RAW SPRING ‘16
FEATURES 8 - FLOURICH BRAND 12 - MAURICE MOORE 18 - SALMA EL-WARDANY 22 - JENNA GREEN 28 - RENO FAHSION SHOW
CONTRIBUTERS TO THIS ISSUE Editor in Chief Mason Taylor Co-Editor Jared Quick Writer Loubna A TFC Consulting
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)R]eno])
Fashion Show 2016 Saturday july 2 Doors @ 6:00pm show @ 7:30pm All ages welcome
tickets $25 available at banana republic in sparks or online Renovanity.brownpapertickets.com Featuring Mens and womens fashions by 25 local and international designers including some from " Project RunwayÂŽ
Official After party at LEX
$10 entry with fashion show ticket
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
This editorial was started from a very real, raw, love for creating. Art is probably the most subjective thing to ever exist. I might not like what you like. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never heard that song, or seen that painting. To me, those preferences that make our tastes different, can bring us back together as a collective. You can expect a different group of creatives in every issue that you just might add to your list. Before R.A.W was real all we did was talk about new artists that we would find everyday, welcome to the conversation. Word of mouth is still powerful because word is bond, if your’e honest. Honestly, this wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you, Mais
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SMELL GOOD
CENTRAL written by Loubna A A scent can leave a lasting impression. We are more likely to forget how someone we just met looks like, but the memory of their perfume can last almost forever. Scent attraction is a thing; recent studies showed that our scent is the most important thing for attracting the opposite sex. Smelling good can reflect who you are, can boost your confidence and last but not least, smelling good will make you unforgettable! There is great evidence that smell plays a role in human attraction, in fact, special ingredients known for being appealing are added to some perfumes. Some brands even claim that their perfumes contains pheromones chemicals to help anyone who wears them be more attractive. Now that spring has finally sprung, why not switch up our strong woody, musky or even floral scents? I believe that every season suits a certain kind of scents and fragrances. In the springtime, most people like fragrances that remind us of fresh air, a warm sunlight, or some freshly chopped roses. Each one of us has at least has a scent that reminded him of spring and summer. These are three of my favorite spring fragrances for women. When it comes to men’s fragrances, the selection process is a little harder. Of course, there are few famous colognes such as the Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue or Burberry Weekend which are incredible and suit perfectly for a spring time rush. But, here are a few others that are different but just as good - if not better.
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Real Artists Wanted: Spring 2016
THE SHORT LIST
WOMENS SPRING FRAGRANCES
Chanel Chance Eau Fraiche
Clean Reserve Blonde Rose
Philosophy Pure Grace Summer
Forget everything you know about An incredibly unique, edgy but the original version of this perfume. sophisticated and feminine scent. This one has the most unique blend of floral bursts, notes of citrus mixed with woody notes of amber. Sephora - 3.4oz $100
A perfect blend of coconut water, vanilla and cacao.
Sephora - 2oz $48
Sephora - 3.4oz $90
MENS SPRING FRAGRANCES
Bvlgari Eau Parfumee Au The Vert
Clean Shower Fresh
L’Occitane Eau de Cedrat
A new found basic for the season. Delicate, discreet but yet very fresh. If you are someone with a more modern, refined and slightly unpredictable style.
Another new found basic for the season. Delicate, discreet but yet very fresh. If you are someone with a more modern, refined and slightly unpredictable style.
Sephora - 2.5oz $97
Sephora - 2.14oz $72
If you are someone with a more modern, refined and slightly unpredictable style, this is perfect for you. The notes of bergamot, cedrat, blue ginger, and nutmeg makes a great blend of being invigoratingly crisp and masculine. Sephora - 3.40z $58
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What’s the common theme or message behind your brand? The message behind our brand has to do with the process of growing and filling your mind/vision with successful and positive thoughts, the original brand name I started with was “grow rich” but after long thoughts I came up with flourish then eventually wanted to be more unique name and changed it to flourich which to me has the same meaning as grow rich. So with that we want to use our vision to inspire others no what they decide to do in life, if you want to be a doctor grow rich and become a doctor, if you want to rap grow rich at rapping , you guys do magazines I’m pretty sure you started somewhere at the bottom but you can grow rich and grow your company info success with everything you learn on the way.
