Crash magazine vidi pagess

August 2017

Whats Next: Marina Diamandis talks music and fashion

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Feminism in America

Fearless Lupita

Lupita Nyong’o breaks barriers of fashion, film, & Hollywood

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Crave / Wander/ 5th Floor Explore new taste and sights

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The Scenic Route

Travel Essentials You Can’t be Without

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Girl With A Purpose

Lupita Nyongo And Her Fearless Mission

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What’s Next

Marina Diamandis talks music

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Feminism in

Explore new taste and sights

CRASHMAG

Keeping relevant topics always in style.

CRASH

Founder & Editorial Director Vidi Gomez

CRASH.com

Facebook.com/CRASH

CRASHMAG

Culture Revolution Art Style Hollywood

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Editor in Cheif Lucy Kaylin Creative Director Jill Arnus Design Director Jill Arnus Beauty Director Marc Becker Photo Director Jen Sanders Marketing Editorial Director Anna Sandoval Advertising Team Lucy Kaylin Hannah Tatlor Aaron Kidd Josh Lopez Sam Anderson Taylor Beam Style Team Jill Arnus Rachael Ishida Melinda Loreto Betty Lopez Karizz Fabroz

Words From The Editor Redefining Summer Reading

Here at CRASH Magazine, we aim to inspire, enlighten, bolden, and entertain our readers with our intriguing images, stories, interviews, and style. Our brand focuses on the empowerment of women and features only cover stars that we feel are paving the way in either fashion, art, culture,politics, or entertainment.

Our goal is to evoke discussions among our readers and inspire them to be aware of the quick changing world and to be bold,educated,and original throught it all. I hope you enjoy our August issue. xoxo

Vidi Gomez Vidi Gomez Editor

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Crave / Wander / 5th Floor

Now that the heat is on, it’s the perfect time to enjoy drinks poolside,at outdoor parties, or even (for those avoiding the sun) while binge watching your favorite shows indoors. These delicious cocktails combine the best of summer by infusing wine, fresh fruits and soda water. Whether you prefer a white wine, red wine, or even a rosÊ, sangrias can be created in no time by adding your favorite fruit, a splash of club soda, and chilling in the fridge to blend the flavors. Not only are these a great way to cool off, they are simple to make and are sure to liven up any gathering.

Written & Photographs by Vidi Gomez

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Focus Crave / Wander / 5th Floor

Art Excursion

Adventure awaits at the Getty Museum.

Now that the heat is on, it’s the perfect time to enjoy drinks poolside, at BBQ’s, outdoor parties, or even (for those avoiding the sun) while binge watching your favorite shows indoors. These delicious cocktails combine the best of summer by infusing wine, fresh fruits and soda water. Whether you prefer a white wine, red wine, or even a rosé, sangrias can be created in no time by adding your favorite fruit, a splash of club soda, and chilling in the fridge to blend the flavors.

Not only are these a great way to cool off, these festive drinks are simple to make and are sure to liven up any gathering. wine, red wine, or even a rosé, sangrias can be created in no time by adding your favorite fruit, a splash of club soda, and chilling in the fridge to blend the flavors. Not only are these a great way to cool off, these festive drinks are simple to make and are sure to liven up any gathering.

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Written by Vidi Gomez Photographs by Vidi Gomez

Now that the heat is on, it’s the perfect time to enjoy drinks poolside, at BBQ’s, outdoor parties, or even (for those avoiding the sun) while binge watching your favorite shows indoors. These delicious cocktails combine the best of summer by infusing wine, fresh fruits and soda water. Whether you prefer a white wine, red wine, or even a rosé, sangrias can be created in no time by adding your favorite fruit, a splash of club soda, and chilling in the fridge to blend the flavors.

Not only are these a great way to cool off, these festive drinks are simple to make and are sure to liven up any gathering. wine, red wine, or even a rosé, sangrias can be created in no time by adding your favorite fruit, a splash of club soda, and chilling in the fridge to blend the flavors. Not only are these a great way to cool off, these festive drinks are simple to make and are sure to liven up any gathering.

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Crave / Wander / 5th Floor

This 5th floor window display was inspired by Patrick Starrr, who is one of the most popular beauty Youtubers and Instagrammers at the moment. One of the original “Beauty Boys�, he has played an integral role in transforming how we view - and talk about- men in makeup.

Now with over 3.2 million followers on Instagram, the social media sensation reflects on his humble beginnings and fight to end unfair ideals. He told his story to fellow Fidm students and this was the outcome they created. In all, butterflies seemed to be the perfect metaphor for the transformation that Patrick Starrr felt wearing makeup and expressing himself, allowing this window to come to life.

Written & Photographed by Vidi Gomez

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The Scenic Route Road trip essentials you won’t want to be without!

