Happy AAPI month🥢Never been one to scream “happy XYZ day” celebrating whatever group of people is supposed to be celebrating this or that month, but this year I feel more responsibility to actually soapbox and speak about how I as an Asian person I move through this world.
As one of the only non-white editors-in-chief in western cultural magazine publishing and media (shout out to @samiranasr@lrpeoples@chiomannadi and to @hanyayanagihara who is departing T Mag soon (side note: notice the trend of BIPOC voices leaving many cultural institutions…)) there’s a need to be louder to talk about where we are in the state of the fashion world, media, art, television and entertainment. There’s now more visibility for non-white faces and voices, but we continue to be tokenized, viewed as sidelined characters often times conflating more than one check-box DEI need, and kept in a silo away from ‘mainstream’ dialogue.
I’m immensely proud of being Chinese-Scottish Canadian, yet I’ve tended to share and show my traditions and background through the work I do and the people I align or collaborate with or the designers I wear — and then in parallel support cultures of the global majority similarly when much of the world I sit in turns away — rather than preaching about it. But this is to change.
A Magazine is a fully BIPOC team, how incredible is that I’m the whitest person on the team! It doesn’t matter what our backgrounds are, but we bring them into a publication that ultimately has an impact on an industry and cultural legacy that is well loved and respected. Taking over the editorship, I’ve taken this responsibility to centre BIPOC voices incredibly seriously, and yes, while we are moving forward we and the cultural industry at large have immense progress to make. My hope is that with the reminder of these celebratory months, we continue to make space for us, collectively.
Photography by dear @quillemons an artist I’ve known since he was 18. Thank you for eye.
thank you to friends near and far who came to Milan to celebrate A Manual for Living Curated for @nike , to @martin_lotti for your trust and partnership and allowing us into your world in a way never before, to the A Mag and Nike teams, to all our contributors, to @luca.pronzato@we.are.ona@daladk , to @dropcity_org and to @karlaotto for your support on the evening.
I can’t reiterate it enough, this publication is special, it makes you think, it makes you curious. I really encourage you to pick up a copy.
Photography @aria.ruffini
@blakeabbie Editor-in-Chief of @amagazinecuratedby sat down with Fragment Design founder @fujiwarahiroshi and Nike Chief Design Officer Martin Lotti. Together they explored the constant drive for new ideas and the emotional connection to @nike Air and their respective histories with the brand spanning nearly 30 years.
The dialogue reflected on how curation is itself a form of creation and editing is the basic process to amplify one’s creative vision. The panel talk took place at @dropcity_org alongside the launch of A Manual For Living Curated for Nike at NikeAir_Lab during @milan.design.week .
Photography @aria.ruffini
More than a year in the making, A Manual for Living Curated for Nike, a special project between @amagazinecuratedby and @nike will finally be out next week as we launch during Salone in Milan. An exercise in understanding how if Nike were to be personified it might think and breathe, guided by the voices at the heart of its hybrid intelligence of sports innovation and design.
This is unlike any other publication we’ve done; it is meant to be used as a tool, a way to question your self and the world around you as you read through exercises that use the same prompts asked of the Nike teams.
I’m still shook that our ideas to curate this issue were take and run with — but that’s Nike; they are dreamers and have no fear trying something. We made Nike pillow fights, two chair prototypes, reimagined what athletes rituals could look like like, contemplated the stadium as religious space, looked at how the brain works on Nike, looked to the future of design, there are neuroscience tools to stretch the brain… we even commissioned a comic strip.
No one will ever think that the cover took six week to figure out how to print — but we were dedicated to making this object as technically pushed as possible; to do something that our printers have never done.
Thank you to the A Mag team, to Martin, Sara, Nick, Matt, Deme, John, Golnaz, Janett, Jayden, all the artists and photographers — it’s a very special publication and I cannot wait for you to read.
Vid by @nam_borgers
my dream is to be the face of a tea brand. imagine this mug printed on a cold no sugar milky oolong, thank for getting me closer to that goal @fashionsnapcom . I think I shared some good quotes too in my conversation with @manamihirahira about the current start of fashion and publishing, which is online and out today. It’s in Japanese, which I don’t speak so if it’s about something else, sorry for that! Arigato gozaimasu 🙇🏻
‘Heart of the Valley’ is out now on @nowness . When editing @newyorkwilly ’s issue of @amagazinecuratedby , one of the first stories he thought of was to bring @_carlosjaramillo_ to photograph his hometown of Huron California, where he had not visited in years. The most impoverished city in the state, it is an agricultural town with a large population of Latino migrant workers.
I knew that photographs were not going to be enough just documenting these folk’s lives, rather I wanted to make sure they had the opportunity to speak about their lives and experiences — if they wanted to. We weren’t even sure they would be willing to considering the possible danger they could put themselves in. But Carlos wanted to try; and so we asked @micoyotito to join what would be Carlos’ first film directing, and mine producing. What they were able to gather are, as you see, honest open stories bringing a human voice to the stories, as we have become too desensitized to others’ suffering. Shot over Easter weekend last year, I wanted to make sure too that we captured their joy, not only the fear. To see hope and laughter and happy times, even as the situation has gotten worse over the last year; in June when we were celebrating Willy’s issue in Paris, tanks rolled into his hometown. To know that this community and so many more communities across the country are being ripped apart — it was an important story to tell and to continue sharing, especially with the continued assault on Black, Brown, Indigenous and POC communities
Thank you to Huron and to those who were willing and had the courage to share their stories.
Starring @NewYorkWilly . Director @_carlosjaramillo_
Executive Producer @fatinelayt@blakeabbie Producer @legjema@albertshyong@____theis Director of Photography @micoyotito Editor @kool_cigs@cartel.tv@xing_18 Colour @calvinbellas@royal.muster Sound @barkingowl_
in Shanghai, I feel like I’m living.
Shanghai has to be one of the places I feel most at home in the world, strange cause I have no attachment to the city; my mom grew up in the ‘rival’ capital Hangzhou down the river, which would normally imply the opposite effect. But all the time I’ve accumulated here I feel like I’m becoming more myself. I’m truly in my china maxxxxxxxing era. It’s an incredible feeling to find a place that drives you, where you have a real community and friend group and that work and life have found a way to balance. I’m excited to share that with that I’ve found an apartment here so will be fully dividing my time between here and NYC (and all the travel to Europe and Canada) — in a way that feels more intentional and grounded. I’m back to working on my tv and film projects (I have so much writing to do!!! And have to get back in front of the camera, I’m feeling the scratchy itch so bad!) and have started a new book project. All of which has a relationship to China or my sense of it as a 华侨 mixed raced third culture kid. In someway, Shanghai allows me to reconnect with that creative in ways I haven’t yet found elsewhere, and maybe support me in speaking up just a little bit louder (which is not necessarily in my scorpio nature, ironically).
These last couple weeks here with fashion week and all the people who have just started to discover ShanghaiMs beauty and energy — it’s been a whirlwind. But I’m so happy that Shanghai’s back and more people are finding that out.
excited to be in conversation tomorrow with @glennmartens in Shanghai, following his breathtaking @maisonmargiela FW26 show. @sunsun_jiejie Dean of the fashion design school at @donghua_university will be joining us in dialogue for the students of the university and those who managed to get the invite before it was over subscribed.
This talk continues the Maison’s /folders project, enfolding all over China — Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and Shenzhen — this month with different exhibitions and events. 明天见！
