AphroChic Magazine Issue No. 19

a curated lifestyle magazine
ISSUE NO. 19 \ SPRING 2025
ARCHITECT ACTIVIST \ CELEBRATING IT ALL \ THE MYSTIQUE OF SPICE ISLAND
APHROCHIC.COM

Marcus Samuelsson
West Elm Collection

It’s 2025 and we are thrilled to welcome you to a new era at AphroChic. This is a big year for
us. The brand will turn 18, we’ll be publishing our 20th issue of this magazine in a matter
of months, and we’re growing in directions that we once only dreamed of, launching one
of the largest Black-owned furniture collections in the United States — AphroChic Home.
AphroChic Home began 14 years ago at our first foray into selling our products — a booth at Maison et Objet in 2011. We were
just two kids entering the design world at that time, with little knowledge of what we were getting ourselves into. Fast forward to
2025, and those two kids are now full-on adults, having worked in the field of design for almost 20 years. We’ve done everything
from designing decorative objects for the home, to designing residential interiors, and corporate spaces for Fortune 500s, all the
while dreaming of one day having our own line of furniture to help people tell their authentic story of home.
This year, that dream has been realized with a collection of over 200 pieces that we’ve designed and curated just for you. In
the AphroChic Home collection you’ll find statement pieces that will make your room pop, handcrafted elements that bring form
and texture home, a host of modern furnishings in bold new silhouettes, and pieces crafted with sustainability in mind. And this
new collection has been designed to fit seamlessly with our Artists & Artisans products by incredible makers across the African
Diaspora, making AphroChic a full home solution for anyone who is looking for special pieces that make a house a home. Get all
the details in the Mood section of this issue.
Beyond the launch of AphroChic Home, from cover to cover, and from one end of the African Diaspora to another, this issue
is filled with inspiring stories that show our creativity, ingenuity and soul as a people. On the cover, we feature Ashley Robinson
of 12amsunshine. The Oakland-based botanic artist is one of 24 floral creatives featured in Teresa Speight’s new book Black Flora:
Inspiring Profiles of Floriculture’s New Vanguard, tracing the important history of Black horticulture through the contemporary
work of some of its biggest innovators.
In City Stories we take you to Zanzibar, to Mji Mkongwe, the Stone City, once the seat of a powerful sultanate whose history
stretches from the beginnings of the Silk Road to the end of British colonial rule, and its current status as part of Tanzania. We
explore the city’s amazing culture, architecture, and food, along with a few annual festivals you’ll want to catch.
Cameroonian designer Imane Ayissi is teaching us something new this issue, merging his African heritage with Parisian
chic in a stunning reimagining of haute couture fashion. Meanwhile, we take a look at Taraji P. Henson’s first foray into food and
wine, an effervescent new moscato with Italian vintner Seven Daughters. We’ll also take a tour of Ethiopian American artist Julie
Mehretu’s fantastically surreal home — a refashioned rectory filled with color, pattern, and vision.
In Black Family Home we begin a multi-part series looking at Tropical Modernism — the late-to-post colonial architecture
style that began in British colonial Africa before sweeping to places like Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Hawaii. Exploring its roots in older
colonial architecture, built as physical manifestations of white supremacist ideologies, Tropical Modernism sheds intriguing new
light on the narrative power of built environments while evoking familiar parallels to America today.
And in Sounds we have music that will lift your soul, celebrating the new album from esperanza spalding — Milton +
Esperanza, an intergenerational feat, featuring two of the best jazz artists of our time.
As we enter this new era at AphroChic we want to assure you that we are doing it with our eyes wide open. We are aware of
how much chaos and negativity there is in our world, and that’s why this is a protected space. One you can come to each quarter
for a positive experience that celebrates the authenticity of Black cultures around the world. From the features in each issue, to
the celebrations of new trajectories for this brand, AphroChic has been built to be a home just for you.
Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason
Founders, AphroChic
Instagram: @aphrochic
editors’ letter
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issue nineteen 5

SPRING 2025
DEPARTMENTS
Read This 10
Visual Cues 12
Coming Up 14
The Black Family Home 16
Mood 28
FEATURES
Fashion // Haute Couture Reimagined 36
Interior Design // A Work of Art 46
Culture // Activist Architect 58
Food // Celebrating It All 62
Entertaining // Floriculture 70
City Stories // The Mystique of Spice Island 78
Wellness // Sanctuary 88
PINPOINT
Artists & Artisans 96
Sounds 104
Who Are You? 110

CONTRIBUTORS
Cover Photo: Ashley Robinson
Photographer: Nate King
Publishers/Editors: Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason
Creative Director: Cheminne Taylor-Smith
Editorial/Product Contact:
AphroChic
AphroChic.com
magazine@aphrochic.com
Brand Partnerships and Ad Sales:
Krystle DeSantos
Krystle@aphrochic.com
issue nineteen 9

READ THIS
Food is more than nourishment — its recipes offer memories, history, culture, and tradition. Food is an integral part
of Black history, with a deeper meaning that finds its heart in the term "soul food." This month, AphroChic highlights
three books that delve into how food defines Black identity, community, and resilience. In a deeply personal journey,
Toya Boudy shares her family story through recipes and her roots in New Orleans in Cooking for the Culture. Food
historian Michael Twitty takes a deep dive into food traditions and the politics of who "owns" Southern food in The
Cooking Gene. And Trap Kitchen takes a simple staple dish like macaroni and cheese and explores both its roots and
new international twists on the recipe. These books offer a journey into recipes handed down for generations, and
how simple dishes have had an enormous cultural impact on what it means to be both African and American.
The Cooking Gene
by Michael Twitty
Publisher: Amistad. $15
Cooking for the Culture
by Toya Boudy
Publisher: Countryman Press. $19
Trap Kitchen: Mac N' All Over the World
by Malachi Jenkins and Roberto Smith
Publisher: Kingston Imperial. $25
10 aphrochic

HOME

VISUAL CUES
Jim Crow Must Go
by Samuel Hodge
Stained glass artist Samuel Hodge found himself drawn to the art in the late 1950s while
stationed in the Air Force in Okinawa. Coming from a long line of storytellers, he began to
explore how those stories could be told through glass. In a permanent exhibition at Detroit's
The Charles Wright Museum of African American History, Wright's work features and
highlights freedom advocates, musicians, and dancers. With opalescent glass and copper
foil, Stories in Stained Glass showcases Harry Belafonte, Preservation Jazz luminaries,
Martin Luther King Jr. and others involved in the Civil Rights Movement, as well as street
scenes and protest marches. Inspired by the long history of narratives provided by stained
glass windows in churches and cathedrals, Wright brings the scenes to life by painstakingly
fitting together pieces of glass and parchment paper to frame Black history in color and
light. To visit the exhibit, or to learn more, go to thewright.org.
12 aphrochic

COMING UP
Meetings, conferences and events exploring activism and social change across the African Diaspora
Black Food Truck Festival
April 25-27 | Charleston, SC
The Black Food Truck Festival celebrates Black culture and food
traditions with a culinary feast that features over 40 food trucks,
serving an array of cuisines from Black American soul food to
West African dishes. The event also includes DJs, a Kids Zone,
hookah and cigar lounges, as well as live musical performers.
Learn more at blackfoodtruckfestival.com.
Ohio Black Expo
May 24-25 | Columbus, Ohio
Beginning in the 1980s, the primary goal of the Ohio Black Expo
was to showcase Black-owned businesses to the general public
and to help them grow. Today the Expo features hundreds of
businesses as vendors, and also celebrates Black culture through
music, art, food, and workshops, all in a beautiful riverfront location.
Learn more at ohioblackexpo.com.
Fade to Black Arts Festival
June 8-14 | Houston
The Fade to Black Festival showcases the works
of African-American performances in film, music,
poetry, and theatre. It also offers a dynamic lineup of
workshops, performances, readings, screenings, and
discussions to cultivate a greater appreciation for diverse
perspectives. This year's festival ambassador
is actor, director, and Tony Award winner Phylicia
Rashad. Learn more at fadetoblackfest.com.
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Interior Life (Man)
by Derrick Adams

THE BLACK FAMILY HOME
Stone & Story: The Architectural Narratives
of Tropical Modernism
It’s 1948, and the British empire is in trouble. Once a
territory so vast that the sun could be said never to truly set
on it, its seat of power, Great Britain, has emerged battered
and bankrupt from the Second World War. From every
corner of Britain’s global network of oppression, demands
for independence are growing louder. And, in a desperate
attempt to silence or at least slow the cries for freedom,
Britain turns to an unlikely avenue for reestablishing its
narrative of control — architecture.
Tropical Modernism, an architectural approach originated by British husbandand-wife
team Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew is, in its most basic form, the combination
of mid-century modern building techniques and design aesthetics with climatological
science and the building methods and design motifs of various colonized peoples.
In that sense, its purpose was to create European-style structures suited for use in
tropical climates. More precisely however, it was the continuation of a long-standing
practice of Britain and other colonizing powers of using built environments to literally
etch in stone notions of power, feelings of dominance, and mythologies of race, while
controlling both where and how people lived, even as it purported to usher in new levels
of urban multiculturalism. Though as an approach to building, Tropical Modernism
became a global trend, its introduction and evolution took different paths in different
places. In particular, its introduction into British Colonial West Africa, specifically
Ghana, has been a subject of recent interest, garnering an exhibit at the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London and as the topic of a book by Christopher Turner, the curator
of the exhibit. Later embraced by the leaders of newly liberated former British colonies,
The Black Family Home is an
ongoing series focusing on the
history and future of what home
means for Black families.
This series inspired the new book
AphroChic: Celebrating the Legacy
of the Black Family Home.
Words by Bryan Mason
Universty College Ibadan Library Veranda
Courtesy of RIBA
16 aphrochic

