My interest in high fashion tends to begin and end with ANTM. Not a snob thing, just not my bag.
But the Fashionista pix and post of Arlenis Sosa (h/t to Giselle Rodríguez Cid) caught my eye. #1, she's got the mancha de plátano smack in the middle of that beautiful forehead (esp. when you see her more "natural" shots). #2, according to this NY Mag bio-chronology, her big assignments seem to be ones where she's figured as Black "African." (which, really, is just about the only way high fashion tends to see Black women anyway. Always back to Saartjie Baartman, in't?).
I am digging how African fashion (of Africa, by Africans, for Africans) has been getting more play on its own terms. Not that it means non-whites have any significant space on the catwalk, no matter what Vicki Woods says.
In the Models.com video here, Arlenis (her name alone is like a Quisqueya gang signal) represents Monte Cristi, far removed from the capital, bordering Haiti, as unlikely a place to grow supermodels as Siberia. I <3 the comments, where her cousins and assorted Dominicans pop up in all their untranslated beauty.
[Arlenis time via fashionista from Time Magazine]
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