How do you let your brand stay unique in a market that eats up similarities? It’s very, that’s the hardest part of the creative process, cause there’s brand that inspired me growing up that floods my consciousness with all their work and on top of that I study a lot of brands. So a lot of my work might be a reflection of those brands that inspired me you know? I try to stay unique by my
message and concept I’m selling I feel if I stick to that I will forever be in my own lane.
What is the hardest thing to deal with in maintaining your brand?
selling our name and once we establish that and a bigger following then we can focus on collections
How big of a team did you start with?
Just everything since we’re a small independent brand for now I don’t have a big enough fan base yet to be able to release some of the bigger things I want I have to stay within our budget and stay simple which us frustrating, another hard thing is outside of my brand I work I am a full time father and work a full time job right not everything is tough.
One man team for now, its hard to have a team which I will need eventually but if I do have a team it will be with people who are inspired just as much as I am and people who want to be successful just as much as me and willing to put in the work I put in , cause a lot of people want to be on the team just to ride along that’s not my get down you know?
Does social media really have a big impact on the success of your brand?
In your opinion what takes a brand from being just a name on a garment, to being a real brand?
Right now everything cause like I said I’m a full time father and maintain a full time job so it’s hard for me to keep up and do events needed for now but I try to use social media as much as I can to help improve our audience.
What inspires what’s next for each collection, or does it change every time?
The way you brand it for starting we focus on quality, when people purchase our items we want them to think quality and that right there will separate real brands from those who have something just printed on a garment and quality starts with websites to photoshoots to the way you conduct business and customer service quality ends with the quality of your product.
For now I’m not focused on collections I’m more focused on
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singer. songwriter. producer. engineer. tsunami mob collective member Your style is familiar, but unique. Who do you draw inspiration from? I draw inspiration from just about everything in the universe, my life is dedicated to understanding and creation so naturally I find myself inspired by pretty much everything. Doctor Noble Drew Ali, Shania Twain, Stevie Wonder, Late Chicago Bears RB Walter Payton, my mom, James Fauntleroy, and all of my incredibly talented friends inspire me daily. All of these inspirations go into my music, each and everyone. I am a cancer and i’m very nostalgic so I try to create music that is new and refreshing but still somehow feels familiar and nostalgic, I can’t tell you my secrets on how I do that, but that is indeed what I’m doing. What’s the one thing that separates you from other artists? I think what separates me from other artists is the fact that I am behind 100% of the creative process from the production, writing, singing, rapping, mixing, mastering, and recording. Not many artists are capable of being that hands on with their
work, so being able to do all of those things at a very high level makes my work that much more authentic and genuine being that its all a reflection of me, and not anybody else. If you could work with any artist, who would it be and why. My answer to this question always changes. But at the present moment however, I’d say Shania Twain. I grew up having a massive Shania obsession posters on the wall, all of the CDs, knowing every lyric to every one of her songs. People don’t always understand how somebody like myself would be so into her musically but let’s just be honest here, she’s one of the greatest canadian artists of all time. I think the contrast between our styles could mesh so beautifully, not to mention the songwriting abilities of our heads together, Cmon ! Imagine my track “The Loudest Silence” meets “It Only Hurts When Im Breathing” - that would be incredible.
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What is your writing style? Pen and paper, or digital. & what is the perfect writing condition/setting for you to draw out the most creative energy?
I notice that a lot of your artwork makes use of real vibrant color pallets, is there a theme behind that, or is it just more random?
I write on my phone mostly just because I can always keep it backed up to the cloud and even just throw an idea around no matter where I am. But sometimes I don’t even write words down. A lot of my music is freestyled, i’ll do a take of random melodies and phrases and then kind of refine them as I go until I have a song! The perfect creative setting for me is a room with candles and incense burning, full of a bunch of my creative friends and musicians, tons of cool lights, all just throwing ideas, melodies, and lyrics off of each other while having the most deep and intimate conversations in between. It’s my favourite way to write, I get so inspired by intellectual conversations and being around all of my talented ass friends.
Well vibrant colors are a direct representation of my personality. I am quite possibly the most passionate person many people meet and that comes from my passion for music but also my passion for life, for love, for spirituality, for nutrition, for athletics, it really never ends. Those vibrant color schemes reflect that passion, those colors cut through and make you feel something. I also keep my artwork (of which i do most of myself) very minimal because I do all this work to create great music and title the song perfectly so artistically I’m thinking, how can i make my audience feel my intense passion without any confusion or second thought before they even press play. I guess its working.