Universty College Ibadan Library Veranda
18 Courtesy of RIBA aphrochic

issue nineteen 19

THE BLACK FAMILY HOME
such as Kwame Nkrumah, the legacy of Tropical Modernism
endures, as do the questions and lessons it offers to us today.
To truly understand the intervention of Tropical Modernism
and its implications requires a wider apprehension of the scope,
intent, and outcomes of the colonial building projects that
preceded it; a topic which exceeds Ghana alone, stretching, even
in this limited case, to encompass the whole of British colonial
holdings on the Continent. From the beginning, the colonizers
used their facility at building to great effect. And whether the
structure was municipal, functional, or cultural, its purpose was
ever the same: to demonstrate the superiority of the invaders, to
impress upon the colonized that their subordination was more
than inevitable, it was natural.
Scholar Maurice Amutabi recorded the first impressions
recalled by Kenyan Okwatoya Anjili upon his first arrival in the
city of Nairobi in 1939. “Those gigantic buildings and else that
the omusungu (white man, plural abasungu) had built in Nairobi
made us to look at them with a lot of admiration,” Anjili recounts.
“We thought that there was nothing that abasungu could not do.”
Scholar and urban planner Fassil Demissie further explicates
the role of built environments in creating and maintaining
the power dynamics of colonization.
“Colonial institutions such as the courts, police, prisons, and
schools [were] crucial in establishing and maintaining political
domination,” he states. “Colonial architecture and urbanism
played a pivotal role in shaping the spatial and social structures of
African cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.”
Amutabi paints a vivid picture of Nairobi as Anjili first encountered
it. Created in 1899 as a mere supply point for the
Imperial British East Africa Company, then engaged in the
building of the Kenya-Uganda railway, by 1939 the city was replete
with massive billboards, automobiles, and colonial structures.
The buildings were “coded symbols and metaphors of power,”
Amutabi explains. “They spoke to the Africans, telling them that
the Europeans were superior, and meant to tell the Africans about
the mentality of the colonizers and what the colonizers expected
from them.”
One of the things that was expected, in Kenya and elsewhere,
was for colonized people to understand the hierarchy implied
by the construction of colonial cities. “The colonial governor
operated from the largest [building in] Nairobi,” Amutabi relates.
“Of the residential houses, the governor’s mansion was the
biggest.” As social status also shaped the size and layout of built
spaces in many Kenyan societies, the message was easily received
and quickly mirrored in the way that Kenyans thought of their
colonizers and themselves. As access to white spaces was heavily
regulated by police guards, those who could enter them, for
however menial a purpose, maintained great social status within
the community of those who could not.
The larger understanding that Britain expected from its
colonized subjects was that the cities themselves, literally and
in some cases legally, were not for them. Cities were for industry
and rule, both considered the exclusive province of white men.
Most colonial cities were centers for either moving the goods the
colonies produced or administration of the colonies themselves.
As such, they required little participation from those they sought
to rule and who were, for the most part, consigned to live in rural
areas. This view apparently exceeded the bounds of Britain’s
Fry Drew and Partners Mfantsipim School Cape Coast
Victoria and Albert Museum London
20 aphrochic

Aditya Prakash Fonds. Canadian Centre for Architecture
Courtesy of RIBA
issue nineteen 21

Kenneth Scott Scott House Accra
Victoria and Albert Museum London

THE BLACK FAMILY HOME
colonies and was reflected in other European colonial
perspectives as well. With the result that even as late as
1940, “only 7 per cent of Africa’s population lived in urban
areas,” according to emeriti professors Richard Harris
and Susan Parnell.
In parts of East and Southern Africa, laws prohibited
the movement of Africans into cities, though such
laws were routinely flouted, both by Africans permitted
to be in a given city hiding those who were not, and
by white business owners who enjoyed the benefits
of having more than the legal allotment of workers
available for use. Even so, those allowed to enter the city
were limited to men whose labor was required in one
capacity or another, a restriction reflected in the construction
of housing accommodations for Black populations
in British colonial cities.
“Europeans assumed that African urban housing
would be built only for ‘bachelors’ — that is, unaccompanied
men, married or not,” Harris and Parnell explain.
Conditions in these highly segregated sections of the
city were deplorable — men often slept in shacks and
sheds — and did not improve once colonial authorities
ceded to the need to build spaces to accommodate more
than individual men. “When municipalities began to
build for African families,” Parnell and Harris continue,
“they often assumed that one-bedroom dwellings were
adequate; communal latrines were common, and indoor
plumbing unheard of.” In all, it was recognized that
standards for African city dwellers, “must be drastically
lower than those appropriate for Europeans.” The
same was true of wages which, ironically, the increase of
which would have done much to alleviate the problems
of housing.
Nevertheless, Africans continued to migrate to
colonial cities, eventually discarding the early custom of
returning to rural communities when work was scarce.
Well before World War II, the “uncontrolled” urbanization
of colonized Africans had become a problem for colonizers
on the ground and common topic of debate in
London, where the Colonial Office largely resisted calls
for a systemic approach to building permanent spaces
for African people in its cities, leading some local authorities
to seek to address the issue themselves.
In 1919, the colonial administrators of Nairobi set
out to regulate Pumwani, an eastern portion of the city
close to the railroad that, “served to house all Africans
employed in Nairobi who could not find housing through
their employers,” according to architectural historian
Rixt Woudstra. “By 1934,” Woudstra relays, “the Land
Commission counted 317 dwellings” in that area alone.
Though administrative involvement ushered in necessities
such as plot regulation and sewage management,
the ultimate goal of the initiative was to control
and regulate the presence and movement of Africans
within the city. Several restrictions were imposed on
city-dwelling Kenyans, including a curfew that neither
allowed them to leave Pumwani, nor Europeans to enter
it, between the hours of 10pm and 5am. Historian Luise
White eloquently summarizes the purpose of the colonizers.
“Control over Africans’ housing,” she explains,
“became control over urban Africans.” Yet despite these
attempts at control, the appalling conditions caused by
overcrowding in Black city segments brought to the fore
one of the least considered factors in the change to come
— African agency.
Though frequently marginalized or infantilized in
tellings of colonial history, Africans were hardly passive
bystanders to the operations of colonization. The decade
before World War II was rife with unrest, strikes, demonstrations,
and other protests decrying disparate conditions
in treatment, housing, and wages. In 1935, mineworkers
in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) staged
strikes at several mines over a nine-day period in May,
responding to a reduction in wages coupled with an
increased “Native Tax” on Africans living in cities.
Similar campaigns were waged in the Kenyan port city of
Mombasa in 1937 and '39, with issues of urban overcrowding
and poor sanitation found to be among the prevailing
issues. The built structures of the colonies were failing
to secure from Africans that which the colonizers needed
most, what “career colonialist” Eric Dutton, referred to
as “Goodwill and Rule,” de-euphemized by scholar Garth
Myers as “consent as well as domination.”
“Colonial rule,” admit Harris and Parnell,
“depended on the cooperation, however grudging, of the
governed.” In the increasing absence of that cooperation
however, Britain, already at war by 1939, found itself less
and less able to ignore the state of its African cities, especially
in a moment when it most needed to draw on all
of its resources. Even less so by its end.
Two issues primarily motivated London’s reluctance
towards urban development. The first, unsur-
24 aphrochic

Top left: Tropical Modernism by Christopher Turner
Top right: Maxwell Fry and John Noah. Courtesy of RIBA
Bottom left: Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry 1945. Courtesy
of RIBA
issue nineteen 25

THE BLACK FAMILY HOME
prisingly, was the racist urge to keep cities for white
residents where possible, and where not, to keep the
populations as segregated — and conditions for Black
residents as bleak — as they possibly could be. The
second, perhaps less expected, was a general reticence
on the part of the British when it came to colonies developing
their own manufacturing capabilities. If the
advent of the war in 1939 complicated the latter, forcing
some colonized nations to begin manufacturing or
even embrace industrialization to offset the disruption
of goods from England, the end of the war did easily as
much to the former.
“Urbanization during the war had led to overcrowding
and the expansion of fringe squatter and slum communities
that were not amenable to [anti-migration] laws,
inspections, or indeed any of the apparatus of regulation
and control,” say Parnell and Harris. And here finally
was the issue: the growing unwillingness of African
people in British colonial territories to capitulate to traditional
forms of control, was resulting in disruptions in
the supply chain to Britain from its colonies, just as the
war was disrupting that same supply chain of goods and
materials to the colonies from the British metropole. It
is out of this moment that Tropical Modernism emerges,
not only as a design aesthetic, but as an extension, and
attempted rebranding of British colonial power.
Despite its reluctance to directly facilitate the
establishment of permanent Black enclaves in its
colonial cities, the 1930s were full of activity by the
British Colonial Office on that very topic. Studies were
conducted, differing perspectives formed, and fact
finding missions were sent both to survey conditions in
the colonies facing the biggest challenges and those —
largely in South Africa, a member of the British Commonwealth
— thought to be measures of success.
Eventually the Colonial Office sought the assistance
of the Building Research Institute, through which it
was connected to a group of architects and planners
including Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.
Others of this collection included Leonard Thornton-White
and Ernst May, as well as planner and
engineer Alfred Alcock. All were employed throughout
the British colonial territories in Africa, much as
Robert Gardner-Medwin and Frank Stockade operated
in the Caribbean. Fry and Drew also undertook ambitious
projects in India, championing the modernist aesthetic
and pioneering the approach that would later be termed
Tropical Modernism. AC
Top: Community Centre Accra 1953. Courtesy of RIBA
Bottom: Pierre Jeanneret High Court Capitol Complex Chandigarh India model
Right: Illustration from the Architectural Review 1953. Courtesy of RIBA
26 aphrochic

