The major exception to the rule: smoking. A cigarette habit will do a number on just about every major health system—your heart, your lungs, even your skin—including your reproductive system. Smoking kicks egg loss into overdrive—women who smoke enter menopause an average of one to four years earlier than non-smokers. (The verdict on vaping is still out: “The problem with vaping is that everyone thinks it’s not as bad as cigarettes but we don’t really know what it does yet,” says Dr. Knopman.)
Weight can also impact your chances of having a baby (that goes for male partners too). “Obesity in women increases the rate of miscarriage, and is associated with worse outcomes for fertility treatments,” Dr. Brady says.
Success rates with IVF—often hailed as a magic bullet—hover around 5 percent for women in their early 40s. “People are really shocked to hear that,” Dr. Brady says.
Really shocked. Fertility doctors see women every day who’ve been led to believe that egg-freezing and IVF are insurance policies with limited risks and hopeful guarantees.
IVF is revolutionary science that has allowed over 8 million births to women who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant, since the procedure was first pioneered in the 1980s. But “most of the success of IVF is based on the age of the female,” Dr. Knopman says. “The younger you are when you make the embryos the better chance those embryos are going to be viable and lead to a viable pregnancy.”
It’s far from a fail-safe promise, but the technology (and the ad campaigns surrounding it) has given an inflated sense of confidence about what fertility treatments can and can’t do. “People come in at 40 and say, ‘Oh I’m going to do IVF,’ and I tell them okay but this may take us a lot of rounds and it may not work,” Dr. Knopman says. In other words, you can’t just throw money at the problem: “It’s not always a slam dunk,” she says.
It also matters where you do your IVF. It’s a technically challenging procedure, part art, part science, and not all IVF clinics are up to the challenge. “Not all labs can do egg retrieval and storage the same way,” Dr. Knopman says. “Lab conditions can alter the embryo.” Before handing over your credit card, your body, or your dreams of future pregnancy, ask the clinic the right questions: How many eggs have you frozen? How many eggs have survived the thaw? How many eggs have made embryos?
Look for a clinic associated with the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, which provides oversight and keeps tabs on a clinic’s success rate.
“One of the biggest myths I hear is that the pill hurts your fertility and that long-term pill use is not good,” says Dr. Knopman. That’s not true. Let us repeat: Hormonal birth control—whether you use the pill, the ring, the patch or a hormonal IUD—doesn’t hurt your fertility.
“What birth control won’t protect you from is egg loss,” Dr. Knopman says. “Most of us are born with about one to two million eggs. By the time we get our first period, most of us have about 350,000 eggs—you lose a significant amount before you even menstruate.” Each month, regardless of whether you’re ovulating or not, around a thousand eggs die off, their cells absorbed back into your body. “From the first period to the last period, you’re constantly losing eggs no matter what you do,” says Dr. Knopman.
The second I heard Kim Kardashian West is training to be a lawyer, I was here for it. I’m for all women—yes, even a mega-rich celebrity like KKW—doing whatever the hell they want with their profession. But as a woman of color who has fought hard to become (and then stay) a lawyer herself, I’m especially impressed that someone with an already wildly successful career and a fourth child on the way has decided to pursue the law. Because trust me when I say this: No matter how wealthy and famous someone is, no matter how many employees or other helpers they have on speed dial…no one signs up for a four-year law apprenticeship at a firm, multiple tests, and the California bar just for kicks. No one.
So when Kardashian West says she’s put a lot of thought into her decision, I believe her. I know firsthand just how difficult it can be for women to tough it out in this field, and I salute her for taking it on—as I would for any woman. Not everyone’s on board, though:
I first set out to become a lawyer in my early twenties. I lived in Canada, where I went to law school for three years. Then I did a brief stint in BigLaw (a nickname for the largest, most prominent law firms) but quickly burned out and took a massive paycheck hit to transition to my true calling: immigration and refugee law. Soon after settling into my career, though, I got married and moved to America. There, my Canadian law degree was about as useful to me as this goldfish walker. I had no choice but to go back to law school for a L.L.M. (basically a year-long crash course in American law). That meant incurring even more student debt and losing more of my sanity (and hair) to graduate and take the bar…again.
Now I’m 30 and my legal career is starting to feel incompatible with the rest of my life. I’ve been delaying the decision to have kids because I’ve seen how maternity leave or leaving the office early too often to be with your family can make a difference when it comes to climbing the ranks at a firm. I know I’m not alone in this feeling: According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, law is one of the least inclusive professions in the U.S., and minority and female attrition is high.
That is why I’m excited by the prospect of Kardashian West putting a spotlight on the profession. Law is in need of a rebranding, in my opinion—so who better to make that happen than a hard-working, high-profile reality star? Of course Kardashian West doesn’t need me—or anyone else, for that matter—legitimizing her decision to become a lawyer, but I’m tired of seeing people act like her career swerve is just the latest musings of a bored, vapid celebrity. To me, she seems to clearly be cognizant of our country’s serious social inequities and actually wants to do something about it.
