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Posts tagged as “Glamour Magazine”

Lupita Nyong'o Covers Glamour Magazine's Women of the Year 2014 Issue

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Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o has been on a roll in 2014; in February, the actress won an Oscar for “12 Years a Slave” and has subsequently been popping up on “best dressed” and “most beautiful” lists ever since, in addition to becoming a beauty ambassador for Lancome and landing a role in the upcoming “Star Wars” reboot by JJ Abrams.

Nevertheless, in her interview with Glamour magazine, she tells the magazine the attention she’s received has been overwhelming.  “Right now I’m still adjusting. I guess I feel catapulted into a different place; I have a little whiplash,” she said. “I did have a dream to be an actress, but I didn’t think about being famous. And I haven’t yet figured out how to be a celebrity; that’s something I’m learning, and I wish there were a course on how to handle it.”

She couldn’t even imagine what winning the Oscar would be like, she observed.

“I don’t think I will ever be able to really articulate how bizarre it was to hear my name at the Academy Awards. I’d watched in my pajamas the year before!” she said. “I felt numb — dazed and confused. I remember feeling light — weightless. More like limbo than cloud nine.”

Nyong’o, who was born in Mexico of Kenyan parents, mentions that she didn’t know success on this level would be possible for a woman with darker skin.  For her, Oprah Winfrey wasn’t just a role model but a “reference point,” and seeing Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg in “The Color Purple” was key to her belief that she could become successful.

She hopes she can have the same effect on people who see her.

“I’ve heard people talk about images in popular culture changing, and that makes me feel great, because it means that the little girl I was, once upon a time, has an image to instill in her that she is beautiful, that she is worthy,” she said. “Until I saw people who looked like me, doing the things I wanted to, I wasn’t so sure it was a possibility.”

The December issue of Glamour will be available on newsstands November 11.

article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (follow @lakinhutcherson)

South Carolina Native Sergio Hudson wins Rihanna's "Styled To Rock" Design Competition

Sergio

After ten weeks of cutting, sewing and styling, South Carolina native Sergio Hudson came out on top as the winner of Rihanna’s Styled To Rock design competition.  The pop star, along with judges/mentors Mel Ottenberg, Erin Wasson, and Pharrell Williams, chose the father of three over runner up Laura Petrielli-Pulice from Chicago, for his envelope-pushing aesthetic and strong structuring skills. Hudson walks away with a $100,000 cash prize, a fashion feature in Glamour magazine and a spot on Rihanna’s official design team.

Airing on Bravo, the music-meets-fashion competition series followed 12 up-and-coming coming designers, hand-picked by the pop-star, to create unique fashion pieces for some of the biggest names in entertainment. With celebrity guests such as Miley Cyrus and Kelly Osbourne, the designers experienced demanding real-life challenges, made to push their creative boundaries. Each week, with only a limited time frame, they were asked to create an innovative outfit and complete look based on the celebrities’ detailed brief.  In the final challenge, the final two designers had to create two editorial looks specifically for Rihanna. Sergio’s denim ball gown and high-cut denim shorts were the stand out pieces.

Essence Magazine Announces Vanessa Bush as New Editor-In-Chief

Vanessa Bush, new Editor of Essence Magazine
“I’m absolutely thrilled. This truly is my dream job. I’ve loved Essence since I was a kid,” Vanessa Bush, the new editor-in-chief of Essencetold theGrio.  The new head of the black women’s lifestyle bible has worked for numerous publications over the course of her career, including Life and Glamour, but none other has drawn her passionate devotion.  In her new role, Bush is thrilled to take her decade-plus years of experience in journalism and apply it in service to African-American women, at a magazine that inspired her both as a black woman and budding journalist as a child.
She even remembers her first encounter with the glossy.  “It’s something that I will never forget. I can remember creating mini-magazines with my mom,” Bush reminisced. “One of the few places where I could actually cut out pictures of women who look like me was Essence magazine. So to be able to bring that full circle decades later is just a dream. Essence is the embodiment of the quintessential black woman who is empowered and that’s an achiever, that’s looking for inspiration, that’s looking for wise counsel. That’s always trying to be the best that she can be. Essence has always been that guide book that shows us how to do that.”
The backstory of the new Essence chief
The Columbia School of Journalism graduate began her career as a staff writer before moving into editorial duties. In 2000, Bush began working at Time, Inc., now the parent company of Essence Communications.  Simultaneously, after operating independently since its founding by Edward Lewis in 1970, Essence began its initial partnership with Time in 2000. Bush made her move at that time, and joined the Essence team as a beauty and fashion features editor.