4. Pack Light TopShop Denim Backpack $30

1. Keep Cool Swell Water Bottle $20

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2. Coloring Fun Amazon Adult Coloring Book $10

3. Snap Away Instax Mini Polaroid $80

5. On/Off Marc Jacobs x Vans $150

8. Shades On Rose Gold Ray-Bans $110

11. Stay Alive

6. Road Tunes

Apple Portable Charger Kit $65

Lana Del Rey CD $15

9. Girl Power Wildfox Couture Hat $50

7. Fresh Hair Tresame Dry shampoo $5

10. Must Read The Glass Castle Hardcover Book $20

12. Relaxed & Ready Asos Boyfriend Jeans $60

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Collide with Culture

August 2017

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Lupita Nyong’o wears head to toe Givenchy.

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egal and glowing, Lupita Nyong’o is simply stunning in person just as she is onscreen. The Kenyan beauty has become a household name since winning an Oscar for her turn in 12 Years a Slave.

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She’s been busy as can be, yet she is beating the boards daily performing in playwright and The Walking Dead star Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed, currently offBroaday and heading to the Great White Way in September. The play is set during the American civil war and looks at how the lives of five women are severely impacted by the ordeal. Nyong’o’s role as one of the captives subjected to regular trauma is “physically and emotionally exhausting,” but it was one she felt she had to inhabit.

“I didn’t grow up seeing African women onstage very often, much less African women in American stories. I flt it was one of my purposes to act in this role Danai created,” she says. When the play first opened stateside, it happened at the same time right-wingers raised a Confederate flag in front of the White House and a Florida jury acquitted a man for killing a black teen. Few plays have felt as urgent, and its instant acclaim perhaps indicates that Americans are finally ready for honest stories about their history, even if they require outsiders to tell them.

A relative newcomer but not an ingénue, Nyong’o harbours no delusions about celebrity. “I cannot live in my public image,” she says.

“It is part of me but it is not me. I have no illusions about it ever being me.” This grounded perspective

owes itself in large part to her father, political-science professor Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, who organised for democracy in Kenya but found himself exiled in Mexico, where Nyong’o was born in 1983.

The family eventually returned to their home country, where political turbulence led to Peter being regularly detained without charge, sometimes for months at a time. Her parents sheltered their children from the stakes, but Nyong’o learned early on that the person captured on camera was a distortion.

(Her father is now a Kenyan senator.) Her mother, meanwhile, taught her how to be a woman.

“She instilled in me that you don’t have to apologise for being a woman. There’s no apology in my femininity.” This attitude inspires the bodily awareness that makes Nyong’o such an efficient actor.

Lupita appreciates the fact that Lancôme’s brand ambassadors, who currently include Julia Roberts, Kate Winslet, and Penélope Cruz, “are very different, unique women—it’s not about conforming to an already established idea of what is beautiful, and I like that.” In her meetings with the beauty house’s executives, she echoed powerful sentiments she expressed in a speech earlier in the year at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon. From the time I first realized I liked girls (approximately age 8) to the time I entered high school, I had six “serious” crushes. None of these girls were girlfriends–I was far too timid then to make that happen.

Lupita Nyong’o wears a satin dress and shoes by Dior and a pearl necklace by Chanel (left).

Lupita Nyong’o wears a dress and Mui Mui and a necklace by Prada (right).

As much as we tout how important it is for a young Black person’s parents to instill an appropriate sense of self-worth, self-love, and racial consciousness, family units don’t exist in vacuums. A kid’s peer groups matter. The images they’re exposed to matter.

The media they consume matters. And, I don’t think it was a coincidence my young tastes skewed lighter at a time when the vast majority of the young female entertainers considered crush-worthy (Halle Berry,

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Perhaps a dream will be born because of my presence.

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This is where the endless laud and favor given to the beauty of a dark-skinned Black woman with short, kinky hair can make a difference. Just the act of seeing or reading about this universal praise can light a bulb in the head of a young kid already convinced light girls are the only girls worthy of his extra Nowalaters and Valentine’s Day cards.

In the last year, Lupita Nyong’o has been a slave, a flight attendant, a red carpet darling, a muse for Oprah, an inspiration for Black women and girls, a face of Lancome, and a subject of approximately 2,833,354 different Tumblr pages. She is not, however, Superwoman. There’s no possible way one person can reverse the centuries of history and context contributing to the colorism we face today, emoticons her new ‘dos induce.

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Lupita’s Favorite Life Lessons: Lupita Nyong’o wears a dress

by Balmain (left). Prada shirt and skirt (right).

“1. You are smart: I took this to mean both that I was dressed well (We Kenyans say “smart” for “well-dressed”), but also that I was intelligent. It always made me feel special and valuable.

“2. It will be OK: He said this whenever I was sad with the little burdens of my childhood (a fight with my friends, a broken doll, a lost favorite piece of clothing). He also said this when I was concerned with the big burdens of his adulthood (detention without trial, house arrests, caught in tear gas during violent riots). Daddy said this to me as he held me close and I always felt a sense of comfort and security from him.

I knew he would do all he could to make my life safe and that he was doing the same to make the country better for all of us.

“3. You can do anything: Daddy never ever made me feel limited by my sex. He supported me when I did things that my society thought un-ladylike, like whistling, dressing like Kriss Kross, and even climbing trees in my adulthood. He was my first example of what feminism looks like on a man.