MOOD
AphroChic Home
A stunning tufted sofa in pink, an elegant, handcrafted
bentwood console table, mouth-blown glassware, warm oversized
ceramics — all of this and more can be discovered in the
new AphroChic Home collection. All of this and more can be
discovered in the new AphroChic Home collection. Almost two
decades in the making, the collection features work by artisans
from around the globe, with over 200 pieces expertly curated
to provide the perfect base of furniture and decor to help anyone
tell their personal story at home.
A full assortment, the collection includes modern sofas
and lounge chairs; sculptural tables for the dining and living
room; handmade tabletop items including ceramics, glassware,
and bone china; and colorful, richly patterned bedding and
wallpaper. More than just pretty decorative objects, each piece
in the AphroChic Home collection is infused with meaning — a
celebration and remembrance of the many Black traditions
and innovations in furniture design that have influenced how
all people live around the world, including the United States,
where the cultural legacy of Black furniture design stretches
back to 1619, predating the founding of the nation itself.
Upon their arrival, the ancestors — humans trafficked
through the European institution of the Trans-Atlantic slave
trade — brought with them vast cultural knowledge of artistry
and craftsmanship. In his 1977 essay for the The Black Scholar,
Slave Artisans and Craftsmen: The Roots of Afro-American
Art, James E. Newton wrote, “Since the dominant arts of the
African homeland were in the area of decoration and design,
the African was master-craftsman in his native culture
demonstrating variable skills and degrees of proficiency in the
fashioning of wood, bone, and ivory, weaving, pottery, basket
making, the making of clothing, tools, and other implements.
There was also strong evidence of the building trades among
some tribes while others proved skillful in the development of
exquisite sculptured objects of bronze through new methods
and processes of casting techniques.”
Experts in methods like ironwork, where the Mande,
blacksmiths of the Malian Empire, had been forging iron since
at least the 13th century, “African men with iron making skills
were imported to the Chesapeake to work as blacksmiths on
plantations and in the iron industry that, by the early 18th
century, had begun to develop in Colonial America. There were
Hendrix Bowl
Wearing Boater by Boscoe Holder
28 aphrochic

Solange Pink Velvet Modular Sofa
issue nineteen 29

MOOD
Left: Eversley Glassware
Bottom Left: Starling Serving Stand
Bottom Right: Langston Table Lamp
30 aphrochic

at least 65 ironworks in the region employing as many as 4500 slaves,”
reads a National Park Service article on the history of ironwork in
the US. “There is some evidence to support [the] hypothesis that slave
traders valued Africans with skills or at least those from iron-producing
regions who might possess skills. By 1775, the American colonies
were the world’s third largest producer of iron. Built largely on slave
labor, slavery played a crucial role in the growth and development of the
industry. By the 1750s, enslaved men performed most of the skilled and
manual labor,” the paper goes on to report. Black ironworkers crafted
everything from the utensils used at state-like plantation dinners, to
the stunning wrought iron balconies of New Orleans homes.
A century later, in the 1800s, three notable African Americans
would prosper in manufacturing furniture in the period before the Civil
War — Thomas Day, Pierre Charles Dutreil Barjon, and Henry Boyd. All
three developed aesthetic ideas and patented processes that would leave
an indelible mark on the industry. Via the Los Angeles Times, “Pierre
Charles Dutreuil Barjon was born in Santo Domingo (now Haiti), in 1799,
to a freewoman of color. In 1813, Barjon began apprenticing in New Orleans
as a cabinetmaker, working for Jean Rousseau, another freeman
of color. He established his own business in 1821 in the city’s French
Quarter that was later taken over by his son Dutreuil Jr. in 1854.” In 1856
Barjon would retire to Paris and his furniture would be conserved in
numerous cultural institutions including the Louisiana State Museum,
The Historic New Orleans Collection, and the Hermann-Grima House.
“Henry Boyd established his own furniture shop in Cincinnati,
Ohio,” reports the National Museum of African American History and
Culture. “He specialized in the manufacture of bedsteads, which were
advertised as quick and easy to assemble, sturdy, and vermin-proof.
Boyd’s patented design employed an innovative technology — double-threaded
rails that screwed into the bedposts, strengthening the
frame and making the beds relatively easy to assemble and ideal for
travel. Boosted by testimonials from leading citizens, Boyd was soon
shipping his famous ‘Patent Bedsteads’ to customers throughout
the South and West. To meet the growing demand, Boyd introduced
steam-powered machinery that enabled his factory to produce over
1,000 bedsteads a year by the mid-1840s.” Sadly, white supremacists
burned down his factory three times. While he was able to rebuild
twice, following the final arson attack Boyd was unable to secure fire
insurance, forcing him to close his company and work as a carpenter
until he died in 1886.
And Thomas Day would become one of the most prolific furniture
designers in American history. “A free African American living
in North Carolina in the days before the Civil War, Day became one of
the South’s most sought-after craftsmen,” we wrote in our 2013 book,
Glyph Wallpaper
Magdalene Jug Collection
issue nineteen 31

MOOD
REMIX: Decorating with Culture, Objects and Soul.
“Born in 1801 to free African American parents, Day
learned the trade of a cabinetmaker from his father,
who was himself a respected artisan… Day was
particularly famous for his architectural flourishes.
While some have perceived an African influence in
the curved forms that he employed, Day’s designs
are generally believed to show a mix of influences,
making them uniquely American. His work was
influenced by classical European design reflecting
Gothic, Greek Revival, and rococo styling. At the
height of his success, Day owned the largest furniture
business in North Carolina.”
From the first artisans to arrive in America
through the institution of slavery, to the expert ironworkers,
and furniture manufacturers, centuries of
ancestral knowledge has been fused into the very
DNA of American furniture design. Our ability to
transmute soil into metal, crafting everything from
nails and pots, to utensils and balustrades; the crafting
of wood to hewn elegant seating, turned wood
tables, and classic beds; the creation of ceramics,
turning clay into vessels for storage; the ingenuity
of architecture, designing and building homes from
the ground up; all of this came with the ancestors
creating the base of much of the furniture and decor
industry we experience today. This new collection is
a celebration of that history, and of the Black artists,
artisans, and designers who are shaping the art and
design landscape today. Pieces from the Eversley
Collection featuring colorful mouth-blown glassware
are an homage to the vivid cylindrical sculptures
by American artist Fred Eversley. The forms of
our rustic handmade coffee and accent tables reflect
American sculptor Thaddeus Mosley’s wood totems.
The Magadalene Jug’s evocative shape is reminiscent
of the work of Kenyan-born British studio potter,
Dame Magdalene Anyango Namakhiya Odundo DBE.
And the elegant curve in our Day Console Table is
inspired by Thomas Day’s masterful flourishes.
Experience and explore the full collection for
yourself at AphroChic.com. AC
Day Console Table
32 aphrochic

Khopesh Flatware Set in gold Ellison Coffee Table in oak Petra Sandstone Vase Collection
Ewe
Accent
Chair

FEATURES
Haute Couture Reimagined | A Work of Art | Activist Architect |
Celebrating It All | Floriculture | The Mystique of Spice Island | Sanctuary

Fashion
Haute Couture
Reimagined
Imane Ayissi Melds African Heritage
and Parisian Luxury
For centuries, Paris has stood as the epicenter of haute couture,
where fashion transcends clothing, transforming into works of
art. Emerging in the 19th century, couture represents the pinnacle
of craftsmanship — each garment meticulously designed and
handcrafted to a client’s precise measurements, embodying luxury,
exclusivity, and unparalleled attention to detail. From hand-sewn
embellishments to opulent fabrics, haute couture is a fusion of
creativity and precision, resulting in one-of-a-kind pieces that
exude sophistication and individuality.
Words by Krystle DeSantos
Photos courtesy of The Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode
36 aphrochic

38 aphrochic

Fashion
Imane Ayissi
Yet, like many creative industries,
haute couture has long been dominated
by legacy fashion houses, lacking diverse
voices and perspectives from varying
cultural backgrounds. Paris-based
couturier Imane Ayissi is challenging this
status quo, breaking barriers, reimagining
and redefining the landscape with
his distinct vision and masterful craftsmanship.
Seamlessly blending his African
heritage with French haute couture, Ayissi
creates designs that honor tradition while
pushing the boundaries of global fashion,
right in the heart of the world’s fashion
capital.
Born in Cameroon, Ayissi’s journey
into fashion has been anything but conventional.
A former dancer with the Ballet
National du Cameroun and later, in the early
’90s, a model for luxury French fashion
houses such as Dior, Valentino, Lanvin, and
Yves Saint Laurent, he developed a deep appreciation
for design, devoting himself to
his work as a couturier. His aesthetic, a bold
intersection of tradition and modernity,
fuses African traditions and realities with
Western fashion, establishing him as a
critical voice in haute couture.
For Ayissi, a strong identity is essential
in standing out in the competitive world
of fashion, yet he understands the need to
balance his distinctive artistic identity while
continuously evolving. His recent Spring/
Summer 2025 Haute Couture collection exemplifies
this balance, masterfully blending
bold colors, floral patterns, hardware,
structured silhouettes, and fluid draping
techniques. He creates striking contrasts
with raffia, lace, and silk while reinterpreting
classic African textiles. His designs
draw inspiration from Ghana’s Kenté cloth
— woven from silk, rayon, or cotton strips,
symbolizing Pan-African unity — as well as
Cameroon’s indigo-dyed ndop cloth, traissue
nineteen 39

