Anok Yai's Sensual 'Golden Days' in British Vogue June 2021 by Lachlan Bailey

Update: WWD leads Monday, May 10 with: Sensuality Becomes Statement of Self-Love, Body Positivity for Fall 2021. Are they reading AOC or what? This article wasn’t there on Sunday.

In March 2018, AOC took great pleasure in writing the headline: Sudanese-Born, Howard U Discovered Anok Yai Opens Prada Show As 1st Model of Color in 20 Years. Like a strong, determined filly at Louisville’s Kentucky Derby, Anok Yai was off and running — and she hasn’t looked back since.

No one was more shocked to find herself in a Prada runway show and also the brand’s spring 2018 ‘Black Nylon’ campaign, than Sudanese-born Anok Yai, who was photographed in November 2017 by Steven Hall at Howard University's homecoming event in Washington, DC. Yai was a student at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, majoring in biochemistry, when her images went viral.

Poof - she's suddenly the university student posing in a big-exposure, international Prada campaign.

British Vogue June 2021 ‘s Sensual Signals

Billie Eilish may be dominating the pages of British Vogue’s June 2021 issue, rewriting her own bio in the arena of female sexuality expressed. But Anok Yai drops the gauntlet also, in ‘Golden Days’, a tribute to hot summer days and nights, with its accompanying sensual awareness.

Clare Richardson styles Anok in images by Lachlan Bailey [IG] . / Hair by Shay Ashual; makeup by Mark Carrasquillo

Besides this hypnotically-beautiful beauty story, Anok Yai also makes a scorching impression in the new V Magazine. Yai’s great images are sign of coming warm days and hotter nights.

A Decade Lost

Women have been under lock and key for about a decade now in the pages of fashion magazines and beyond. We attribute the situation to the rise of the right wing worldwide, with their accompanying condemnation of sensual women.

The concurrent rise of the importance of modesty among many Muslim women in and out of fashion has been another significant force in ambiguity about sexuality in today’s political and cultural world. The utter condemnation of a disrespectful fashion industry by Halima Aden, as she threw in the towel on her modeling career while slamming the door with force, got our attention.

Add in the #MeToo movement and major discussions around gender fluidity, and it’s only natural that mainstream fashion has taken a chill pill on sexuality.

The Phoenix Struggles to Rise

To every action there is a reaction, and a visible, eyes-wide-open expression of sexuality is rising again. Besides this hypnotically-beautiful beauty story, Anok Yai also makes a scorching impression in the new V Magazine.

Billie Eilish asks “so what have you got against Marilyn Monroe and other 20th century pinups” and Candice Swanepoel delivers absolutely, sensually-confrontational images in her new Tropic of C drop. We’re not talking about her bikini body either. We speak of Swanepoel’s eyes, her direct gaze on the viewer — Candice is wonderfully, subtly confrontational, just as Billie Eilish is being confrontational.

Anja Rubik went stark naked in multiple images — including covers of Vogue Poland — to demand a stop to the virtual elimination of abortion in Poland, and new legislation against gay rights. The truth is that the right-wingers, the white nationalists are on the move around the world, and as always — women bear the brunt in hundreds of ways.

In Kabul, 50 School Girls Die

After 20 years of US involvement in Afghanistan, and the announcement that we really are getting out of the country, all of our hopes for women and girls are dashed. All but 7 or 8 of the 58 killed in Saturday’s bombing of Kabul’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighborhood were school girls on their way home after finishing their school day. After a car bomb was detonated in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school, two more bombs exploded when the students ran out in panic.

Anybody who knows AOC understands that I’m thrilled to see sensuality expressed again on women, men, and all variations of the LGTBQ world. AOC was founded on a strong platform of women’s rights first, and human rights generally. And we’ve always stood for Smart Sensuality Women — meaning women with brains, sensuality and hearts devoted to racial justice and helping humanity. Of course, the definition transcends gender but the belief is that women will lead the way, because men are not conceeding ground easily.

It takes a village every day, always. This fight will outlive all of us, but the fight is the right road. The rights of women controlling our own bodies and expressed sexuality is paramount at Anne of Carverszville. Of course, I believe this right is a human ideal, but in our present world, we still cannot agree that women have a right to be educated, let alone have access to birth control. It also goes without saying that people of color feel totally helpless in terms of protecting their own lives.

Until the playing field is remotely even, AOC stands for women’s rights and the drop-dead, gorgeous British Vogue images of Anok Yai that grace our digital planet today. ~ Anne