“Last year I registered with the California State Bar to study law,” Kardashian West wrote on Instagram recently alongside a photo of herself studying. “For the next 4 years, a minimum of 18 hours a week is required, I will take written and multiple choice tests monthly. As my first year is almost coming to an end I am preparing for the baby bar, a mini version of the bar, which is required when studying law this way. I’ve seen some comments from people who are saying it’s my privilege or my money that got me here, but that’s not the case. One person actually said I should ‘stay in my lane.’ I want people to understand that there is nothing that should limit your pursuit of your dreams, and the accomplishment of new goals. You can create your own lanes, just as I am.”
Kardashian West comes from a place of extreme privilege, but she can still use her platform for good. Look at Amal Clooney’s current caseload, for example. She’s married to George Clooney and rocks $2,000 coats, sure, but she continues to represent the world’s most vulnerable while also teaching the next crop of lawyers.
This Is Us closed out the first half of season three with not one, not two, but three major cliffhangers for the beloved Pearsons.
After nearly a year of guessing, viewers found out that the “her” in question in the future is actually Rebecca, not Beth or Kate. “The reveal is one piece of the larger picture in terms of what happened with our family as we move through the rest of the series,” executive producer and co-showrunner Elizabeth Berger tells Glamour.com.
However, what wasn’t revealed was the state of Beth’s marriage to Randall or Kate’s marriage to Toby. Considering that both Randall and Toby aren’t wearing wedding rings in the future, what does that mean for the fan-favorite couples? “Everyone is going to have to see what becomes of them,” Berger teases.
And if that wasn’t enough to make viewers sweat, then the big reveal that Nicky Pearson is actually alive most certainly did. “Yes, there’s a lot going on,” executive producer and co-showrunner Isaac Aptaker says. “I can promise we’ll have some very satisfying answers in the immediate episodes when the show returns. It’s worth it.”
Until then, Aptaker and Berger do their best to explain everything that went down in tonight’s fall finale, and where the show will pick up in the new year.
PHOTO: NBC
Glamour: Nicky is alive! Who is the actor that plays him as an older man? It actually looked like it could be Milo Ventimiglia, but perhaps wearing prosthetics.
Isaac Aptaker: That’s top secret! But I promise you it’s not Milo with prosthetics. However, we’ll get the full story on older Nicky very, very soon. We’re going to be along with Kevin as he’s on this quest, with this little nugget of information he’s been given, to try and figure out what the story of his uncle was, and his whereabouts in the present day. We’re going to pick up on this right away, so fans won’t have to wait months and months. ‘All about Nicky ‘will be told by the end of the season.
Bradford, Pennsylvania (where Nicky now lives) is about a four-hour drive from Pittsburgh, so what significance does that town hold?
Elizabeth Berger: You may be seeing some version of that drive in the near future!
Aptaker: Bradford is actually a town where my mom grew up, and I’ve been there once, and it felt like exactly where I would have imagined Nicky would have settled down.
Is that how you decided on Bradford, PA then?
Aptaker: Yeah, well we knew the type of place, and I was like, ‘Actually, I’ve been somewhere that I think is perfect!’
What should viewers take away from the quick glimpse we got into Nicky’s life? Obviously we see him living a rather reclusive existence, and there is a bottle of alcohol on the table.
Berger: Obviously we’re not showing too much, but I think in the brief glimpse that we get, it’s someone that is living somewhat of a solitary existence, and like Isaac said, when we return we’ll find out the full story very quickly.
Is Nicky past the point of being able to acclimate himself into the Pearson family in the present day? Is he past the point of being saved?
Berger: That is a very good question. And knowing the type of family that the Pearsons are, you can guess that the Pearsons are probably going to want him to try and acclimate, and probably not be able to stay away once some of them learn about his existence. I think we’re going to be finding someone that has been living a very specific type of lifestyle, and there may be limitations there in terms of what he can do.
When might he meet some of the other Pearsons?
Aptaker: Kevin is pretty determined to get to the bottom of this story. He bought two tickets to Vietnam, so it’s all-consuming for him. I think it’s a matter of how long does it take to being told from a hotel clerk that your uncle is alive to actually tracking him down. I can promise that we’ll have some very satisfying answers in the immediate episodes that we come back with.
PHOTO: NBC
When did Milo first find out that Nicky was going to be alive, and what was his reaction?
Berger: We crafted our whole Vietnam arc [prior to] the beginning of the season and so as soon as we figure everything out, we let the actors in on it so they know the larger scope of what they’re playing. And I think he dug it. Milo loves the time period and he’s been having an amazing time working with Michael [Angarano, who plays Nicky].