Fashion
40 aphrochic

issue nineteen 41

Fashion
ditionally associated with wealth and power among the
Bamileke people.
One of the most striking elements of Ayissi’s latest
collection is his use of voluminous embellishments and
sculptural shapes, particularly those crafted from Madagascar
raffia. They evoke the grandeur of Cameroonian
Juju hats which are traditionally made of feathers
and worn by the royal dancers of Cameroon’s Bamileke
Tribe.
The Juju hat is a ceremonial headdress symbolizing
prosperity and status, and in Ayissi’s creations
this historical reference is reimagined using a natural
fiber that is both durable and pliable, mimicking the
hat’s rich feathered texture and grandeur. The result is
a striking visual statement that pays homage to African
craftsmanship and embodies cultural appreciation.
Ayissi’s impact extends beyond aesthetics. His
debut solo exhibition, Imane Ayissi: From Africa to
the World, curated by Rafael Gomes at SCAD Fashion
Museum of Fashion + Film, showcases over 40 of his
signature designs. The exhibition places his work in a
broader context, illustrating how he bridges African
sartorial traditions with the fashion landscape.
By challenging conventional definitions of luxury,
Imane Ayissi asserts that African fashion is more than
an influence. It is a way to tell stories, preserve history,
and challenge the eurocentric dominance in haute
couture. As he continues to shape the future of fashion,
his influence extends well beyond Paris, sparking a reimagining
of haute couture and reaffirming Africa’s
rightful position at the center of the fashion conversation
and as a powerful force in global style. AC
issue nineteen 43

Fashion
44 aphrochic

issue nineteen 45

Interior Design
A Work of Art
Julie Mehretu: Color and Light Flood through a
Painter’s Converted Neo-Gothic Rectory in Harlem
When Ethiopian-born American painter Julie Mehretu was
commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
in 2016 to make two monumental paintings — both 27 feet
tall by 32 feet wide — she needed to find a space to produce
them. Her regular studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of
Manhattan was too small. At that time, she was living in
Harlem with her former spouse, artist Jessica Rankin,
and their two young children. One block away from their
house was the deconsecrated Catholic church of St. Thomas
the Apostle. Dating to 1907, the neo-Gothic building was
large enough for her to work in. For more than a year,
this vast vaulted nave was her studio as she completed the
commission.
Excerpt from Inside the Homes of Artists: For Art's Sake. Published by Rizzoli. Text by
Tiqui Atencio Demirdjian. Photographs © Jean-François Jaussaud. Interior images
furnished by GRT Architects. Photographs © Jason Schmidt.
46 aphrochic

Interior Design
Simultaneously, she was looking for
a new home of her own, having separated
amicably from Jessica. She wanted to remain
in the neighborhood so she could continue
to co-parent the children. Next door to the
church was the abandoned former rectory,
built at the same time and home to the parish
priests. A four-story building, it was spacious,
full of unique character, and near to her
family, so she bought it. She says now that if
she knew what she was getting herself into,
she would never have started.
She enlisted the help of her friends Tal
Schori and Rustam Mehta of GRT Architects,
who together with the artist came up with a
vision to preserve the history of the building
on the outside while opening up and reimagining
the interiors. “We began by looking for
ways to move light and people through the
space in a more poetic way,” the pair said. On
the front facade, the most dramatic intervention
was to make an 18.5-foot-tall pointed-arch
window by vertically connecting the
existing windows on the second and third
floors to create an opening that floods the
house with light. At the very top, Julie commissioned
Italian artist Constantino Buccolieri
to create a mosaic of a snake-haired
Medusa.
Inside, however, the team faced an
unexpected challenge. The building was
suffering from decades of neglect and was
falling apart. “The building was a mess. Everything
had to be redone. Most of the
interior brick walls had to be rebuilt. All the
joists were rotten and needed replacing. Had
I known, I wouldn’t have taken it on.”
It took six years of prolonged construction
work, problems with the contractors,
and pandemic-related delays before the
renovations were completed and Julie and
the children could finally move in. “We were
supposed to be in the house when my eldest
son started high school, but we didn’t move in
until his final year there. But it worked out in
the end.”
The finished five-story house has a
guest garden apartment on the ground floor,
three levels of family home, and a skylit
studio on the top floor, where the roof was
raised by four feet to allow Julie to work on
large paintings. A bespoke pulley system was
installed to enable her to lift heavy canvases
up the staircase that rises up through the
center of the building and lands in a different
place on each story. “The journey up this
stair first arrives at a street-facing living
room where two stories are combined, their
previous division recalled by a change in wall
cladding,” say the architects. Julie’s bedroom
is on the same level, while the children’s
rooms are one flight up on the third floor.
“I wanted to have a house that felt like a
home, somewhere the kids and I could all be
together and could build a new narrative for
ourselves. It’s a lot bigger than the previous
house we had, but I wanted to find ways to
shrink it. So we removed certain parts of
floors and kept things very porous and open.
The kids can be up where their bedrooms are,
but they still feel like they are right here with
me wherever in the house I might be.”
The decorator Michael Kirkland,
another friend of the artist’s, helped with
the furniture and accessories in what was,
in Julie’s words, “a really amazingly collaborative
project.” The whole team would share
thoughts and pictures by email and texts.
Many of these ideas took their inspiration
from the work of other artists. The “diaphonous”
central staircase made from white steel
perforated with thousands of holes, which
seems to float upward, for instance, was influenced
by photographs of Korean artist Do
Ho Suh’s “weightless” life-size structures
made from panels of colorful translucent
fabric and wire. Julie’s friend, Vietnamese
artist Danh Vo, suggested that she illuminate
the full height of the stairs by combining five
of Isamu Noguchi’s L7 paper pendant lamps
in a thirty-foot-long form inspired by Constantin
Brancusi’s Endless Column. An image
of another artist’s studio led to the decision
to cover the floor of the open-plan expanse
of the kitchen, dining, and living areas with
geometric black-and-white tiles. “The idea
for the floor initially came from a photograph
of Twombly’s studio in Rome, but also my
48 aphrochic

Interior Design
memories of going to that city when I was a child. We spent
many summers there because my father was teaching in
the university, and lots of Roman apartments have these
kind of tiled floors.” Meanwhile, the Persian rug in the
lounge comes from the apartment in Rome where the
family stayed each year.
The memory of her family’s lost home in Ethiopia
also played a part in the interior decoration of the former
rectory. “My parents built their first house in the mid-
1970s. It was at the height of the Africanism movement, the
new age of African unity, decolonization, and liberation.
My parents were both Africanists and modernists, and
they really felt like they were building their dream of a new
future for the continent. We moved into the new house at
the end of 1976 or the beginning of 1977. It was a one-story
building with plenty of indoor and outdoor spaces, and it
had a lot of wood inside. But just a few months later, amid
worsening repression following the revolution, we had to
leave Ethiopia and the house.”
“When we arrived in the United States, we lived at
first in university accommodation, but after a while my
parents bought a very small house. Eventually, they built
an additional room, which was very reminiscent of the
old Ethiopian house. It also had a tiled floor like this one.
Both of those places were the homes that influenced me
the most when I was designing my own house. That Africanist
international modernist aesthetic is what inspires
my own design decisions. It was informed by Scandinavian
sensibilities at the time, but it was also indigenous
to Ethiopia. There were all these gorgeous adobe homes
with the most beautiful hand-carved wooden windows.
The reedlike cladding in the lounge here, for example,
50 aphrochic

issue nineteen 51

Interior Design
takes its inspiration from those homes of
my childhood.”
Throughout her house you can see
the traces of her friendship with other
artists and designers. She owns artworks
by close friends such as the painter
Sojourner Truth Parsons. Berlin-based
Iranian-German sculptor Nairy Baghramian
designed rocklike bronze handles
for the building’s doors that were meant to
be “really ugly.” In the living room, a blue
cast-concrete table by the Brooklyn-based
designer Misha Kahn crouches on the floor
like a wild animal about to leap.
And just as her home is a record of her
close relationships with others, the house
itself enables her to enjoy the company
of friends and family. “I entertain all the
time. Every week, we have friends here for
dinner, and people stay here when they
come to New York, mostly other artists
or my parents. Last Christmas, my entire
family came to stay. We were all in this
house, and it worked. I really love it when
the house is filled in that way. I love the
energy. So it was very important to me that
it would be able to absorb that.” AC
52 aphrochic

Studio Anansi
CB2 Collection

Interior Design

Interior Design
GET THE BOOK
Inside the Homes of
Artists: For Art's Sake.
Published by Rizzoli.
56 aphrochic

Culture
Activist Architect
Uncovering Greatness with Pascale Sablan
Pascale Sablan is not out to rewrite history. She is working
very hard, however, to fill in some of the blanks. “Most
people do not know that New York City was built on the
backs and bones of our [Black] ancestors,” she says. “Not just
figuratively or spiritually, but I mean quite literally—architecturally.”
A native of the city who grew up in
Queens with 10 siblings, the intersection of
that specific history with built environments
and questions of representation was a formational
influence on the very beginning
of her career. “My first architectural job
was as an intern working on the African
Burial Ground National Monument project
in Manhattan,” Pascale recalls. “The historians
estimated the remains of 419 enslaved
African people and over 500 artifacts were
buried on the lot itself, and that an estimated
15,000 additional remains were interred all
across downtown Manhattan.”
So began the career of an activist
architect. The intern that participated on
the team that competed for — and won —
the honor of constructing the monument,
is now an award-winning and celebrated
architect, and the youngest African American
to be elevated to the American Institute
of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows. By
her own estimation, Sablan is only the 21st
Black American woman to be so awarded
in the more than 150 years that the AIA has
been in existence. Since then she has been
president of both NYCOBA — the New York
Coalition of Black Architects — the New York
Words by Bryan Mason
Photos by Stanley Jordan and furnished by ORO Editions
issue nineteen 59

