confession… as a teen magazine lover i was never that girlie buying vogues (first one i remember purchasing was in my 20s: edward’s debut of adwoa & hooked after) what really got me into them (after sugar mag lol) was DAZED & CONFUSED it was my EMA treat in the months that i’d gotten some and i’d spend hours on limewire downloading the best music from their dazed digital monthly playlists to my ipod. so this is a very special moment for me: my first piece for @dazed is a cover story!!! teenage me would be so so gaggged!!! thank you @kaci0n & @jackstuartmills for this full-circle freelance moment with the one and only @ayrastarr ☁️🌟☁️⭐️✨🌟☁️⭐️☁️☁️✨ she named herself celestial being for reasons she can’t yet put into words, but takes only one chat to feel: what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained
spent 3 days on the road with @sza for the december cover of @britishvogue & somehow left a bigger stan than I entered (see exhibit A: last year’s spotify unwrapped)
i really did need the full 4000+ words to describe any of it so for now will just say thank you lana for sharing the beautiful chaos of your world with me. hope the world might understand you better. hope you feel i did you justice 🦋🐞🐛🦟🪲🪳🐜🕷️
it’s also such a blessing to be saying thank you to @kendricklamar@billieeilish@iamstillpunch@aleherself mr. mubarak-rowe & theola for contributing your voices & wisdom to this piece
and the biggest love to @chiomannadi & @gileshattersley & @oemarks for trusting me with this special moment and for all the lessons i’ve learned (& continue to) working with you that led me to ever being able to approach anything like this 💕💕💕 it’s so surreal and i’m so grateful xxx
i’ve always wondered why it is that despite all of its firsts, biggests, and mosts, Sudan has always felt so off the map
i wrote a personal viewpoint to grieve and reflect on things happening to my family and homeland but also to preserve their memory and accomplishments so that these histories live on
for me this is by far the most important piece i’ve ever written & the most vulnerable i’ve ever felt sharing a story. i’d really appreciate if you read it when you get time, link in my bio
social media is so powerful. please keep calling to #freesudan #keepeyesonsudan #savesudan. we really need your outrage, we need your protest, we need your support 💚❤️🤍🖤🇸🇩
end of last year I went for a walk in the park with @oliviarodrigo for the April cover of @britishvogue 🌞
we had a fun chat about seshing, situationships, and the sour side of love. feel like I laughed nonstop. except for when i listened to some of OR3 and nearly wept on the hilltop next to her. it’s crazy good and I can’t wait for it to be out in the world!!!
pertinently olivia also spoke about the dangers of the child star industry, horrors of ICE, and standing on her beliefs. she’s spoken up for palestine & asked me questions about the crisis in sudan referencing my articles. she bought her vinyl to sign for my @freedomforsudan fundraiser the very next day. she’s real as fuck 🤜🏾🤛🏾
a genuine, kind, inquisitive person who’s always trying to be better and do good with the platform and power she wields. we could really do with more of those!!! read at the link in my story!!!
thank you to @madisonhu and @robertsmith for your phenomenal stories & @hsiskind for all your help❣️ thank you @gileshattersley@oemarks@chiomannadi for your eternal support ❣️ vogue4eva xxx
IN SUDAN MOMENTS BEFORE
1000 DAYS OF WAR
AT THE HANDS OF RSF & SAF
& THEIR FOREIGN BACKERS
THE PEOPLE MARCHED FOR CIVILIAN RULE
GIVE BACK THE POWER TO THE PEOPLE
مدنية
video source: @niidal@amel.mukhtar
filmmaker: @charlieparkinsonsheen
an honour to be picked by @santandave to write the only interview he’s done for his uk aoty for the winter cover of @theface ❄️
he spoke about the change he’s undergone these 4 years - a reckoning with the gaps between his lifestyle, his music and his morals - and this album as the risky attempt to hold himself accountable and live by his principles. it’d not include any more songs engineered for low vibrational clubs, or casually misogynistic lyrics, and would call out the rape culture that connects them. it’d be a 10-song-long self examination he hoped might inspire others to do similar. we also unpacked the politics of today, dms with Sadiq khan, and his love life
and at the end of our chat he told me he’d read my work and really liked it !! he thought i was doing great things !! best lyricist in the country is a fan of my writing !!! I met Dave I’m never going to fail fr
thank you @m_j_whitehouse@_davyreed@carlitof8@sunnilekh v proud to be a part of this moment 🖤🖤🖤 link in story
so fab to curl up at home with @ibkamara , who is really a miracle of a person, for his (self-shot!) cover of @crackmagazine ☃️☃️☃️❣️❣️ he ascended to the very top of the fashion world as a side quest and is now also pursuing his lifelong dream of music and as you might expect from someone with such great taste its really freaking good !!! Gemini final boss
I ❤️ crack thank you to the goat @loufbrai it’s so fun and easy to work with you 🫧🫧🫧
it still hasn’t fully sunk in but last thursday 23.01 my dad passed. he fought cancer for 7 years. the survival rate past 5 was less than 1%.