Aptaker: He and Michael already knew each other and had worked on a project together, so they had a brother dynamic down so quickly. I went to their first day on set, which was that scene where Jack is working at the autobody shop and they are waiting to see the draft, and they felt like brothers instantly. They just had this dynamic that was so perfect.
What can you say about the Vietnamese woman? We obviously didn’t get the answers to who she is, but will we? How much emphasis should we put into who this woman is?
Aptaker: Honestly not a ton. For us, that was more a story of how, in life, you think you’re pursuing one thing, but it leads you to a much larger question that you didn’t even know you should be asking. In a little bit of a way, she was a MacGuffin [Ed note: essentially a red herring]. She was certainly important to Jack and they had that connection, but Kevin thought there was going to be this great, salacious love story with maybe an illegitimate child, and it turned out that ultimately this was more a story about brothers that he didn’t even realize.
Berger: But we will be learning a bit more about what happens with her in the past. Obviously, we still have so many questions about what happened actually during the rest of Jack and Nicky’s time together, and she obviously is involved [in their lives], so we will be getting a satisfying answer there in that time period.
Let’s move on to the question everyone has had since the season two finale: Who is “her” in the future? We finally see Beth in the future, so we know it’s not her. But when Beth says she’s going to visit Randall’s mother—thereby answering who “her” is—my first thought was that she was referring to his birth mother, and not Rebecca. Did you purposely want to make it unclear about which mother she was going to see?
Aptaker: You’re the second person that brought this up, especially because we thought, ‘Let’s just try to be really clear for once about who ‘her’ is!’ I guess we weren’t! That was not us trying to be clever. So [when Beth says she’s going to visit] Randall’s birth mother, she’s referring to Rebecca.
That makes sense,because otherwise why would older Randall call up older Toby (as he did in the season three premiere) to say “She wants you there, Toby,” if he was talking about his birth mother and not Rebecca.
Aptaker: That’s hilarious. Yes, we can answer the question that “her” is Rebecca, so that no longer has to be looming over people. And also, Beth is OK [in the future]. She has survived and is healthy and thriving in the future.
And as sad as it is knowing Rebecca is probably not doing well, at least we know that, for the most part, she has lived a long, healthy life. Is she in her eighties?
Berger: Yeah. Yes, that is true. There wasn’t some untimely death here, and this reveal is giving one piece of the larger picture, in terms of what happened with our family as we move through the rest of the series. It’s one little piece in terms of the larger plan that we’ve had in our minds since the beginning.
This must be hard for Tess, too, especially after seeing the touching scene she shared with Rebecca about her coming out.
Aptaker: Exactly. As young Tess was coming of age, Rebecca was clearly becoming such an important person in her life, and they developed a strong bond over the years and that would make it particularly painful for Tess to see Rebecca in whatever circumstance she may be in.
PHOTO: NBC
Speaking of the future, what kind of solace can you give to Beth and Randall and Katoby fans? Now we’ve seen both Randall and Toby not wearing wedding rings in the future, so either you guys have something against wedding rings or both men are not with their present-day spouses. This is very disturbing.
Aptaker, jokingly: In our future, jewelry is outlawed.
Berger: I think we can’t say too much on it. We have two incredibly strong, lovable couples that are going to be put through the pieces, and everyone is going to have to wait and see what becomes of them.
So should fans automatically not assume that Beth and Randall are divorced or separated?
Aptaker: I think you have to look at those scenes and make what assumptions and connections and guesses you want to make, because I would say we certainly haven’t shown them in any sort of affectionate, married way yet. We only know these very limited, very intentional moments that are [playing out] every so often, and it could certainly go either way.
Berger: I don’t think people should assume the best or worst. They’re just going to have to go on this journey with us a little longer.
There’s no way Beth and Randall split up over their argument involving his political future, right? They’re too strong of a couple for that.
Aptaker: I certainly don’t think they’re splitting up over that argument, but we’re over a decade into the future, so a lot can go right or wrong in the marriage in that much time.
PHOTO: NBC/Ron Batzdorff
How has Beth changed in the future? What are we meant to take away from that quick glimpse of her as the boss of a dance company?
Aptaker: Exactly. I think it’s a little bit of a head-scratcher right now for us, but it’s something that we’re going to be getting into the second half of the season. We’re doing an all-Beth episode that we’ll be starting to shoot in a week or two that will really dive into her backstory and give us a lot of answers about who Beth was before she met Randall. Once we explore that backstory, the future flash[forward] will start to make a lot more sense.
In the future, Beth’s assistant hands her a Pin the Tail on the Donkey game. Remind viewers how that played into Rebecca’s past.
Berger: It’s something that we showed in our birthday episode in season one, so the game is part of the Pearson family history.
Finally, what can you say about where we pick up in January?