Culture
chapter of NOMA (National Organization
of Minority Architects) and more recently
of NOMA itself. The newly installed CEO
of the firm Adjaye & Associates New York
studio, Pascale’s stellar career includes an
array of projects of various scales dedicated
to making cultural representation a part of
material culture in locations around the
world, all while working to increase the
number of Black and woman architects
working in the field.
Through it all, the importance of representation
in the field of architecture and
the value of inclusion in built structures for
the people who live with them has always
been top of mind for Sablan. But then a
new question presented itself. Becoming
the AIA’s 21st Black woman fellow stirred
curiosity about the 20 who preceded her,
and all of the other builders — female, Black
and otherwise — whose names and identities
are forgotten and silent, alongside
works that even now shape our lives. “I
started to ask historians for expanded
content about women, people of color, and
African Americans who had held prominent
positions and impact in the profession,” she
explains. “Over and over again, the answer
was, “ ‘I don’t know.’”
Taking on the task of excavation
herself, the result is Greatness: Diverse
Designers of Architecture, the architect’s first
book, released this year by ORO Editions.
Including essays from the author reflecting
on the state, process, and consequences
of the erasure, both for the affected
designers and the field as a whole, Sablan
goes on to profile 47 contemporary architects
and designers, displaying projects
created across a wide array of disciplines
and functions.
“This book confronts the historical underrepresentation
of women and BIPOC
designers in architecture, a disparity starkly
evident in both academia and media,”
Pascale states. “It illuminates the obscured
contributions of these diverse creators and
challenges the systemic erasure that has
long plagued the profession.”
But perhaps the book’s most valuable
contribution is its format. Breaking its
roster of profiled designers down by architectural
discipline, from Urban to Institutional,
Residential, and more, the
book provides a more detailed look at the
nuances of the profession than is generally
available from a lay perspective. In each
section, before the projects and designers
are individually discussed, Sablan offers an
overview of the field in question, outlining in
brief its role and intent, impact on society,
historical harms it has included, facilitated
or caused, and opportunities for healing,
along with suggestions for moving the field
forward in a more equitable and progressive
manner. As the basis for a larger conversation,
this book offers a foundation that may
prove as lasting and useful as any structure
profiled within its pages.
Rewriting history is easy. In most cases,
it’s primarily a question of power — the
illusion that one person or group holds the
license on the past, and has the sole right to
catalog and interpret its contents. Infinitely
more difficult is telling the whole story.
It isn't a job for one person, but it only takes
one to get the ball rolling. “This endeavor is
not merely an academic pursuit,” she attests,
“It’s a vital correction to the architectural
narrative and a commitment to reshaping
our understanding and appreciation of architectural
diversity.” AC
60 aphrochic

GET THE BOOK
Greatness: Diverse Designers of Architecture by Pascale Sablan. Published by Oro Editions.
issue nineteen 61

62 aphrochic

Celebrating It All
issue nineteen 63

Food
Taraji P. Henson Enters the World of Wine
“Celebrate it all,” says actor and entrepreneur Taraji P. Henson,
when discussing her first foray into wine with Italian vintner, Seven
Daughters. The woman who has lit up the screen with authenticity and
vibrant characters is entering the world of food and wine, with a debut
effervescent moscato.
Influenced by a recent trip to Italy, where she
enjoyed a variety of wines, Henson sought out a team
to create her own label with. A match was made with
Terlato Wine Group whose reputation of excellence in
winemaking is unparalleled in the industry. Made from
100% Muscat grapes sourced from the northern Italy
Veneto region, the brand first launched Seven Daughters
in 2006, and almost 20 years later, were looking for a way
to refresh.
Henson, who has officially joined Seven Daughters
as a strategic advisor and creative collaborator, was
thrilled to work with the brand. “I am excited to be
working with [the] team as we unveil the next generation
of Seven Daughters. I believe in celebrating every moment
and never settling for less, so when it came time to team
up with the brand this was an easy decision because they
Words by Jeanine Hays
Photographs courtesy of Knoxy Knox
64 aphrochic

Food
embody those same principles.”
The collaboration is built on a philosophy inspired
by Henson: celebrate it all, never settle, and strength in
numbers, and features new packaging and an elevated
logo inspired by her favorite things. The new packaging
features hand-illustrated watercolors in swirls of green,
blue, purple, orange, and red, enhanced by subtle hints
of gold — Henson's favorite color. The flowing number
seven on the label reflects the gowns the award-winning
actor has worn on the red carpet. And a ring on the new
label represents Henson’s community—the supportive
circle that has helped lift her up throughout her career.
Other personal touches include a bespoke illustration of
Henson's beloved french bulldog Buddha, a comb representing
her passion for hair care, and a nod to her
favorite Prince song — Raspberry Beret.
The newly re-launched Seven Daughters Moscato is
well-balanced with bright flavors of fresh white peaches,
orange zest, lemon meringue and almond. Designed
to celebrate life's moments big and small, the moscato
is crisp, pale, golden with a refreshingly sweet aroma of
florals, stone fruit and citrus, making it perfect for casual
gatherings, brunch with friends, or an after-dinner treat.
“Seven Daughters celebrates the power of community
and connection,” says Henson. “The new design reflects
not only our shared vision but also celebrates the power
of community and connection, and I can't wait to reintroduce
the world to Seven Daughters.” AC
68 aphrochic

Peach Cocktail Recipe
Taraji invites you to craft your very own Seven
Daughters Moscato cocktail experience with this
delicious recipe, courtesy of crycastles.
2 bottles of Seven Daughters Moscato
1/2 bottle of Vodka
7 sliced peaches
1 bottle Peach Nectar
Mix all of the liquids in a beverage dispenser. Add the
sliced peaches. Chill & serve. Makes 12-15 servings.
issue nineteen 69

Entertaining
Floriculture
Ashley Robinson Is Part of the New Vanguard
of Black Floral Design
"Having an outlook where I can dwell in a place of purpose, peace, and
spirituality allows me to create what I imagine in my mind’s eye.” This
quote is from botanical artist, Ashley Robinson, whose story is featured
in the newly released book by Teresa Speight, Black Flora: Inspiring Profiles
of Floriculture’s New Vanguard. The book is a groundbreaking look at the
legacy of Black horticulture, featuring 24 Black growers, florists, and
designers from across the United States. And Ashley’s story within is one
of a woman who has found a liberating form of self-expression “co-creating
with Mother Nature,” as she states.
Words by Jeanine Hays
Images from Black Flora: Inspiring Profiles of Floriculture’s New Vanguard. Copyright © 2024 by Teresa
Speight. All rights reserved. Published by Timber Press, an imprint of Workman Publishing, a division
of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Furnished by Ashley Robinson
Coconut, onion and grape floral bouquet by Ashley Robinson
70 aphrochic

Entertaining
It’s on social media that you can see many of
Ashley’s most innovative floral designs come to life. She
provides a behind-the-scenes look at her first floral
fashion installation at Music x Flowers Los Angeles — an
event created to amplify the voices of African Americans
in horticulture — where she created an LA Dodgers ball
cap out of cornflower, blue roses, and carnations, and a
pair of Nikes using amaranthus, craspedia, and lilyturf.
Followers also get an inside view of arrangements
she’s been inspired to create at home — an array of air
plants, lilies, and eucalyptus lining her bookshelf; a color-block
study of ruby red flora arranged in a nook in her
home; and a stunning blend of anthurium and roses that
reflects her current mood.
In Black Flora, we get a deeper dive into the world
of floral design for Ashley, seeing the one-of-a-kind
couture designs that she creates with palm leaves, artichokes,
and mustard seeds. It’s this unique talent that
Speight hones in on in Black Flora, examining how Ashley
brings together nature and “a modern aesthetic vision”
to create these moments of botanical couture. “I've discovered
my creative calling and a new form of expression
through botanical couture,” Ashley relates in the
book. “My gifts aren't a particular skill, they lie in the
embodiment of my unique wholeness.”
For Robinson, and so many of the other Black
floral designers and growers featured in Black Flora,
the book represents an important note of recognition
in a horticulture industry where Black contributions
are mainly rendered invisible. An outcome
of anti-Blackness that is seen in industries across
the board in the United States. With the narratives in
the book, Speight is seeking “to plant seeds of possibilities
through the telling of these stories to inspire
and empower future Black flower farmers and floral
designers.”
More than just recognition, the book does the
important work of unearthing the historical legacy of
Black floral design that Robinson and the other designers
represented are part of. In the foreword, horticulturalist
and historian Abra Lee relates a powerful historical
narrative of Black horticulture: “Black people's passion
and purpose through the ministry of flowers pre-dates
the Civil War in the United States. When the war was over
and plantations of the South were burned to the ground
GET THE BOOK
Black Flora: Inspiring Profiles of Floriculture’s New Vanguard
Timber Press, $35.
Lily Grass Bandeau featuring 50 interwoven
blades of Lily Grass styled with Billy Ball
hair accessories created by Robinson.
72 aphrochic

Entertaining
and deserted, our formerly enslaved ancestors went back
to the ruined gardens. From this land, nurtured by their
educated hands, they took cuttings and roots of flowers
and planted them in plots around their homes, preserving
magnificent heirlooms we still enjoy to this day. This
petal-paved past has been the entry point into the world
of plants as a viable career for many — including me,” Lee
writes “There is power in flowers,” Lee goes on to say, “We
shape our future, express our identity, reimagine, and
continue to push the floriculture forward as we always
have.”
Robinson has an understanding of the historical
legacy as well and its importance in her work.“Being able
to acknowledge and appreciate my mom and grandma on
those pages meant more than simply telling my story. This
moment of recognition was far beyond those who were
featured. It paid homage to our ancestors, mentors, and
the legacy of our relationship as Black people with the soil
we walk on,” she stated when reflecting on the book’s importance.
AC
Above: Bouquet by Robinson.
Right: Stacked Succulent Necklace made with String of Pearls. Created by Robinson.
74 aphrochic