it’s been a blessing to be his child. i think everything good about me i learned from him.
he dedicated his life to the fight for a better world - for the equality & freedoms of the oppressed. he was the first to write about the identity crisis at the heart of sudan’s conflicts. and he laid the ground for its revolution.
a natural storyteller, he told me bedtime stories from heart - folk tales and memories. i never got doctor/lawyer pressure, if anything my dad most wanted me to pursue the arts. he loved the little poems i wrote and his friends would bribe me to keep writing. him & my uncle translated my first pieces on bv to arabic to share online.
he was a sufi muslim & practiced patience, forgiveness, love. he was sudan’s compass. we’re all mourning him. war continues and without him i’m unmoored. but he named me amel: the arabic word for hope. as well as amel al-baqir, his friends called me amel al-sudan. only recently did i realise it wasn’t to signify who/where i belong to, but who he wanted me to be. (the hope of albaqir. hope of sudan). he had so much hope. all I can do is try to nurture it.
sorry i couldn’t really respond these past 3 months. through different icu wards there’ve been so many scary moments. close-calls. pressure from doctors to give up. but there was beauty too. days he could eat solids, we ate our way round philly chinatown from his hospital bed. we watched films - the last was “uncle boonmee” who he related to, with his terminal illness, swollen feet, and awareness the end was near. he posted reflections on his fear/excitement around death to fb (end in pics) and saw it mirrored in a scene. i’m so grateful for all of these memories, as hard as some have been.
my beautiful friends - your check-ins kept me afloat. i just didn’t have the words. we’ve had the spectre of death over us for so long. it’s hard to talk as if it’s not happening but also didn’t want to bring it up. and then when the day comes it still blindsides you. i really miss him. but I love u. back soon.
amel albaqir
5 1/2 YEARS of 9-to-5 VOGUE!!!!! leaving to go freelance (✿╹◡╹)
entered Vogue House age 25 and exiting The Adelphi age 30 to check out what else this world is saying
crazy to think I was at vogue longer than secondary school or university. its been the nuttiest education! but I’ve learned more than I could put in words
feel like the luckiest girl to have spent a sixth of my life working with the some of the best of the best - spending most of it handling all of the magazine features in a tiny team of four with @gileshattersley & @oemarks and putting forward everything from online evergreens to vogueworld acts to cover stars under @edward_enninful and @chiomannadi ❣️ the most brilliant minds!
I can leave having written 2 british vogue covers!!! + 1 cover viewpoint + 4 well pieces + probably about 200 printed bylines + like 5000 online + more amazing amazing amazing stuff to come out soon
seen 2 reigns. 2 offices. 1 wfh pandemic. can let go of my 220,000 unread emails (if yours is one I’m sorry I can’t don’t hate me)
thank u for all the gossip laughs tears screams and many memoir chapters
open for bookings! hit me up for writing & editing & consulting, or if you invest in businesses (really!) and still lmk about all the events /gifts/ trips I’m still alive and tbh will prob have a lil bit more energy & time to go to stuff xx
email in bio (￣ε￣＠)
south africa changed my life my life my life my life in the sunshine ⛅️🌤️☀️🌞🌞🌞🌞🌟 big thank u to @elizabailey@sagalamo@perfecthideaways for all the doors you opened 💐
a mini video diary celebrating the wedding of the year: @notkrishnaswaminathan & @shree_v 💕💕💕 a 4 day extravaganza in 5 star settings that kept getting better and better. landed straight into a saltburn party, learnt and performed like three dances on stage, set an egg and spoon world record, had what felt like endless food and fun .. gonna add 100 moments to story but didn’t capture enough to satisfy myself. best case for getting a neuralink yet 🙏 thank you both for everything 💋💋💋💋💋💋