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How do you decide on the content for your pieces? As a writer, and someone who’s an empath, I very much have to feel my pieces, and then they come to life. I think your audience can always really really sense if you’re not being genuine. If I sit down and say, ‘okay, I’m going to write about x or y’, and think about it, and work on it, and edit it, play with it, mould it, re-edit it, it never has a great effect. It doesn’t get a good reaction from my readers. It doesn’t even feel genuine to me. It feels too contrived. So I very much lead with emotion on the things that I write and produce. Things that have gotten the best reaction, and I think some of my best work, has come when I’m really pissed off, or super upset, or experiencing a lot of feelings. It just comes to me and writing it out and putting it on a page is a way of dealing with that emotion and managing it. So my work very much comes from that place of emotion. They say you should write about what you know. I don’t ever aim to write about things that are beyond my experience because then, what am I really bringing to it if I’m not writing about the things that I know? You just write them in the hope that someone’s going to be like, shit, I feel that way too, and that we’re going to have shared experiences that connect us. It’s all just my experiences, feelings and a lot of me just being pissed off at men. Which sounds ridiculous, but they are ridiculous creatures after all.
that we all fall in love with different accounts on a daily basis. Then he responded to it with his piece and we worked on the final edit together, making sure they flowed perfectly with one another. I think it worked because I love his work and I love his style. I really resonate with his words. If it was someone whose work was good, but I didn’t necessarily feel that chemistry, or any kind of emotional connection to it, I think it would have been really hard to work together. It’s really important to me to feel an emotional connection to the writer I’m working with, and that’s when you can create something amazing together. For example, I have a creative partner, and we do lot of stuff together. We’ve written a screenplay together which we’re filming later this month we do a lot of spoken word poetry pieces together. We exist on very similar creative planes, which is why we work so well together. When I have an idea he’s instantly with it, and I don’t have to explain it, he just gets it, and understands it, and vice versa. That’s so important when you’re creatively working with anyone, whether it’s poetry on Instagram, an article or a novel.
POETRY FOR ME, JUST HAPPENED.
What is it like collaborating with different poets? It’s super interesting. I recently just did my first collab with a guy called Bradley Cale (@bradley_cale), he’s a poet on Instagram, based in California, and he’s incredible. I really wanted to do something with him because I’ve loved his work for a long time now. I think if you’re going to do a collab, it’s really important to find someone whose style you love. Generally a lot of people on Instagram will ask you to do collaborations, but I think it’s important that you find someone whose style you really connect with, otherwise it’s really hard to mash those words together and create something that has synergy between the two. So I did my first one with Bradley. It was amazing. I wrote a piece about people who fall in love with the people in their phones, which we all do. Anyone on Instagram will understand
What got you into poetry? Honestly? It was a total accident. I’ve always been a writer. I’ve written since I was a kid. I always made up stories and wrote them down. Wrote up fictional news stories. Wrote my thoughts down. I was also a big reader, and I loved the fantasy genre. So I always had a very overactive imagination. The things that I wrote were either fictional stories, or nonfiction blog articles. I’m also writing a novel at the minute which is fictional, but the poetry just kind of happened accidentally. I mean I liked poetry, but I was never mad about it. I’ve studied all the classics obviously, and I appreciate them, but I never, ever, intentionally set out to write poetry. I think social media sites, especially Instagram, are completely redefining poetry for a modern audience and Instagram is honestly what got me into actually writing poetry in the first place. Poets on Instagram like RM Drake, Tyler Knott Gregson and Alison A. Malee, they’re people that we’ll later study. They will be in the anthologies and books that our kids kids will study as the great poets. I love their style, and I love the style of Instagram poetry. It’s so fresh, and clean, and modern, and emotional and real. Real nitty
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gritty stuff that really connects with our generation. Poetry for me really just happened. I was just expressing myself that way, and it felt right. What type of effect do you want your poetry to have on society?
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I want people to read my work and have those, ‘fuck yeah’ moments’. The moments when you’re reading something and you think, that’s exactly how I feel, I totally get that. I want it to be something that resonates. There’s so much poetry that I read and I think, oh my god, it’s like you literally crawled into my soul and then wrote what was in there. That’s the beauty of it. That’s when it’s really beautiful.
People ask me on the regular: “Oh do you know anyone from the Taliban?” And I’m like no fam, I don’t. Why would I know anyone from the Taliban? People are still just extremely uneducated.