Entertaining
Left: Rose and carnation-filled
bouquet by Robinson.
Right: “Shine” print by Robinson.
“This petal-paved past has been
the entry point into the world of
plants as a viable career for many.”
—Abra Lee
76 aphrochic

The Mystique
of Spice Island

City Stories
Exploring Stone Town, Zanzibar
A jewel of the Indian Ocean, the island nation of Zanzibar rests off
the Eastern coast of Tanzania, the larger republic of which it is a
semi-autonomous part. Zanzibar is ancient — its unique culture and
political status belying a long and layered history. An important port
of call linking Africa to Asia through the Silk Road, it was part of the
Kilwa Sultanate before falling to the Portuguese in 1503. When the
Portuguese were defeated at Mombasa by the Sultanate of Oman, the
nation changed hands again. Afterward it so grew in importance that
in the mid-19th century the sultan, Saïd bin Sultan al-Busaidi, moved
his capitol from Muscat in Oman to Stone Town in Zanzibar. Upon his
death in 1856, al-Busaidi’s realm was divided between two of his sons.
The younger of the two, Majid bin Saïd al-Busaidi, born in Zanzibar
in 1834, took the island nation as his seat, establishing the Sultanate
of Zanzibar. This new power went on to control significant portions
of the Swahili Coast and important inland trade routes as far as
the Congo River until 1884, when, as part of Europe’s “Scramble for
Africa,” it came under the power of the recently created German East
Africa Company. A few years later, a treaty between Germany and
Britain converted the nation to a British protectorate in 1890. And
less than a hundred years later, in 1964, Zanzibar gained its independence
from colonial rule. That same year, it joined with fellow former
British colony Tanganyika to form the modern Republic of Tanzania.
Words by Bryan Mason
Photos by Qarim Zam
80 aphrochic

issue nineteen 81

City Stories
82 aphrochic

Encompassing more than 50 islands and small
islets, the Zanzibar archipelago is dominated by the
three largest islands: Unguja, Pemba, and Mafia. And
on the largest of the three, Unguja — often referred
to as Zanzibar Island — sits the historical wonder
known as Stone Town. Strategically located on the
westernmost point of the middle section of the
island, the city that was once a seat of sultans is now
a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Today, Stone Town is part of Zanzibar City.
Colloquially referred to as Mji Mkongwe, meaning
“old city,” the settlement derives its rock-based
moniker from the fact that its buildings were predominantly
constructed out of coralline ragstone
and mangrove timber, and finished in lime mortar
and plaster. The city architecture reflects the traditional
Swahili culture, as well as influences
from India, Europe, and the Middle East. Narrow
pathways lined with houses and shops intersect
around open plazas populated by mosques and
souks. Long, stone benches, known as baraza, trace
the walls along courtyards and homes. A centerpiece
of daily life, they serve as a place for rest and
socializing as well as an elevated sidewalk when it
rains.
Homes in the city are one- and two-story
affairs, built in styles that reflect Arab as well as
African methods and aesthetics. Common features
include narrow rooms arranged around a central
courtyard, wide verandahs, and “Zanzibar doors.”
The massive, richly tooled, double doors often incorporate
elements of Hindu symbology or Islamic
prayer, and are by far the best-known feature of this
historical style.
The city is also home to a number of larger
structures, vestiges of the many nations with which
Zanzibar has interacted over the centuries, whether
as subjects or sovereigns. The Old Fort (Ngome
Kongwe) is one of the oldest such structures. Erected
by the Omani sultan following the ousting of the Portuguese,
the building rests on the foundations of an
old Portuguese church. And though the island’s population
is less than 2% Christian, St. Joseph’s Roman
Catholic Cathedral and Christ Church Anglican
Cathedral both stand in the city. The latter, constructed
on the site of the largest and last slave
market of East Africa, was built to commemorate the
end of the trade.
While more than 50 mosques are estimated to
operate within Stone Town, the Malinda Mosque,
currently in ruins, is among the city’s most threatissue
nineteen 83

City Stories

City Stories
ened structures, under constant barrage from erosion, and water
damage from mangrove deforestation.
Other sights in the city include the Forodhani Gardens, a
verdant park in front of the House of Wonders, the largest structure
in Mji Mkongwe, built by the second Sultan of Zanzibar and so
named because it was the first building in Zanzibar to have electricity
and the first in East Africa to feature an elevator. But the attractions
in Stone Town aren’t limited just to glimpses of the past, as
the gardens demonstrate. Every evening, as night falls, the gardens
open into a night market, featuring one of Zanzibar’s biggest attractions
— its food.
Like its architecture, Zanzibar’s cuisine demonstrates a
synthesis of cultures — stretching back to the 2nd century BC. The
night market offers tandoori lobster skewers and grilled sweet
potatoes alongside grilled shrimp, meats, gyros and coconut bread
— all ready to be washed down with a glass (or more) of pressed
sugarcane juice. One local delicacy that can’t be missed are the
“Zanzibar pizzas.” A pizza experience unlike any other, the Zanzibar
style layers a crepe-thin bread crust with cheese, meats, and vegetables
— all to order — before covering it with another bread layer and
grilling it in butter. Coupled with views of the ocean from the pier
and the spectacle of local youths diving from the high walls, it’s an
experience to savor.
And once the sights have been seen, and the tastebuds treated,
there’s still more to see and hear. In addition to its many other attractions,
the courtyard of the Old Fort is home to two large festivals
throughout the year: the Festival of the Dhow Countries — also
known as the Zanzibar International Film Festival — and the music
festival, Sauti za Busara or “Sounds of Wisdom.”
Stone Town beautifully blends the ancient and contemporary
in its stone corridors and open plazas. With a history that connects
continents and spans centuries, from the Silk Road to the “Winds
of Change” and beyond, Stone Town is a beautiful testament to the
enduring power of culture. AC
86 aphrochic

issue nineteen 87

Wellness
Sanctuary
Creating the Perfect Wellness Room at Home
In today’s world where we have 24/7 access to each other via
our mobile phones and social media apps, it’s more important
than ever to carve out time and space where you can prioritize
disconnecting and taking care of you. It’s for this reason that
wellness spaces are becoming a must-have in every home,
whether you live in a four-story house or a studio apartment.
Words by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason
Images of the Wellness Room at the AphroFarmhouse by Patrick Cline
issue nineteen 89

Wellness
First things first, it’s important
to think about your wellness needs and
how you’ll need this space to function.
Are you looking for a space where you
can do breath work and meditation? Are
you in need of a space for cardio, like
riding a bike or running on a treadmill?
Do you need an area for lifting weights?
Do you need floor space to practice yoga
or other movement arts? Once you have
answers to these questions, it’s time to
identify a space in your home where a
wellness area can live.
In our own home, we have a whole
room dedicated to wellness. It’s where
we do our daily exercise, meditation
work, and carve out time for self-care.
We started by by looking for an unused
space in our home. Such spaces could be
a basement, a guest room, the garage, or
even a recessed nook or open corner. In
our home, we needed a room big enough
to be multi-purpose for our favorite
exercise activities including boxing,
yoga, tai chi, biking, and lifting weights.
Our unused guest bedroom fit the bill.
We mostly only use it when family comes
to visit for big holidays once or twice a
year, so we decided to shift the main
function of the space from guest room to
wellness room to prioritize exercise and
taking care of our bodies. Now, instead
of a mostly deserted space we rarely pay
attention to, it’s a vital space that we visit
every day. Having a space dedicated to
wellness has also helped ensure that
we stay committed to our wellness
practices.
Once you have the perfect space
identified in your home, it’s time to
think about a floor plan. Whether large,
medium, or small, there’s a way to turn
any unused space into a wellness area
that will serve your needs. Small spaces
like a bay window or reading nook are
perfect for carving out a calm zone just
to sit, enjoy quiet, absorb the sounds of
nature, or sink into a good book. Cozy
nooks just need enough room to roll out
a mat, fit a meditation pillow or even a
swing or reclining chair for reading and
journaling.
If you’re looking to create an
exercise area in a small wellness room,
you’ll want to find creative ways to
maximize the space. We suggest making
the wall a part of your plan. Walls are
perfect for new, high-tech equipment,
like training mirrors that can be
mounted to the wall so as not to take up
too much space, while still providing the
versatility for a wide range of exercises.
For larger equipment, be sure your
floor plan takes into account exactly
where every item will fit. You want to be
sure there’s plenty of room between large
pieces, and that you can comfortably walk
around or sit in the room. In our wellness
room, we got creative with the floor
plan by placing a large heavy bag in one
corner and our exercise bike opposite it.
Built-in shelving provides storage space
for weights and mats, while the room’s
murphy bed, which is easily tucked away
until guests arrive, gives us plenty of
space for floor exercises.
With functionality and a floor plan
figured out, it’s time to start thinking
about the decorative elements you’ll
want in your wellness room. Are there
certain colors that you’d like to integrate
in the space to motivate you to push
harder or promote a sense of calm? Are
there decorative objects that can also
be functional, like cushions, art, or even
pieces of technology like a white noise
machine? And, just as importantly, are
the pieces you’re using safe, sustainable
and healthy?
You want to be sure that the
equipment and furnishings that make
up your wellness space aren’t full of
volatile organic compounds (VOCs),
are made from natural and high quality
materials, and that they support a
healthy lifestyle. Having VOCs in your
wellness space can cause risk or harm
to your health, and undermine the whole
purpose of working out in the first place.
90 aphrochic

