Category: Anok Yai

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Anok Yai Fashion H.E.R. Miley Cyrus Oscars Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez wore a stunning Ralph Lauren gown to the Oscars: best of the night?

selena-gomez-wore-a-stunning-ralph-lauren-gown-to-the-oscars:-best-of-the-night?

Selena Gomez was definitely one of the best-dressed women of the Oscars. I know I’ve been saying that about a lot of women, but I really do believe it – it was a surprisingly good night for fashion, albeit a bit boring and same-y overall. There were no huge trainwreck-style moments, at least that I saw, although Miley Cyrus really did try, bless her heart. Anyway, Selena has a shockingly good awards-season run, and her Ralph Lauren dress at the Oscars capped it all off. As a fellow big-rig hauler, I’ve been fascinated to see how Selena dresses for her large bust. She’s giving us a masterclass in clever tailoring and what I assume is smart foundation garments, including a minimizer of some variety. Selena’s team apparently based this on a Sofia Loren look, which makes sense. Her necklace is Bulgari, and yes, her fiance Benny Blanco was there. I would pay $50 to hear what Taylor Swift thinks of Selena’s fiance.

As for Miley Cyrus… yeah, she tried it. She wore a McQueen look with dumb gloves (is she Madonna??). Minus the gloves, the dress is fine, almost boring. But Miley’s styling included bleached brows and her whole face looked “off.”

Anok Yai wore Marni – eh. She’s so beautiful, but this looked so cheap.

H.E.R. also wore Ralph Lauren, like Selena. Someone always tries to channel Ferrero Rocher, and this year it was H.E.R.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

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Anok Yai Vittoria Ceretti

Is American Vogue’s December digital cover really bad or just boring?

is-american-vogue’s-december-digital-cover-really-bad-or-just-boring?

Behold, American Vogue’s December 2024 digital cover. This became controversial as soon as it was released. First, some backstory on the cover. It features seven actual models (only one of whom is a nepo-baby): Angelina Kendall, Anok Yai, Vittoria Ceretti, Amelia Gray, Lulu Tenney, Loli Bahia and Devyn Garcia. A real who’s-who of the under-30 models and I think all of them qualify as Gen Z?

Vogue’s cover story is called “How Fashion Is Coming Down To Earth.” The cover models are all wearing various mass-market brands on the cover, brands like Gap, Toteme, Dôen, Levi’s and Polo Ralph Lauren. The thesis is that fashion is headed to mass-market brands, because people – especially young people – do not want to wear couture or excessively priced fashion in this new era. There’s also a focus on how many major designers are moving into established mass-market brands, like Claire Waight Keller moving from Givenchy to Uniqlo. Zac Posen is also creating a Gap line, and that’s especially highlighted in the Vogue piece. I enjoy these kinds of “trendspotting/where is fashion going” pieces but I think Vogue is missing some components of what awaits the fashion industry in the coming years.

Anyway, the controversy! Basically, Vogue could have highlighted the the style diversity within affordable, mass-market brands and really showcased the affordable looks in the best possible way. Instead, Vogue made the choice to make everyone looked washed out and same-y. All the models in jeans and white tops, placed in a grey box with a grey letterhead. This is the future of fashion? Dull, sexless models in a grey box, all wearing the same thing?? I can handle a lack of glamour if the magazine is giving us a striking or striped-down cover image. But this just looks like some AI sh-t.

Elaborated on this https://t.co/owX0mimPGc pic.twitter.com/8b0JNPYeTs

— Louis Pisano (@LouisPisano) December 12, 2024

Love that there are models on the covers. HATE the covers. pic.twitter.com/Rq7cp67x4A

— Linduh Evangelista (@marcuslmorris) December 11, 2024

Cover courtesy of Vogue.

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Anok Yai Gisele Bundchen Met Gala Quinta Brunson Rita Ora Taika Waititi

Gisele Bundchen wore a 2007 Chanel gown for the Met Gala: boring or cool?

gisele-bundchen-wore-a-2007-chanel-gown-for-the-met-gala:-boring-or-cool?

