Benn98
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GABRIELLA KAREFA-JOHNSON WANTS TO CHANGE WHAT FASHION EDITORIALS CAN LOOK LIKE
The stylist is already making her mark on the fashion industry with her joyous approach to photo shoots and style.
At fashion shows, there's often an air of practiced boredom, with many attendees pretending like the events of the day are blasé, even an imposition on their time. It can be, well, kinda boring.
Thank god, then, for Gabriella Karefa-Johnson. The stylist instantly owns any room she bounds into, saying hello to the people she knows, smiling and cracking jokes with her signature, infectious laugh. Her own wardrobe is bright and sunny; she clearly enjoys the clothes while they're on the runway, too. She cheers on her model pals. And then, when the show ends, she's gone again, leaving behind the kind of joyous feeling that should always be present in fashion.
That happiness spills out into Karefa-Johnson's work for places like Garage, where she serves as fashion director, and Vogue, where she got her start under the legendary Tonne Goodman. (More on that later.) Her "Black Cotillion" editorial for Garage's Issue 16 remains one of the best — if not the best — that we've seen all year. It combined her love for the magic of fashion with her deep appreciation for Black culture.
"At Garage, I've been really lucky to have two editors-in-chief who were open to rewriting what our magazine is supposed to be," she explains. "What I took from that opportunity was, 'Okay, what does the fashion world need to be hearing? And what do I have to say that can fill those voids?' I think based on who I am and where our industry was going, in terms of the images we were looking at, representation became super important to me, and I figured out that it wasn't just types of people who weren't being photographed, it was that certain stories weren't being told."
Fashionista
