Seems like Julia Sarr-Jamois is the new ‘it’ girl for the fashion world. She is EVERYWHERE. Every fashion blog I check out, I see her face and her style praised. Within the last week-or-so Sarr-Jamois was featured on TOPSHOP Edited, sharing her styling lips. She was featured on NET-A-PORTER as a visionary of style and also appears in the new video campaign for Barneys New York.
I love how I am seeing more African faces like Oroma Elewa, Arieta Mujay, Marian Kihogo and of course Julia Sarr-Jamois making a name for themselves in the Western fashion world.
1) They are doing what they love. 2) Being someone who is an aficionado of fashion and wanting/trying to get into the industry, seeing people gives me the assurance that I can also make a name for myself in the creative industry, whether it’s fashion or visual communications. It eliminates any inkling of self-doubt that I may have.
At the 2011 International Year For People of African Descent Conference, after I gave a short talk about growing up, The Afroklectic Project and being a creative, a mother us about her teenage daughter who wants to become a fashion designer. The mother said she told her daughter that because she is African no one would buy her clothes. After my talk, the mother said she felt very bad for telling her daughter that, because she had now met someone who had followed a creative path and made something out of it and she was going to tell her daughter about me once she got home.
I guess how the mother saw me that day, is how I see the likes of Oroma Elewa, Arieta Mujay, Marian Kihogo and Sarr-Jamois. I see them as success stories. And I use those stories every time when my mother’s hidden frustration of me being a creative seeps through. Telling my Mum these stories eases her worry about me being a creative especially in the fashion industry. Hopefully one day I will be telling her my own success story!
SOURCE: NET-A-PORTER, TOPSHOP, FASHIONABLE PHOTOGRAPHY & NATURAL BELLE
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