This was Gisele Bundchen’s first solo appearance at a Met Gala in many, many years. This was her first post-divorce gala. She wanted to bring it, and she… sort of did, I guess. She wore a 2007 Chanel look from the archives, a look she wore back in 2007 for an editorial. It was very dramatic and on-brand for her – she’s all about recycling and sustainable fashion. Was it also kind of snooze? Yeah. But she looked fine, albeit a little bit “worked on,” you know? Sis got some post-split cosmetic work.

Rita Ora & Taika Waititi in Prabal Gurung. Dedicated to never serving. Rita tries so hard, they both do. And it just ends up feeling blah.

Anok Yai in Prabal Gurung – truly one of the best looks of the night. This was gorgeous and a great interpretation of the theme.

Quinta Brunson in Prabal Gurung. This was also a great way to honor the theme and I loved how many sheer gloves were worn by various women. Quinta’s hair – with the Chanel-esque feathers – is incredible. She looks great.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Cover Images.

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Anok Yai Lily Rose Depp Vittoria Ceretti

Vittoria Ceretti, Anok Yai & other models slammed nepo-baby Lily Rose Depp

vittoria-ceretti,-anok-yai-&-other-models-slammed-nepo-baby-lily-rose-depp

Last week, Lily Rose Depp’s Elle Magazine cover story came out, and most people rolled their eyes at her and her idiocy, white privilege and blindness to her own nepotism. Lily Rose has two massively famous parents – American Johnny Depp and French model, actress, singer and muse Vanessa Paradis. Paradis has a big career in France and… Lily Rose looks a lot like her mother. Lily Rose got a Chanel contract when she was only 16 years old, and of course she’s gotten modeling and acting jobs based on her name and her parents’ fame. Not according to Lily Rose though, who told Elle:

“The internet seems to care a lot about that kind of stuff. People are going to have preconceived ideas about you or how you got there, and I can definitely say that nothing is going to get you the part except for being right for the part. The internet cares a lot more about who your family is than the people who are casting you in things. Maybe you get your foot in the door, but you still just have your foot in the door. There’s a lot of work that comes after that.”

Well, a lot of people who are NOT nepo-babies have some thoughts about all of that. Model Vittoria Ceretti got it started, posting this message on her IG Stories:

“I just want to share a thought here because I can. I bumped into an interview of a so-called ‘nepo baby’ or whatever y’all call it,” she began her Instagram Story post, which was later shared by the gossip account Diet Prada. While Ceretti conceded that the nepo baby in question has probably faced some rejection, the model pointed out that their privilege and family connections have likely cushioned any blow.

“You can tell me your sad little story about it (even at the end of the day you can still always go cry on your dad’s couch in your villa in Malibu), but how about not being able to pay for your flight back home to your family? Waiting hours to do a fitting/casting just to see a nepo baby walk past you from the warm seat of her/his Mercedes with her/his driver and her/his friend/assistant/agent taking care of HER/HIS MENTAL HEALTH. You have no f–king idea how much it takes to make people respect you. TAKES YEARS. You just get it [for] free day one.”

“I have many nepo baby friends whom I respect, but I can’t stand listening to you compare yourself to me. I was not born on a comfy sexy pillow with a view. I know it’s not your fault, but please, appreciate and know the place you came from.”

[From Yahoo]

Good for Vittoria, truly. I’m glad she said this and I hope that Lily Rose is f–king listening. Another model, Anok Yai also spoke up around the same time as Vittoria, writing about how broke she was when she moved to New York to work as a model, and how she felt like she was on a knife’s edge, with no one or no money to fall back on for years and years. She also wrote, in part: “I will see some of you privilege kids stress about not booking a job because of the impact of your career while there are those of us who stress because we don’t know if we’ll be able to take care of our parents this months or put our siblings through school…I know you work hard and have your struggles like the rest of us, but goddamn if you only knew the hell we go through to stand in the same room that you were born in.”

Anok and Vittoria posting their statements on their respective IGs ended up giving space to several models – none of them nepo babies – the space to tell their own stories and how it bothers them that they can’t even talk about this within the fashion industry, how much nepotism is “baked into the system.” You can follow this thread:

Nyagua Ruea on Lily Rose Depp and white privilege pic.twitter.com/KxmBV3RvIP

— MODELS (@ModelsFacts) November 18, 2022

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of Elle.

