Nadine Ijewere Captures Vogue US December's Ode to Glorious Aunties
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The December 2020 issue of American Vogue brings a delicious visual and historical narrative fashion story to its pages. Titled ‘Family Values: An Ode to Aunties and Their Inimitable Sense of Style’, the new fashion images including models Adut Akech, Akon Changkou, Ariish Wol, Kesewa Aboah and Maty Fall Diba are styled by Gabriella Karefa-Johnson.
London-born photographer Nadine Ijewere, of Nigerian-Jamaican parentage, is behind the lens. Her Nigerian ancestry is relevant because writer Alexis Okewo sets the stage for a discussion on aunties based on her own experience growing up in Alabama’s Nigerian community.
AOC is not unfamiliar with the style and talent of Alabama’s Nigerian community. Vogue featured the paintings of Nigerian-born, Huntsville-raised, U of Alabama grad Toyin Ojih Odutola in November 2017. I wove one of several of them into a narrative about the short-lived, but fine victory for Alabama Senator Doug Jones.
Yours truly became deeply involved in the Jones campaign because he prosecuted the Klan members responsible for the deaths of four little Black girls at church in Birmingham on Sept. 15, 1963. Defeated in November with Trump on the ballot, we assume Sen. Jones will have a wonderful position connected to the Biden administration. He is a truly honorable man and great civil servant for racial justice.
Reading Alexis Okewo’s narrative about her own aunties in Alabama and in her travels to Nigeria, I’m inspired to dig far deeper into the Nigerian-American community in Alabama.
Stay with me now, because Vogue also shares with Ijewere’s new aunties editorial archival images compiled by researcher and archivist Daniel Obaweya also the steward of @nigeriangothic on Instagram. AnOther Magazine interviewed Obaweya in August, 2020.
Vogue is starting to layer up stories in the tradition of AOC!!! This photo above is one gorgeous image of ‘Aunties’. The credits are muddy and difficult so understand with a specific image (I will keep looking, though). Still, the entire fashion story is quite divine. Although the clothes are new and therefore relevant by definition, fashion stories like this one lose a lot of juice without context and the narrative story line behind the images. Fabulous! ~ Anne