Aptaker: We actually just watched the first cut of the episode and it’s a really, really cool one. We are going to pick up on election night for Randall, which is about an eight-week jump in our show. But then we’re going to go back in time. It’s one of our specially-structured episodes where we start on election night, waiting for the results to come in, and then we jump back and tell the story of those eight weeks we missed and catch up to where everybody is on election night.
This Is Us will return January 15 at 9 P.M. ET on NBC.
At 97 years old, Glamour 2018 Woman of the Year honoree Betty Reid Soskin is full of stories that feel more relevant than ever. The oldest serving National Park Service ranger has worked in union halls under Jim Crow segregation, established the first black household in a discriminating California suburb, fought for black history to be represented in the park system, and recorded it all in her memoir, Sign My Name to Freedom.
“Democracy has been experiencing these periods of chaos since 1776. They come and go,” she told Glamour in her Women of the Year profile. “And it’s in those periods that democracy is redefined.” When everything seems to be crumbling, we can remold and reset, she believes: “History has been written by people who got it wrong, but the people who are always trying to get it right have prevailed. If that were not true, I would still be a slave like my great-grandmother.”
And tonight, November 12, at Glamour‘s Women of the Year awards, Soskin shared even more wisdom. Actor Andie MacDowell introduced Soskin. “I have the great privilege of serving on the board of the National Forest Foundation, and I love our national parks,” MacDowell said. “In both you can find some of America’s greatest treasures. One of the standouts is not a tall tree or a grand river, but a woman who encompasses strength and grace we all aspire to: 97-year-old National Park Service ranger Betty Reid Saskin. Betty is posted at the Rosie the Riveter/World War Two Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, where she reminds audiences that ‘what gets remembered depends on who in the room is doing the remembering.’ So Betty remembers and educates on behalf of generations of women of color and other marginalized communities, sharing forgotten stories that span from Dread Scott to Black Lives Matter.”
“Betty has served in many roles: military administrator, civil rights freedom fighter, California field rep, DNC delegate, record shop owner, songwriter, author, daughter, wife, mother, and ranger,” she continued. “But the greatest part she has played in history—so far—is serving as our American conscience.”
Read Soskin’s speech, below:
Thank you very much. You have no idea what it means to me to be here. Thank you very much Glamour, but thanks to all women who are finally stepping up and making their voices heard bc that voice has been missing throughout my life.
That voice is so needed. I was so elated at this election where women took their places in leadership.
I am so aware that I am living in my final decade, that every single, minute, hour has meaning to me. The truth that Kamala was talking about has been the life force for me. Because I don’t have time. If I don’t get it right, I don’t have time to do it over. That’s true for the nation and also true for us.
I know these periods of chaos have been with us since 1776. The period that I have been most marked by was that of the 60s where I was an activist in the black revolution. Along with millions of others in this country, I helped to create the future I’m privileged to now be living in. You can’t imagine what that’s like. You can’t imagine.
Thank you Glamour. And thank you all.
Get more inspiring moments from Glamour‘s Women of the Year awards here.
For every step it feels like the fashion industry takes forward, it takes several back. Racial diversity might be improving on the runway, but it’s still lacking behind-the-scenes. You can see curve models in magazines, but they’re less visible during Fashion Week. Brand campaigns might feel more inclusive with their casting, but options in stores for customers who aren’t straight-size or able-bodied are still limited. We’re left wondering: When will real, lasting change manifest? And who’s going to make it happen?
The “when” isn’t easy to answer. The “who,” though, becomes more clear every day, as change-makers gain a bigger platform as they put in the work to evolve not only what fashion looks like, but also who calls the shots. Leomie Anderson, Sinéad Burke, Gabrielle Richardson, Leyna Bloom, Nadia Aboulhosn, and Vanessa Hong are among those pushing for lasting change in the industry, from amping up representation of all skin tones in ad campaigns to increasing ability, body, and gender diversity on the runway. These women understand that the system is far from perfect—but they’re determined to make it better.
Meet six women who are shaping the future of fashion.
The Backstage Superhero
ASOS Design coat, $119. DKNY shirt, $79. Rebecca Taylor pants, $425. Lila Rice cuff, $248. Annie Costello Brown cuff, $147. AUrate rings, $180, $250. Sam Edelman heels, $120.
From the outside, Leomie Anderson, 25, has had a picture-perfect modeling career: She’s a regular at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, she was named a Redken ambassador, she’s a member of the Savage x Fenty family in Savage x Fenty’s ultra-inclusive lingerie show. But she’ll be the first to tell you that backstage, she constantly encounters a host of challenges—mainly when it comes to ealing with makeup artists and hairstylists who don’t have the training or equipment to handle black skin and hair.
