Queen Mother Blakely’s fight to save her home

  Over 40 years ago, Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely founded a building in Harlem harboring squatters and homeless people. The building was abandoned and a blight to the community. In 1982, after lots of hard work, she and a small team from New Future Foundation, Inc. made the property into a viable livable home for women and children with the opportunity of homeownership. Now, this same building, a place she calls home, and that has helped hundreds of exchange students obtain education, employment, careers and the ability to become productive members of society, is in danger of being taken away from senior citizens…

Tracy Reese SPRING 2018 READY-TO-WEAR

  NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 11, 2017 by EMILY FARRA Tracy Reese was pushing for more diversity in fashion way before it became a major talking point of the Spring ’18 season. Her shows have long featured women of different ages and ethnicities, and she’s recently expanded into plus sizes, too. But her presentation at Pier 59 today will likely go down as one of the most diverse and feel-good of the week—and that’s partly because her gorgeous cast of “real”-looking women didn’t just stand there and look pretty. First, let’s address the clothes. From the get-go, they had a mood-lifting effect:…

Tracy Reese Fall 2017

Tracy Reese’s House Party First Lady of New York Chirlane McCray and Sasheer Zamata of “Saturday Night Live” attended Reese’s fall fashion show. By Lisa Lockwood on February 12, 2017 The scene at Tracy Reese. AP/REX/Shutterstock POETRY IN FASHION: First Lady of New York Chirlane McCray and Sasheer Zamata of “Saturday Night Live” attended Tracy Reese’s fall fashion show that was held at 632 on Hudson. With women reading poetry and models posing in Reese’s designs, guests wound their way through the three floors of the private home in Manhattan’s West Village, stopping to listen to poets recite about human rights and the strength of…

Partying GHE20G0TH1K Style With Venus X & The North Face

  By Stephanie Smith-Strickland in Style Nov 17, 2017 from highsnobiety.com Venus X is the fearless founder of GHE20G0TH1K, the beloved New York underground party that’s been celebrated for its counterculture attitude and unflinching dedication to creating an inclusive space on the dance floor. Founded in 2010, the party has since grown to include a record label, a concept store and a self-styled brand voice that is singularly New York. We linked up with Venus, whose demanding DJ schedule sees her spinning records across the East and West Coast, and the world. Last year she and DJ Asmara even spent a month in Brazil creating…

Exploring the Culinary Soul of New York with Restaurateur John Seymour

  By Stephanie Smith-Strickland in Style Nov 10, 2017 from highsnobiety.com From his “New Yawk” accent to his jocular demeanor, restaurateur John Seymour is a thoroughbred product of the Big Apple. There’s nowhere his love of the city he calls home is more apparent than at Sweet Chick, his soul food-flavored restaurant whose fried chicken biscuit has become a perennial favorite of everyone from the fashion set to fellow New York-born tastemakers like A$AP Bari, who hosted a VLONE pop-up in the restaurant’s coffee shop extension. Seymour’s love affair with New York, and his passionate desire to protect its history and heritage,…

The Beastie Boys’ Honorary Fourth Member Takes Us Through New York’s Golden Era Hip-Hop Haunts

  By Stephanie Smith-Strickland in Style Oct 27, 201 from highsnobiety.com New York City is known as much for its illustrious sense of history as it it for its colorful denizens. It’s the birthplace of hip-hop and the home of dreamers, designers and artists of all ilk. As the saying goes: “If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.” Legendary portrait photographer and Brooklyn-born city slicker Ricky Powell is a testament to the serendipitous nature of an urban landscape in which a few chance encounters can lead to the career of a lifetime. The North Face caught…

Tagging Claw Money’s Singular New York With The North Face

  By Stephanie Smith-Strickland in Style Oct 25, 2017 From highsnobiety.com New York is a city of transplants. People from all over the world descend on the tiny island for work, play, and to pursue their dreams. So much so, it can easily seem as though non-natives outnumber tried and true city denizens. Despite that, few people channel the lifeblood of the city like Claudia Gold, known professionally as Claw Money. Born and raised in Fresh Meadows, Queens, the prolific graffiti artist turned fashion designer has emerged as one of the most prominent creative voices of the era, earning the admiration of musicians…

Tracy Reese Garden Show

From Vogue NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 12, 2016 by EMILY FARRA Tracy Reese has nixed the traditional runway show in favor of unconventional presentations, from last season’s film screening to her Spring ’17 garden party in the New York Marble Cemetery. Instead of positioning models along the perimeter, she cast women of all ages, sizes, and occupations, many of whom are making a big difference in New York. One woman was in charge of organizing a prom for disadvantaged youth and children with illnesses at Madison Square Garden; another directed a program for bringing art to the incarcerated. Several women were dedicated to…