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Anok Yai Dan Levy Jasmine Tookes Kaia Gerber Met Gala

Kaia Gerber in Oscar de la Renta at the Met Gala: delicate & lovely?

kaia-gerber-in-oscar-de-la-renta-at-the-met-gala:-delicate-&-lovely?

Kaia Gerber departs from the Carlyle Hotel for the MET Gala

There was a lot of energy for Kaia Gerber at this year’s Met Gala. She looked beautiful in this delicate-looking Oscar de la Renta. It feels inspired by Hubert de Givenchy’s collaborations with Audrey Hepburn. But is it part of the “American lexicon”? I don’t know. But it’s very Audrey and very ballerina too.

Kaia Gerber departs from the Carlyle Hotel for the MET Gala

Bonus Kaia: she went to the Met Gala afterparties with her boyfriend Jacob Elordi.

Kaia Gerber and Jacob Elordi arrive at the MET Gala after-party held at Cathédrale in NYC

Jasmine Tookes in Oscar de la Renta. I actually like this? It feels on-theme, like it was made from drop-cloths during the Revolutionary War.

Embed from Getty Images

Anok Yai in Oscar de la Renta. Beautiful? For sure. Doesn’t have much to do with the theme, it’s just a pretty model in a pretty dress.

Embed from Getty Images

Bonus WTFery: Dan Levy in Loewe. This is not great, baby.

MET Gala Departures 2021

Photos courtesy of Getty, Backgrid, Avalon Red.

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Anok Yai Bella Hadid Kaia Gerber Lourdes Ciccone Leon Precious Lee

Vogue’s September issue aims for inclusivity: does it work or is it just tokenism?

vogue’s-september-issue-aims-for-inclusivity:-does-it-work-or-is-it-just-tokenism?

2020 Vanity Fair Oscar Party

Someone mentioned in the comments that there was a rumor going around that Adele would be the cover girl for Vogue’s September issue. If only! Instead, we get this September issue which… it’s not great, let’s be honest. I know what Anna Wintour was going for, truly. I understand the idea behind it, and if even if you don’t understand the ideas behind it, the self-congratulatory cover story beats us over the head with it: diversity, inclusion, no more sizeism or racism! We’re still ageist though, don’t worry!

The “cover models” are Kaia Gerber, Anok Yai, Ariel Nicholson, Bella Hadid, Lola Leon (in the right-hand corner), Sherry Shi, Yumi Nu and Precious Lee. Precious is “the Black model who is not a sample size.” Yumi Nu is “the Asian model who is not a sample size.” Bella is a white-presenting half-Palestinian woman. Kaia is white bread. Sherry is Chinese-American. Anok is Sudanase-American. Ariel is a trans woman. Lola is half-Cuban and half-Italian-American. So, when we take a moment to identify these women and grasp what Vogue is trying to represent, how do you feel? Does it feel like “too little too late”? Does it feel like tokenism? Does it feel like maybe the idea was okay but the execution kind of sucks? Because most of all, I just feel like this is a bad photo for the damn cover. It feels like the only thing uniting these women is youth and slicked-down hair with center parts.

As I said, the Vogue cover article is very self-congratulatory as various fashion industry professionals seem shell-shocked by the fact that they can’t gatekeep their way out of this. They desperately want to make the fashion industry white and thin again and they’re only pretending to be happy with this new turn of events all while feverishly muttering to themselves “but what about the sample sizes?!?!” This paragraph was particular rich:

It is tempting to pan across the faces on these pages and see the shattering of beauty norms: There’s no dominant type, no singular standard for readers to measure themselves against. For far too long, that standard was bone-thin, painfully young, cisgender, and, by an overwhelming margin, white. Such uniformity now seems outrageous, both antiquated and out of sync with a culture rejoicing in the hard-fought visibility of people who mirror the splendid multiplicity of our modern global society. Yet the mind snags on this idea that beauty norms have gone out the window: There is still, of course, currency in being a slim, conventionally pretty white woman, as most-followed female TikTok stars Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae might attest. On Instagram, lingerie ads featuring women with voluptuous fat rolls alternate with others for products promising speedy post-pandemic weight loss. There’s work yet to do on this front.

[From Vogue]

I’m sorry, this is a whole mess. Here’s a cookie for “trying” though. I know you won’t eat it.

Cover & IGs courtesy of Vogue.