“I remember being younger, and being scared to say anything because of the stereotypes that are usually applied to black women,” Anderson says. “I’ll be literally on jobs and literally just say ‘you’re hurting my head,’ and [the makeup artist will] be like ‘ok you diva,’ ‘ok you fierce queen’ and all this sort of stuff… [Th]at’s a fear that I know that a lot of young black models have in the industry, of like getting that label of being a diva or being hard to work with for simply just saying, you know, like stating that my makeup might not look like the right shade or my hair needs a certain type of product.”
After 11 years in the industry—and of having this scene repeat itself over and over again backstage—Anderson was fed up. In 2016, she took to social media, live-tweeting while backstage at a fashion show about how she had to bring her own makeup with her. “Why is it that the black makeup artists are busy with blonde white girls and slaying their makeup and I have to supply my own foundation,” she wrote.
“I wasn’t calling out an individual [makeup artist],” she says of the tweet, which went viral. “It was about saying this is rife within the industry.” Lifting the veil on this reality for many models could have ended with that tweet. But once Anderson started calling out these issues in the fashion industry, she didn’t want to stop—“because I’m really not one for performative activism,” she explains. “I really like to be very proactive about everything that I do.”
She started a YouTube series called the Black Model Survival Kit, where she shares her go-to beauty products. She launched a clothing brand and online forum, LAPP (which stands for “Leomie Anderson, The Project, the Purpose”), which combines her love of streetwear with her passion for giving women a platform to share their thoughts on race, relationships, health, and more.
Anderson has seen a difference since speaking up. “I have to say that where we are now is a much better place than where we were say, ten years ago,” she says. “Now we’re at a point where I think that we can actually celebrate our blackness and just be proud of being black in the fashion industry, which I feel like […] we weren’t really allowed to be before.”
“I’m thankful my voice—and the voices of all black models—was heard,” she continues. And for those who have yet to listen, Anderson has choice words: “I’m not sitting around waiting for [the fashion industry] to change.” She’s going to do something about it.
The Accessibility Advocate
Richard Malone jacket, $1,650. COS shirt, $125. Wolf Circus Jewelry earrings, $98. Annika Inez earring (worn as brooch), $265 for pair. Parisa Wang belt bag, $285. Repetto slippers, $325. For her bold red lip, try Estée Lauder Pure Color Envy Sculpting Lipstick in Jealous ($32, esteelauder.com).
At three feet, five inches tall, Sinéad Burke didn’t see representation in the fashion industry as just an issue—it wasn’t even something that was talked about. “I felt invisible,” she says.
Then, in 2016, the 28-year-old Ph.D. candidate was invited to give a TEDTalk. Titled “Why Design Should Include Everyone,” the presentation sparked more than a million views, initiating a long-overdue conversation about ability and fashion, in many ways led by Burke herself. Since then, she’s launched a column in British Vogue and secured speaking engagements at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Fashion designers also took notice: Burke now collaborates with the likes of Burberry and Christopher Kane, creating custom pieces for her height that send a clear message about how it’s not enough for brands to make adaptive clothing—they have to make them beautiful.
While it’s great that designers want to work with her to create pieces that fit her needs, Burke’s setting her sights on making accessible fashion for everyone—especially when it comes to the experience of shopping. Often, she says, workers at individual stores aren’t familiar with the diversity and inclusion policies preached by company executives or the physical spaces aren’t accessible. “We need to bridge that gap, where we make everybody feel comfortable in these spaces because they are allowed to be there,” she explains.
Burke has been instrumental in making accessible and adaptive fashion a much more prominent part of the larger conversation. But even still, she sometimes has to remind herself the importance of having to speak from experience: “We always lessen our own experience, because we’re like, ‘Oh, everybody knows this.’ And that’s not true.”
“I think we need to turn that monologue that we have in our head on mute sometimes and really go for it,” she continues. “The notion that you feel left out of fashion, or you feel uninvited from something because of systemic oppressions, does not just apply to me. And it’s hard, but it’s about bringing more and more people to the table.”
The Runway Disrupter
3.1 Phillip Lim trench coat, $995. Jil Sander top. Equipment shirt, $280, pants, $395. Kenneth Jay Lane hoops, $75. Mounser necklace, $195. Cuyana bag, $195. Louise Olsen ring, $180. Whistles mules, $199. To get her slicked-back style, try Tresemmé Tres Two Mega Firm Hold Sculpting Gel ($5, at drugstores).
Leyna Bloom wasn’t surprised when her Twitter campaign to be the first trans model of color to walk the Victoria’s Secret Fashion show, which she started in April, racked up 31,000 retweets: “A great group of people are not represented in fashion, and we’ve had enough.”
“The fashion community [hangs] out at the drag bars [and] they have their transsexual friends,” she continues. “But they’re not sitting here acknowledging them in the workplace, and they’re not hiring them.”
Bloom knows the issue all too well: Despite being featured in major magazines and having a presence at Fashion Week, she’s spoken about struggling to be signed to a modeling agency and land larger modeling jobs. Online, she has an active fanbase that supports her every shoot and call for representation. “[There’s] power in knowing your self worth, and I’m getting such great feedback because I stand for what I believe in,” she says.
