Rihanna covers the May 2020 issue of British Vogue, launching another editor-in-chief Edward Enninful first — featuring a durag on the cover. Rihanna rewrites the rules on both covers, wearing a white Burberry ensemble with a Stephen Jones durag on the first. On the second cover, the businesswoman — as she fancies herself these days — wears a black Maison Margiela Artisanal jacket, Savage x Fenty lace bodysuit, and Stephen Jones durag. Photographer Steven Klein is in the studio, with hair by Yusef and makeup by Isamaya Ffrench.

Writer Funmi Fetto makes the point loud and clear that the durag “has been reclaimed as a symbol of black beauty, a signifier of style worn on the streets, the catwalk, the red carpet...and now the cover of ‘Vogue.’.

From AOC’s perspective, there’s a whole lotta fashionista types, who purport to be industry professionals, and therefore need to get a grip on where we are going, if they ever want to work again post pandemic. I’d say two are having heart attacks over Rihanna’s British Vogue’s covers for every one with a wry smile on her face. Put Anne in the smaller camp.

These same fashion traditionalists would probably expire permanently — no not over coronavirus, but over Fetto’s opening statement — if they ever bothered to get beyond the pictures and down to reading. There’s actually context around the durag. Who knows? We might learn something about black history.

When is a cloth not just a cloth? When it begins life on the heads of black female slaves. The ultimate purpose of the durag when it was first conceived was neither about choice nor functionality. It was enforced, a method to suppress black women’s beauty and distinguish their lowly, inferior status as labourers.

Today, the durag, an iteration of the head cloth birthed in oppression, is a celebration of black culture. Extolling its virtues are the artists who paint it, musicians who write songs about it, festivals dedicated to it and Instagram accounts born to serve it. The tainted fabric has been reclaimed as a symbol of black beauty, a signifier of style worn on the streets, the catwalk, the red carpet… And now, in a powerful mic-drop moment, the durag is making its first appearance on the May 2020 cover of British Vogue, worn by Rihanna.

Durags Are Unapologetic

“I featured a durag in my first collection because it represented a way of being unapologetic,” says Bianca Saunders, one of London’s fresh wave of designers whose work explores culture and identity. Seeing someone like Rihanna wear them for performances and on the red carpet is empowering. It shows other black people that it’s okay to show their blackness and it’s okay to make it fashion.”

The Times They Are A Changing

British Vogue’s Edward Enninful seems to acknowledge the pileup of passed out fashion industry ladies — especially the older ones — who consider durags on the cover of British Vogue to be the final nail in the coffin of luxury fashion. Coronavirus didn’t cause the curtain to fall; durags did it. Enninful writes:

For those who “know” and those who may not, seeing the durag sartorially elevated and celebrated on the cover of British Vogue is hugely significant, as editor-in-chief Edward Enninful acknowledges in his May 2020 editor’s letter. “Did I ever think that I would see a durag on the cover of Vogue? No reader, I did not. Although this potent symbol of black life – of self-preservation, resistance and authenticity – has an important place in popular culture, it is rarely viewed through the prism of high fashion. Yet here we have the most aspirational and beautiful durag. How exciting.”

He added: “It takes a person of extraordinary charisma to pull off such a moment.” The person in question, Rihanna, has consistently been at the forefront of reframing the narrative around the durag. Indeed, it was Rihanna’s suggestion to include the durag in the first place. As Enninful writes: “We worked through a substantial archive of visual references (her fashion and cultural knowledge is encyclopaedic) to find a new proposition. Then suddenly, at 2am, my phone pinged with the latest WhatsApp: ‘How about we go with a durag?’” In 2014, she famously paired a Swarovski-encrusted Adam Selman slip dress with a matching blinging durag. In 2016, she wore a long black fishnet variant for her epic performance at the VMA awards. A month later, she showed her spring/summer 2017 Fenty x Puma collection at New York Fashion Week, with the models sporting durags in their candy coloured splendour.

Bob Dylan is on my mind, because he released a 17-minute song about the JFK assassination. And I like it. On the topic of durags and black history and being unapologetic, today’s black mindset and the mixed response of white people reminds me of Dylan’s anthem ‘The Times They Are A Changing’. He wrote (second stanza):

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

That sums up all you need to know about durags on the cover of British Vogue in May 2020. It only took 50 years. We’re here now at the end of March, and the wrecking ball is upon us. It’s time to pay the piper. Peace. ~ Anne

Civil rights is the bedrock of my life, and we’re doing our best to pull together these topics in our new Blackness Channel. Yes, my beloved African elephants are well represented, but so is black history and black culture.