Samira Nasr’s Summer Editor’s Letter: On Freedom
Bazaar celebrates the country
Reported by Harper's Bazaar.
Freedom is a complicated word to center a fashion magazine around when the Supreme Court is actively dismantling the legal architecture that makes it possible. But that tension is exactly the point. Harper's Bazaar editor-in-chief Samira Nasr leans into it in her summer editor's letter — not to be political for the sake of it, but because pretending fashion exists in a vacuum has never served anyone well.
Nasr anchors the issue around a quote from a 2016 Obama commencement address: "Progress is bumpy. But because of dreamers and innovators and strivers and activists, progress has been this nation's hallmark." Timely, given that on Juneteenth, the Obama Presidential Center opens in Chicago — a reimagined presidential library built as a living hub for community and culture, not just an archive. Artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, one of its commissioned contributors, created the first official joint portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama, which will hang in the museum lobby. Speaking to writer Lauren Michele Jackson, Akunyili Crosby described her intention to honor the very real hope people felt — while staying honest that nostalgia is always a slippery thing.
The Cover and What It Signals
On the cover: model and trans activist Alex Consani, photographed by Jonathan Frantini and styled by Rae Boxer, lit like someone the world should be paying attention to — because it should. In a profile by executive digital director Lynette Nylander, Consani speaks to the particular solidarity of being trans across lines of race and class: "No matter what privilege you have within it... you're still trans. And I think that's a really beautiful connection." Also in the issue, Selena Forrest appears in a fashion story shot by Jeremy Everett in Huntington Beach — the California town where she was discovered — alongside her mother, telling her own story on her own terms.
According to Harper's Bazaar, Nasr closes her letter with something worth sitting with: the team behind this issue represents a breadth of backgrounds that would have been nearly unrecognizable in fashion publishing not long ago. The people in the room shape the stories that get told — and the beauty standards that get reinforced or dismantled.
Fashion has always been about more than clothes; the question is whether the people making it are finally willing to say so out loud.
Read the original at Harper's Bazaar.