At least one designer is heeding her message: Becca McCharen-Tran’s Chromat. Bloom opened that show in 2014 and this past September. “She had so many different bodies in her show. She had so many different colors in her show. She had so many different personalities and identities in her show,” the model says of McCharen-Tran. Runways like Chromat aren’t the norm (yet)—Bloom knows this. But she’s committed to speaking up on behalf of communities that are underrepresented and appropriated from in fashion until then.
“It’s not just in the trans community,” Bloom says. “It’s in my black community. It’s in my Asian community. I’m the product of deportation and immigration so I’m a product of many different things in our society that I have to use my voice to stand up [for].”
As she takes designers to task for their runway casting, Bloom is hoping to disrupt other parts of the business, like gendered clothing distinctions in stores. It all comes back to the same idea: wholly embracing the communities that fashion often poaches from. “We need more designers saying [clothes] are not just for men, not just for women,” Bloom says. “They’re for any person who wants to be creative.”
The (Fashion) Community Organizer
Preen Line dress, $575. Rachel Comey earrings, $160. Echo scarf, $49. Maria Black earring (worn as brooch), $255. W. Kleinberg belt, $175. Laura Lombardi bracelet, $120. Trademark bag, $478. Tory Burch mules, $378.
Whether she’s appearing in Pride campaigns for Kenneth Cole and H&M or celebrating queer artists of color through Art Hoe Collective, Gabrielle Richardson, 23, puts one tenet first: “Nothing can be radical unless it’s accessible.”
That’s why Richardson promotes the work of artists with marginalized identities through her Instagram platform. Art, she says, is both an individual outlet and a unifying force for folks who are underrepresented: “Imagery and media is just the universal language that just requires kind of no translation that everyone can understand. And through that, I think it can really change people’s minds and hearts […] and they’re also the places that I feel like inclusivity starts first.”
It was Richardson’s own search for community that led her to social media, where she found it and more. “As I dived into social media and saw so many people making work that’s very personal that they’re willing to share, it made me feel like I can share my own narrative through my artwork, and it be valid,” she explains. Opening up about her queer-black identity from the Collective, she says, has encouraged other women to, too: “I’ve had so many young black women message me and say, ‘You made me feel comfortable coming out.’ ”
One image at a time, Richardson and the Art Hoe Collective are tearing apart idealistic standards and making room for more multi-hyphenate identities. “I don’t want to see—and I say this often—I don’t want to see kind of like, an unrealistic expectation of what humanity should be,” she says. “I want to see the best version of ourselves.”
The Socially Conscious Influencer
Tory Sport sweater, $278. No21 shirt. Mr. Larkin turtleneck, $165. Tibi skirt, $595. Ariana Boussard-Reifel earrings, $475. Cuyana bag, $250. Alice + Olivia by Stacey Bendet mules, $350.
Vanessa Hong’s blog, The Haute Pursuit, became a must-read for #OOTD inspiration when it launched in 2010. By 2015, it had expanded into a lifestyle brand that made outerwear carried at Nordstrom and worn by Lady Gaga. That all came to a standstill, though, when Hong, 34, watched The True Cost, a documentary about unethical fashion production. Afterwards, she felt “morally obligated” to change her business.
Fashion, she learned, was (and is) the second-largest polluting industry in the world; the average American produces up to 82 pounds of textile waste per year. This information was “mind-blowing” to Hong.
“It was just like this really crazy moment,” she says. “I was in Rome on a gig, and I remember watching this documentary in the most antithetical situation, like in this lavish room, and I was like, What am I doing?”
Hong felt paralyzed by her two options: Ignore the information she knew and continue to support brands that harm the planet on her blog, or abandon fashion altogether. “When I first kind of had this awakening, […] I was really scared. Because I was like, I actually cannot work in fashion anymore, because there’s no one that is able to say that they’re able to do something a hundred percent sustainably,” she remembers. Talking to like-minded figures in the industry, like designer Phillip Lim, changed her perspective, convincing her that she could turn her existing platform in a less harmful direction by re-educating herself—and her audience—on what it means to shop sustainably, which, she admits, isn’t always clear. “A lot of us actually have no concept of what it means to make a sustainable product [or] how can a brand say it’s sustainable,” she says.
Hong is calling on her followers and industry peers to consider a different type of diversity—a “diversity in the type of fashion that you’re getting.” She does this, in part, by incorporating conscious, ethically-produced brands and vintage into her outfit posts and styling tips on Instagram, to “bring awareness to these things… but do it in a very digestible way.” She has also reworked other parts of her business, like her e-commerce, to push her new ethos forward: She relaunched The Haute Pursuit’s store, replacing the faux fur coats with biodegradable bags from Morocco. On top of that, she’sstarting a podcast on sustainability and, as she puts it, other “woke issues.”