I never set out on this mission with a huge vision being like, I’m going to be a poet who talks about this, or x y and z. I just want to be someone who other people can connect with, and can resonate with, and I’m really passionate about keeping it real. That sounds like such a cliche, but what I mean by that is, a lot of people get very stuck in the need to use certain words, to sound super clever, to create specific rhyming patterns. I’m not trying to prove any of that. I want it to be really raw, and really gritty. Which I suppose is why I put swear words in my poetry. People ask me about it or say it would be better without swearing, but that’s’ how we speak today. It’s how we interact and express ourselves, and it’s really important to me that it has that element of it and stays true to reality. That it’s just from our times. From our generation. From our worries. From our cares. From our dramas. It’s our thing. There’s a lot of different ways to write, what would you say is your style of writing? That’s so interesting, I don’t really know. There is a lot of different styles, and if we look back at writing from Shakespeare and Austen, Wordsworth and Tolstoy, all the writers we think of as great authors who have created literature which is deemed ‘high literature’, that’s notactually deemed great writing anymore. Because that’s not the way we write or the way we speak today. Like I said, my style is very raw. I don’t
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try make anything look great. I don’t want to polish it. I don’t want to spend hours editing a piece until it’s perfect. I don’t rhyme, typically poetry rhymes and has a certain amount of stanzas and a certain rhythm, I’m not about that at all. I’d rather something just be really raw, untarnished, sort of coming straight from my soul and out onto the page type of thing, the way it was originally felt.
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When we feel emotions, which essentially all my poetry is, little snippets of emotion coming out, we don’t tailor how we feel about them. You can’t control your emotions like that. They just come out raw, vulnerable, and real.
I’d like to think my poetry is a reflection of that. Which is why I don’t like to mess with it too much. Just feel it, write it, and stick it up there. What is your book about? I’m writing a novel called ‘Burkas & Bikinis’. It’s about four young Muslim girls living in England, and the struggle they face between their different cultural identities. They’re all trying to be young Muslim girls that please their families and stay true to their cultures, while also trying to be just like every other normal British girl growing up.It’s about how those two lives kind of stay apart, and at the same time, come together. The whole inspiration for the book came when I did my thesis for my Masters. I was studying the representation of young Muslims throughout literature. The conclusion was that there’s three groups they always fit into. Number one: was the terrorist. Young adults running away to Syria to join ISIS. You know what I’m talking about, you hear it every day in the news. Number two: was the whole Aladdin/Jasmine vibe. Nomads living in the desert who have camels for pets and 4 wives at a time. Or the third group: was characters who’ve come from different countries like Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, and come to the Western world, and the west has ‘freed’ them from ‘oppressive’ Islam. I remember studying this and thinking, hang on here, that was
never me and my girlfriends and I never knew anyone who belonged to any of those categories. We grew up in England, we were British. We loved being British, we loved our religion. We went out, got drunk, had sex, did all the stuff that we religiously and culturally shouldn’t have been doing, but then, we also went to the mosque, fasted in ramadan, prayed every night and were part of our Muslim communities, and loved that part of our life too. We never, ever wanted to separate those things. I think, especially in the media, there is absolutely no representation from young Muslims outside of a terrorists discourse. We’re either terrorists, or we don’t exist, and I’m like, how can this be it? How is this all we’ve got? I still can’t get through airport security properly. I still get asked to explain ISIS, like I even know anything about that. That stuff needs to change. Muslims in western countries are enriched and multifaceted. I mean, we have such a huge voice, and it’s time we started speaking up. What was Cairo like during the revolution? Amazing. Incredible. An experience like no other. So, when I first moved over to Egypt, I was working on a ranch, in the middle of the desert in between Cairo and Alexandria. After about five months I traded in my farm life and riding crop and moved to the city, and the next day was the 25th of January 2011, which was the day of the revolution. That day is famous in Egyptian history now. It was crazy. There were curfews, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. You couldn’t go out because there were bullets flying around the neighborhood. We made sure we stayed away from the windows. We went out to protest as well, but you had to be so careful. There were guns, knives and street barricades everywhere. Each street would come out and border off their road, light fires and take turns patrolling to try and keep their communities safe. I remember I always used to get caught out after curfew. I never seemed to make it back home in time, which was really naughty of me. You’ve got to go through all of these checkpoints just to try and get home. You’re driving your car and all these tanks and army people stopping you being like “where are you going why are you out after curfew”. Thank God I’ve got a British passport because honestly that saved my ass so many times. Despite the danger, and run-ins with the Egyptian army, it was incredible to be a part of. To witness history unfold in front of you, to be a part of history, I mean that’s phenomenal.