issue nineteen 91

Wellness
The Products We Love
To help you create the wellness space of your
dreams, here are a few of our favorite places to
help you get started:
Serena & Lily: The luxury furniture brand
has so many pieces that can help you create the
perfect wellness room. We love their Hanging
Rattan Chair. It can fit easily into a corner, and is
perfect for a reading nook, or creating a space to
journal and relax.
C2 Paint: If you’re looking to bring color to
your wellness room, be sure to use low VOC paint
that won’t trigger respiratory or other health
issues. We are big fans of C2 Paint. Their low-VOC
formula is user-friendly and qualifies for LEED
credits, contributing to a healthy wellness environment.
Tuft & Needle: Tuft & Needle is a home decor
brand dedicated to wellness. Their T&N + SNOOZ
white noise machine is perfect for a wellness
room. It uses natural, real-fan noise to provide
a consistent soundscape, muting interruptions
and creating a calm environment for relaxation or
meditation.
Complete Unity Yoga: If you have an interest
in restorative exercises like yoga and meditation,
Complete Unity Yoga has everything you will need
to get started. Their biodegradable yoga mats are
a favorite in our home. They’re non-toxic, made
from natural tree rubber and jute fibers. Along
with mats and props, Complete Unity Yoga also
offers essential sets that include everything you’ll
need for your restorative practice.
Aya Paper Co.: Aya Paper Co. has a great
selection of journals, affirmation calendars and
diaries. The Black-owned brand’s manifestation
journal is made of 100% recycled paper and
provides spaces for you to manifest the life that
you’ve been dreaming of.
AphroChic: A variety of home decor
products that express African American cultural
heritage are available in the shop. Items like
pillows, and wallpaper can be perfect for
designing a personal wellness space. Art by
Canary Islands artist Fares Micue can inspire
feelings of nature and harmony in the room.
Behind The Shadows by Fares
Micue, $600, AphroChic
Luxe Interior Low VOC
Paint, $31.45, C2
92 aphrochic

Hanging Rattan Chair,
$398, Serena & Lily
Sustainable Jute Yoga
Mat, $102, Complete
Unity Yoga
White Noise Machine,
$110, Tuft & Needle
Manifestation
Journal,
$20, Aya
Paper Co.
issue nineteen 93

PINPOINT
Artists & Artisans | Sounds | Who Are You

ARTISTS & ARTISANS
Lauren Halsey: Art That Highlights Culture
And Community In South Central L.A.
There is something happening in Los Angeles. Something bubbling
up beneath the surface of rapid gentrification, community
displacement, and the 21st century whitewashing of one of America’s
Blackest cities. As LA looks for new direction following the harrowing
wildfires that began in January 2025, there is a cultural movement
breaching the superficial artifice of tinsel town, resuscitating what
looked lost, particularly to the outside world.
You can see it in Kendrick’s Squabble Up music
video — cypher, music, movement, and a host of
layered symbols coming together with a single
goal in mind — to honor LA’s Black culture, giving
it space to breathe. You can feel it, as Altadena,
Octavia, and Black historical legacies of the west
come to light following the fires. And you can
recognize it in the work of Lauren Halsey, who
builds monuments to the place and community that
her family has called home for four generations.
For Halsey, a contemporary American artist
who was born in South Central in 1987, her practice
includes art, architecture, and community engagement,
born out of a deep and abiding love
for LA. “Both sides of my family migrated to
South Central from Louisiana in the 1920s and
'30s, and I've inherited so much cultural pride
because of that. From parades to being a backseat
passenger riding with my cousins, I was deeply
ingrained in my neighborhood,” Halsey shared
in an interview with Justsmile magazine in 2022.
Halsey’s love of art, architecture, and
community began at a young age. It was her mother,
a preschool teacher, and aunt, a writer, who would
take her to Black spaces in Los Angeles, that gave
her an important cultural foundation. Her father’s
community work was also an important influence,
as he was the founder of a tutoring program in a
neighborhood park. And it was in church that Halsey
started creating set designs for Black History Month
and Kwanzaa events for the community. “South
Central is more complex than the stereotypes some
Photo of Lauren Halsey by Eddie Salinas
96 aphrochic

Lauren Halsey, emajendat, 2024. Installation view, Serpentine South.
© Lauren Halsey. Photo: © Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Serpentine.

ARTISTS & ARTISANS
cinema and literature have assigned to its communities,”
stated Halsey in an interview with Dwell. “What I haven’t
seen on display, or on the level of Hollywood, is the brilliant
activist context and spirit that have been present here my
whole life, which I think I’ve inherited. Like, regular service
work growing up in the Black church, going to a park, and
seeing matriarchs in the community care for people.”
It’s that love for South Central that has forged the
path to where she is today. "I took architecture classes at El
Camino College for several years. I started making blueprints
of my neighborhood based on archives, documents,
ephemera, and things I was gathering on my walks,”
she shared in an interview with Justsmile. “I was also a
hardcore funkateer and I listened to Parliament every
day. It was my escape and a way to empower my imagination.
I started taking art classes to appropriate the
processes we were learning in architecture, in order to
describe the places Parliament was conjuring in my head.”
Halsey ended up leaving El Camino to attend an architectural
program at CalArts, but returned after
realizing that there was no interest at CalArts in the conversations
she was having between art, architecture,
and community — Black community space in particular.
Undeterred by the experience, over the past five
years Halsey has been bringing her innovative practice
— where art, architecture, and Black space meet — to the
world. In 2023 she presented monumental site-specific
installations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Iris
and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, and during Stranieri
Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere, the 60th International
Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Her striking installation reconfigured forms of
Hathoric columns, carving the capitals with the likenesses
and stories of people from her local community. Drawing
on Ancient Egypt and modern day LA, the installation
was an architectural marvel, filled with hieroglyphs and
symbols that reflect the community that Halsey grew
up in. “I had a huge breakthrough when I was in Harlem.
My studio was right on 125th Street, and I started seeing
a lot of people who were also remixing Egypt through
their shirts and knick-knacks,” says Halsey about the
project. “I started to invite them to my studio, which influenced
my shift to the hieroglyph. That changed everything
for me, it gave me the audacity to want to think
GET THE BOOK
Lauren Halsey: emajendat, $60,
Rizzoli Electa
about an archive or document via this very recognizable
trope in Egypt, that everyone in the world goes to see.”
This year, Halsey will close out her first solo exhibition
in the UK at the Serpentine in London. Entitled
emajendat, the artist created another audacious project,
transforming the gallery into an immersive experience
located in Kensington Gardens. A visual language
all her own, the space became a wonderland of symbols
and ephemera that channel the artist's LA roots.
In the maximalist installation, Halsey archived and
reworked signs and symbols that populated her environment
growing up. Her regular wanderings through
her neighborhood, in which she documents the changing
streetscape, are remixed as objects, posters, flyers, commercial
signs, slogans, and tags that celebrate local
businesses and the communities’ activism. A living
100 aphrochic

Meraki By Huda Hashim

ARTISTS & ARTISANS
monument, the exhibit featured vibrant floor and wall-based assemblages, and
miniature dioramas embedded in what she calls her funkmound sculptures.
The exhibit has also been turned into a book, Lauren Halsey: emajendat,
published by art book powerhouse, Rizzoli Electa. The book, featuring a
brat green cover, is a monograph documenting Halsey’s work and process.
The description reads, “Halsey gathers icons of pride, autonomy, initiative,
and resilience from local vernacular sources recontextualizing and reinterpreting
them for her utopic fantasies of the city. Both celebrating Black
cultural expressions and archiving them, her work —which includes wall
works, massive multiroom installations, and immersive outdoor environments
— is a potent reminder of the importance of community and home.”
And within the pages, her musical inspiration, George Clinton of Parliament-Funkadelic
writes of Halsey, “She got it, the whole P-funk Ethos, I felt like
we succeeded to have somebody as young as she was, gettin’ it. It inspired me and
opened me up by way of my own visual art practice…Afronauts, cosmic travelers
and Dogons, Lauren is an Atomic Dog, from the Dog Star, Sirius. She immortalized
my hair with her Hair Works way back, your escape to the outerspace has beamed
me up, your generosity for community uplifts, Lauren Halsey, you outta this world.”
While Halsey’s work can absolutely take one into the stratosphere, the
artist remains intentionally grounded in her community. In 2019, she co-founded
Summaeverythang, a community center “dedicated to the empowerment
and transcendence of Black and Brown folks socio-politically, economically, intellectually
and artistically,” reads the website. Since the start of the COVID-19
pandemic in 2020, Summaeverythang has delivered thousands of boxes of
organic produce from Southern California farms to South Central LA residents
for free. The idea for the program was inspired by the Black Panther Party’s
Free Breakfast for School Children Program and the words of Toni Morrison.
“There’s a lecture from 1975 that I’ve listened to like 200 times since 2014. Toni
Morrison says that for Black people to be dependent on media and government
‘is hopeless, ridiculous, childish, and it’s an affront…We didn’t used to have
to wait for the word.’ This has inspired me [in] how to be and act,” says Halsey.
So what’s next for Halsey? This year a dream project that she’s worked
on for seventeen years will become a reality — a public sculpture park in Los
Angeles that will act as a community space for Summaeverythang. “It’s not
only sculpture,” Lauren shared in an interview with Dwell. “We’ll offer some
of everything, from discourse to resources to joy to being a safe zone. And
shape-shifting to whatever the needs of youth are. It has the same themes as
my earlier work: local heroes, landmarks, our aesthetic styles, and signage,
but just articulated differently. When the sun moves and the oculus creates
light and shade, the exterior will be lit differently and way more dramatic
because it will have the shadows of the walls … it’s living architecture." AC
The east side of South Central Los Angeles hieroglyph prototype architecture (I),
The Roof Garden Commission, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
102 aphrochic

issue nineteen 103

SOUNDS
Photo by Goathi Diniz
104 aphrochic

Milton + esperanza : An Intergenerational Triumph
For years, esperanza spalding dreamed about
making music with Milton Nascimento, the
revered Brazilian singer-songwriter. spalding
first heard Nascimento in the early 2000s as a
student at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
The evening lives vividly in her memory.
Crammed into her bedroom in the apartment
she shared with four other musicians, she hosted
a group of friends from Brazil for a dinner of
inexpertly made sushi rolls. One of them put
on Native Dancer, Nascimento’s collaboration
with saxophonist and composer Wayne
Shorter, released in 1975. The first sound on the
album is Nascimento’s otherworldly falsetto,
accompanied by gentle piano. “I get chills even
thinking about it,” she says now. The music is
pastoral, beatific; but she recalls feeling almost
angry: “How could I have not known about this
before?”
Reprinted with permission from Shorefire Media
issue nineteen 105