“It’s all about passing on knowledge,” she says of the future of fashion. “You can’t tell people what to do; you have to empower them [with facts].”
Before Nadia Aboulhosn, 29, signed with Wilhelmina Models, she started her eponymous fashion blog. Her followers would call her plus-sized—to which she would respond: “What is ‘plus-size,’ really?”
The 5’3″, size-12 Aboulhosn defines herself as “normal” but still feels she wasn’t represented in fashion. In 2009, when her blog was just getting started, she had to get creative when styling her outfits: “I was forced to thrift-shop because stores that had clothes for my body type weren’t really a thing [back then].”
Aboulhosn envisioned herself designing a collection that was size-inclusive before it became an industry buzzword. But she had hurdles to clear first: She was rejected from FIT, and she had to move from Los Angeles to New York City to find a modeling agency that would represent her. As her profile grew, through modeling and blogging, she inched closer to her design goal, thanks to a plus-size capsule collection with Boohoo. “It was big because nobody plus size had done a capsule collection, and it was Boohoo’s first capsule collection regardless,” she recalls, noting that the gig led to a collaboration with Addition Elle.
Between modeling, blogging, and designing, Aboulhosn saw options for the traditional “plus” customer improving—but not so much for shoppers who wanted a full size run. That’s when she decided to launch her own collection, of casual dresses and daywear available in sizes small to 3X, By Nadia Aboulhosn,.“I wanted full creative control over everything I put out… I wanted something that could make [..] everybody feel like they can come to my shop for whatever they like,” she says.
Aboulhosn dreams of a fashion landscape where terms like “plus size” and “straight size” simply aren’t used. “I’m not really one, or anyone else, to say what can make somebody else feel good and not feel good,” she says. But, “I’ve done the whole styling thing and I’ve done the whole modeling thing, and I’ve done designing.” In every situation, she notes, there’s been an unnecessary divide. The future of fashion, then, would be for that to go away.
A version of this story appeared in the November 2018 print edition of Glamour.
Alana Mayo, the 34-year-old head of production and development at Outlier Society, is happily riding shotgun with her AirPods firmly in place. She’s not listening to music or a podcast; no one is rolling calls on the other line. She just likes to be ready for anything. A 12-year veteran of the film industry—most recently a VP at Paramount Pictures, where she worked on The Big Short, Fences, and Selma—Mayo has spent the last nine months turning the start-up that Michael B. Jordan launched in 2016 (and named after the Malcolm Gladwell book) into a proper studio. And when you’re trying to go from celebrity LLC to Hollywood heavy-weight, being plugged in is simply part of the job.
At any given moment, Outlier, which has only three full-time employees including Mayo and 31-year-old Jordan, is developing an impressive slate of feature films, scripted and nonscripted TV shows, short-form Web series, and a panoply of other platform-agnostic content. “What is so great about this company is that you can be bold and quick and fail without losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and adapt from there,” Mayo says when we sit down in a high-gloss conference room Outlier shares with Skydance Media, the Santa Monica company behind blockbusters like World War Z, Jack Reacher, and several Mission: Impossibles. “I always describe us as a millennial company. I think, because Michael and I are actually in this demographic, we so clearly see the opportunity in reaching people outside of traditional means.”
And reaching people is the mission: Mayo considers “meeting the audience where they’re at” to be her primary concern. “I don’t think the world is fixed by content, but I’d say it is 100 percent informed by content and the images people see,” she says. “I often think back on what I remember from my childhood and how that shaped the image of myself. I think content has a really profound effect on kids.”
In March the studio became one of the first to publicly adopt inclusion riders, a contract amendment that guarantees cast and crew diversity on all productions. The decision was a no-brainer. “Being a person of color, we’re always fighting for inclusion,” Jordan says. “So when we’re able to be in a position of power to bring people in? I didn’t think twice about that. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a thing? Oh, cool. Great.’” And in July, Outlier got its first vote of industry approval in the form of five Emmy nominations for a modern reimagining of Fahrenheit 451 for HBO.
Together the digitally savvy pair pulls inspiration from social media, obscure comic books, even an inkling that something is about to pop in the zeitgeist. “We don’t have a strict formula to how we find intellectual property, but there shouldn’t be any rock left unturned,” says Jordan, who is currently filming back-to-back Outlier projects in Atlanta. “I’ll send Alana a DM or a post on Instagram that inspired my mind. It’s more or less me throwing stuff her way to see if she thinks there’s something there. Then we go back and forth and see if there’s any existing intellectual property or articles that might support the story or if it’s something that we build from the ground up.”
PHOTO: JON KOPALOFF/FILMMAGIC
The Power Couple
“I met Lena as a writer before I met her as a romantic interest,” Mayo says of fiancée Waithe. “I hope one day we’ll figure out a way to work together.”