everywhere you went. It was like the city bubbling. So many people were angry and you could really feel it in the air. People were so tense and something just had to give. Then the revolution hit and it went mental. I’ve never seen anything like it. The way the country came together was unbelievable. No matter how much I write about it, I can never emphasize how amazing it was. Everyone uniting for this one cause. People would stand in the middle of the street with food, just to feed others who were protesting. I remember this old man, bent over his walking stick standing in the middle of Tahrir Square (Revolution Square), with this big flatbread in his hand. As people walked past him to the protests, they would tear a bit of bread off. Just a little something to keep them going. It was beautiful. It was human nature at it’s most perfect. After the revolution elections started and everyone became very disillusioned, and then it was like, hang on, this wasn’t a revolution at all. This was a coup, and the army just fucked us all over, again. Then people got upset all over again and it became political warfare. To be there, and be through all of those stages of emotions an entire country was feeling, was phenomenal. I remember when the president finally abdicated and stepped down, the whole of Cairo had a street party. Every single person in Cairo was partying on the streets till the dawn. I have never been a part of something so amazing. Definitely the biggest street party I’d ever been to in my life, it was unreal. I don’t think many people my age can say they lived through, and were part of, a revolution, and it really was an unbelievable experience. I look back on it now and wonder how on earth I did it, and what the hell was I thinking.
And the country really went through so many stages and I was incredibly lucky to be there for all of it. Before the revolution hit, you could feel the tension
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Do you come from a musical background? Well my grandmother was an Opera singer and then as she got older she sang in the choir at her church. If you could work with any artist past or present, who would it be and why? I would have loved to work with Amy Winehouse. She is and has always been a huge inspiration to me and my music. I will always love her and her work. Presently, one artist I would be thrilled to work with is Sia. I have so much respect for her and think that she is insanely talented. Who do you think is putting out the most important music, socially, right now? I really like Kendrick. His music paints honest pictures of the
beauty and tragedies of life. His songs are poetic and socially charged. His message is always so honest and direct from the heart. How would you describe the type of music you create? Eclectic. I never want to be defined by one sound. The music I make is an expression of how I am feeling at the time. I believe, as we all go through life, we constantly change and my music is a reflection of that. Does social media affect when you decide to put out new content? I have yet to release any of my own music but I have a YouTube account and Instagram where I have been consistently posting covers. I usually just plan to post covers twice a week at times where they will get the most exposure. If you could skip the line, and be well known for your music right now, what would you do with your influence? I would want more people to follow their dreams. I know it’s been said countless times, but I still feel that not enough people are out there following their heart and doing what makes them feel alive. We only get one ride so we might as well make it count.
JENNA GREEN
Are you a songwriter as well as a singer? If so, what sort of process do you have for writing your lyrics? I am both a songwriter and singer. Whenever inspiration strikes, I write in the notes app on my phone. I don’t force my writing process though. I prefer it to come naturally. Because of that, I’m constantly writing -- whether it’s a line, chorus, or a full song and pulling from there. I mostly draw from my experiences, but I’m always inspired by other songwriters and their abilities to capture emotion in words.
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s e l a r o M Melody 28
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How did the affiliation with Project Runway come about? The Reno Fashion show has featured different celebrities in the past, last year we had the winner of America’s next top model. This year we decided to reach out to contestants from project runway that were fan favorites.
What does the Reno Fashion Show add to Artown that only you can offer?
What can people expect from the show? Artown is our regions largest arts festival every July which brings over 200,000 people to our region. The festival is composed of 500 events produced by 100 different organizations. Saturday, July 2 inside the grand ballroom at grand Sierra Resort and Casino doors open at 6 PM show starts at 7:30pm all ages welcome tickets only $25 at banana republic in Sparks or online at Renovanity.brownpapertickets.com
The Reno Fashion Show is one of Artowns most popular events. It is the only artistic platform that highlights the work of clothing Designers, hair and make up artist, and models. Over 1500 people attend the event annually. This year the show features men’s and women’s fashions by 25 local and international designers including some from Project Runway.
RFS
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Me & Mine w| Mais coming soon to iTunes!