SOUNDS
Milton + esperanza (Concord Records), is the
moving culmination of spalding’s long-held admiration.
A mixture of classics from Nascimento’s catalog, new
songs from spalding and Nascimento, and covers from
other artists, including The Beatles and Michael Jackson,
the album is a portrait of their creative relationship.
“Ninety percent of things I write,” she says, “I’m thinking
of him. I’m thinking of his voice. I’m imagining singing it
with him. He’s a very present part of my creative imagination.”
But, she clarifies, that doesn’t mean she’d gone
so far as to imagine a collaborative album; that existed
beyond her fantasies.
The seeds of their connection were planted by
Herbie Hancock, who first told Nascimento about spalding’s
music. The endorsement primed Nascimento to
accept the invitation to duet on “Apple Blossom,” from
spalding’s 2010 album Chamber Music Society, and in that
recording session they acknowledged an affinity (once
upon a time, Nascimento played bass in a jazz trio when
he was a teenager) and fondness between them. They
shared the stage together the next year, at the annual
Rock in Rio festival, and from then on, any time she
traveled through Brazil, she would try to stop in at Nascimento’s
home in Rio De Janeiro to jam and talk. That
might have been the whole story, had it not been for Nascimento’s
son suggesting, out of the blue, that spalding
produce a record for his father. This was at a bar in 2022,
after one of the performances on Nascimento’s farewell
tour, and she felt “sideswiped.” This golden opportunity
was here — and the clock was already running. Because
of the tour, Nascimento’s son explained, Milton’s voice
was in particularly good shape, so it would be best to
begin as soon as possible.
She set to work, recalling words from one of her
other elders, Wayne Shorter, whom she has collaborated
on the opera Iphigenia with. “A few times Wayne had
said to me, ‘You got to keep some of what you don't want,
so that nothing's wasted.’ And I didn't want the element
of feeling pressed for time.” But of course she pressed
forward.
The album opens with Nascimento and spalding in
conversation; he recalls waking from a dream to music.
What follows is a dream realized. “Cais,” from Nascimento’s
expansive, Beatles-inspired masterpiece Clube Da
Esquina (1972), is the first song proper, and if the listener
had any doubts about the strength of the 81-year-old’s
voice, all concerns are set aside by the colossal note
spalding and Nascimento hold together midway through
the performance. Across the album’s 16 songs and interludes,
the contrasting textures between their voices
evokes exquisite poignancy; you can’t help but reflect on
the passage of time, why art endures, and the indefatigable
spirit of human creativity.
Joined by her core band of Matthew Stevens (guitar),
Justin Tyson and Eric Doob (drums), Leo Genovese
(piano), Corey D. King (vocals, synths), spalding and Nascimento
together reimagined five of his beloved songs,
along with four spalding originals, and covers from The
Beatles, Michael Jackson, the Brazilian guitarist Guinga,
and Shorter. Though she did some arranging and other
work in the States, much of the recording happened
in Rio; authenticity and connection are crucial to the
project.
“Outubro,” from 1969, is the oldest song of Nascimento’s
on the album, and like “Cais” it’s another
towering entry in his catalog. (It’s also one of spalding’s
personal favorites; she says that just recording those two
songs would have been enough to leave her satisfied.)
From Nascimento’s album Courage, “Outubro” is one of
his most emotionally forceful songs. The narrator of the
song describes feelings of loneliness and despair, but
chooses to search for love and reawaken a new desire for
life anyway. As a duet, the song soars and unfurls, with an
extended outro that features brilliant flute playing from
Elena Pinderhughes.
Nascimento’s influences are many, but he has long
drawn inspiration from the Beatles and the natural
world. Thus, they boldly reinterpret “A Day in the Life”
as well as Michael Jackson’s apocalyptic warning “Earth
Song” on Milton + esperanza. The Fab Four were in their
20s when they recorded the magisterial, experimental
closing number of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,
and hearing it from Nascimento at this stage in his life
gives it renewed import. “Earth Song,” with its images
of ecological disaster and children killed during war,
is as timely as ever, a harrowing account of a planet on
106 aphrochic

Photo by Lucas Nogueira
issue nineteen 107

SOUNDS
the brink.
Paul Simon drops in for a duet
(“Um Vento Passou”), along with the
Brazilian guitarist Guinga (“Saci”),
the American jazz vocalist Dianne
Reeves (“Earth Song”), British
vocalist Lianne La Havas (“Saudade
Dos Aviões Da Panair”), Shabaka,
and Carolina Shorter, Wayne’s wife,
among others. The album concludes
with a cover of Shorter’s stunning
“When You Dream,” bringing the
album back to where it began, by
dwelling in possibility and the unconscious.
It is a stunning, satisfying
piece of work.
spalding can conjure Nascimento’s
home, where most of his
vocals were recorded, from memory.
Outside the three-tiered house, in the
courtyard, is a small outdoor amphitheater
outside, named for Shorter;
inside, on the main floor, you pass by
a portrait of Nascimento as a child,
dressed in a clown suit (“Adorable,”
spalding says), before arriving at
the grand piano. When working on
the project, she would sometimes
arrive while Nasicmento was doing
physical therapy or resting; making
this album a success required understanding
Nascimento’s life
and schedule as an octogenarian.
“His ideal recording day would be:
watch novelas from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.,
record for an hour and a half, then go
back to watching novelas,” she says,
laughing. Working with her engineer,
they even set up recording equipment
in the room where he liked to watch
television. “The only way I could have
made the album more authentic is
if I had included an excerpt of his
favorite novela theme songs.
“In ways I did choose and did
not choose, my life has brought me
into close proximity and care and
collaboration with elders,” spalding
explains. She is the rare artist who
has successfully made art with a
number of the elders who came
before her.
She’s possessed this inclination
since she was a child. “My mother
used to work in adult foster care
homes,” she says, “and I was homeschooled
at that time, so I would hang
out with elders all day long, other
people's grandmas and grandpas. It
was weird, wonderful, and incredible.
I found that it’s a joy to be kicked
out of my preference for relating, and
get into another being’s rhythm. Yes,
I've heard this story six times, but on
the sixth time, I’ve heard something
I hadn't heard before, and it means
something different today.”
More than celebrating Nascimento’s
gifts and long artistic
journey, Milton + esperanza is a
warmly considered argument for
connecting with our elders. It does
not shy away from how discursive
conversation can be with our elders,
making room between songs for
spoken recollections and wisdom
from Nascimento; it gazes with love at
how age changes the body, capturing
his voice as it is now, without using
studio technology to smooth out any
perceived imperfections or stretch
it beyond its current ability. The
album invites you to spend time
with a person who is a repository of
knowledge — 80-plus years of lived
experience exists in his mind and
voice. Milton + esperanza shares this
simple miracle with you. It models
for the listener a tender embrace of
mentor and disciple, each gazing
with mutual admiration towards
what’s come before, and the future of
music ahead. AC
108 aphrochic

SANDRA GĨTHĨNJI
DESIGN STUDIO
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
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CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING - CUKA MUCII - RUDI NYUMBANI - HOME COMING
NAIROBI DESIGN WEEK
Supported by:
issue nineteen 109
8TH - 16TH MARCH 2025

WHO ARE YOU
Name: Kamili Bell Hill
Based In: New Rochelle, NY
Occupation: Author, Interior Designer, Creator,
and Plant Lady
Currently I'm: Designing my dream kitchen. Our kitchen is
the heart our home. No matter the event, everyone gathers
there. This will be my first time tackling a full kitchen
remodel, thankfully I know the client well!
Black Culture Is: The Blueprint. We set the trends —
whether it’s food, music, fashion, or design — Black
Culture is at the forefront. When I’m tackling a new
project I look to us for inspo. I sometimes draw ideas
from the past designs of some of my favorite Black interior
designers, like Sheila Bridges, whose Harlem Toile is
iconic; or Corey Damen Jenkins, who’s bold use of color
and texture always wows me!
These cultural touch points ground my designs, ensuring
they reflect not only my personal style but also the beauty
and richness of Black culture. Whether it’s a particular
pattern, a color palette, or a mood conveyed by a piece
of art, these influences help me create spaces that feel
authentic, soulful, and deeply connected to my heritage.
GET THE BOOK
Happy Plants, Happy You by Kamili Bell Hill, $26.99, Cool
Springs Press
110 aphrochic