PHOTO: MICHAEL GIBSON/HBO
The Blockbuster
“The correlation between a diverse cast and box office numbers is incredibly strong,” Mayo says of Outlier’s remake of Fahrenheit 451, starring Jordan as Guy Montag. “The more diverse, the more box office—time and time again.”
PHOTO: COURTESY OF MICHAEL B. JORDAN
The Moguls
From left: Mayo, director Destin Daniel Cretton, and Jordan on the set of Outlier’s Just Mercy, a coproduction with Gil Netter and Warner Bros., the first major studio to follow Outlier’s lead and adopt inclusion riders.
Oftentimes an aching void in the marketplace is the perfect place to start. Raising Dion, a forthcoming Netflix series about a young boy with superpowers, is Outlier’s response to Black Panther. “There are so few science-fiction films or TV shows that have people of color as the star. And not in a way where it is the usual paradigm and you’re just casting it differently, but where you’re actually embracing other people and their culture,” Mayo says. “Whoopi Goldberg talked about how [growing up] she never saw black people in the future in film and television. As a child she was like, ‘What happens to us?'”
From an early age Mayo struggled to answer that question for herself. A child of the eighties, she never identified with era classics like Sixteen Candles. “I’m from Chicago, so I should be like, ‘Oh, John Hughes,’ but I did not relate to that movie at all,” she says. “I grew up identifying as an outsider. I had these weird, potentially contradictory parts of my identity.” Mayo’s mom, Maisha, is a Jehovah’s Witness who worked in entertainment law. Her dad, Barry, is a meditation enthusiast and retired radio executive who helped launch New York’s WRKS-FM. “To grow up with weird, idiosyncratic people who did not look at that as a deficit allowed me and my brothers to embrace doing things differently,” she says. “Like, ‘Yeah, we are black kids raised in Chicago in this devout Christian religion, but also we’re all of these other things. And all of these things can exist as a whole.’ I was lucky to grow up that way. I think it very directly led me to what I’m doing professionally now.”
“I grew up identifying as an outsider. I had these weird, potentially contradictory parts of my identity.”
Back at Skydance, Mayo and company stand out among the framed Tom Cruise posters and comically oversize movie props. Her assistant, Christina (employee number three), a recent Columbia University grad with bleached-out blue hair and a near-encyclopedic knowledge of film, keeps answering her cell phone, “Alana Mayo’s office!” At one point during our photo shoot, a female Skydance executive in slacks and a button-down hovers in a door frame. “I’m loving this. I’m texting Lena,” she teases, referring to Mayo’s fiancée, Lena Waithe, Emmy-winning writer and the creator of The Chi. Mayo lets out a laugh—“I’m never going to live this one down, am I?” she says—but continues to clack away on her laptop as a hairstylist sets the edges on her braids.
Later, while drinking her second coffee of the morning, she talks about her experience of being black in white spaces. “This is how we dress. This is how I wear my hair. And I think it is really, really cool for people like us to occupy these spaces because one feeds the other…. We’re finally at a place where I feel like ‘the system’ is excited by young people coming in with a different point of view,” she says. “To be able to work alongside a company like this”—she gestures around Skydance—“means a big-budget, all-audience movie is possible. It allows us to feel emboldened to change and experiment.”
“My office was always filled with people of color and gays and women.And for that, I was ostracized.” —Lee Daniels
In other words, it allows Outlier to change the industry from the inside out, something that hasn’t always been possible. “My office was always filled with people of color and gays and women. And for that, I was ostracized,” says Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels, for whom Mayo interned while in college at Columbia University. “That Alana is being embraced for it makes my heart swell.” When I ask Mayo whether she identifies as a disruptor, her eyes light up. “I love that word,” she says. “I love disruptor. I love innovation. I’m a contrarian by nature, so anything that is about fucking with the status quo is very exciting to me. I would love to think of this company, and everybody who works at it, as a disruptor.”
But what if this all-stories-welcome wormhole closes? What if the next Black Panther doesn’t break records? Or audiences don’t clamor to see David Makes Man, Outlier’s upcoming OWN series from Moonlight cowriter Tarell Alvin McCraney about growing up in a South Florida housing project? What if disruption becomes passé? Hollywood is, after all, a fickle town. “There is a history in this industry of trending,” Mayo concedes. “I’m not optimistic enough to believe that the moment happening right now will not be a trend.”
But she hopes that by the time the tides shift, too many outliers will already have a seat at the conference room table. “People who are looked at as ‘other’ are kicking ass in the industry right now,” Mayo says. “They are setting themselves up for incredible longevity and creating paths for a ton of people to come in behind them, so it won’t really matter when the powers that be don’t feel this to be valuable anymore. At the risk of sounding obnoxious, we’re trying to build something that feels like a legacy and not like a moment.”
Justine Harman is the features director at Glamour.