“4. Do whatever you want to do; just do it to excellence: Dreaming out loud was something he encouraged. He loved listening to my adventurous and sometimes unrealistic and romantic ideas. He did that for all of his kids. Together with my mom, my father taught me to dare to imagine an ideal world and go about making it a reality.

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“5. Knowledge is power: He always reads and he is a walking example of how the power of an education never comes to an end. He has taught me that learning is the best way to stay young, beautiful and relevant.

A free mind is stronger than a free body.

“Lupita employs a powerful intellect in her work and makes very deep, very intricate choices.

And she’s just relentless in her pursuit of authenticity and specificity of the character,” says Gurira, who is an actress (The Walking Dead) as well as a playwright. “She is 150 percent every second, doing more and more work offstage, growing in her understanding of that world. It’s a dream for a writer.” It’s what Lupita said she needed “after that long roller-coaster ride that culminated in the Academy Awards.”

For Nyong’o, 2014 was a year that only happens in fairy tales or Hollywood, a year that spun the then-31year-old actress of 12 Years a Slave into an icon of fashion, beauty, and cool, a star whose combination of grace and mischief and timing on the scene broke a color barrier that never should have existed. In the six months leading up to the Oscars, she swirled through 66 red carpets. She

was dubbed People’s Most Beautiful Person and appeared on the cover of multiple magazines. “But it was all not acting,” she says.

The director of 12 Years a Slave, artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, who continues to be a guiding voice for her, told her, “You have to go right back to the beginning, to when you saw your first film or dressed up, and remind yourself what the purpose is, why you got into the profession, because you get seduced by the obvious.” And so Lupita harnessed her newly minted Oscar power to bring Eclipsed to the stage.

And with Queen of Katwe and the forthcoming film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah—and even to some extent with her fantasy roles

as the pirate Maz Kanata in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Nakia in Marvel’s Black Panther, mother wolf Raksha in Disney’s new Jungle Book—Lupita is using her stature to reshape the way the world sees itself, to reflect images that have always been present but weren’t being looked at. Lupita says.

I“Being able to use my platform to expand and diversify the African voice,” she says, its very emotionally meaningful. to me.”

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GLOW GIRL Marina Dimandis talks music, feminism, and keeping up her glow.

Written by Vidi Gomez. Photos by Hannah Gilbert.

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ight off the bat, Marina Diamandis declared that she was not a robot. Her debut album The Family Jewels boasted clever lyrics and waxed poetic on the big ol’ American Dream. She seemed to skirt around the pressures of Hollywood and fame: observing it mechanics, but never submitting to them. Then the anti-pop pop star was born.

Electra Heart, the alter ego and title of her sophomore LP, emerged with cynicism all tied up in a pretty pink bow and a heart painted on her cheek.

With songs like “Primadonna,” a radio-friendly track filled with pop production but tongue-in-cheek lyrics, Diamandis stepped away from fame’s periphery and into the spotlight. Only she was the one playing the game — not the other way around.

Now, hot off the heels of her third album FROOT, Diamandis has come into her own. The wigs are off and cheeky pessimism is gone. She’s taking stands not just for herself (“Forget,” “Happy”), but for the world around her (“Savages”). Pressure makes diamonds, and Marina Diamandis is proof of that. An idle teen she is no more.

What’s been the biggest surprise since FROOT came out?The biggest surprise is how far I’ve gotten without radio and media. I haven’t one television show. For me, it’s less about the album and more about the fans; learning to rely on your fanbase to get somewhere. I’m a bit past charts.

It’s not like I want to be a Top 40 artist anymore. But, it’s still amazing to see presales — like in the U.S. — were incredibly high. I didn’t have to compromise anything. I did it how I wanted and it’s worked because of the type of fanbase I have.

Are you finding that the more active you are on social media, the less you have to do the traditional promotional tour?Interesting! Kind of. However, if I hadn’t done Electra Heart and hadn’t had “Primadonna” or “How To Be A Heartbreaker,” I wouldn’t have as big a fanbase. Once you’re in a position with that support, I think you can pick your own way. And, you should be doing that. With artists, there’s this whole catch-22 of creating the art you want while not having to compromise anything to get it out. It’s very difficult in the beginning.

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What did you have to compromise in the beginning?I felt a personal pressure to be commercial and make a certain type of music. For example, with Electra, I wanted to make a contemporary pop album — not because I love, love, loved the genre, but because I knew I couldn’t get anywhere in the U.S. on the radio with this sound. I was very much told that by my label. I’m very open about that. I love the songs I

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Songs like “Savages” find you really taking a stance. You weren’t going for a feminist angle were you?It’s interesting you say that because it’s not really gendered.

It’s more about humanity and what we have to reconcile is what’s at the core of all of us; traits that are human that we condemn. So, it’s talking about the nature of man and woman, but I supposed because men seem to be more violent, it’s directed towards that. It’s more sociopolitical than feminist.

That’s particularly true for women.

Songs like that are me trying to piss people off. But, no. I don’t feel pressured. I am a feminist.

I’m a woman and those things are relevant to me. we’re calling it The Neon Nature tour. (That’s the concept, at least.) We want to make this very surreal world with a backdrop the audience can live in that blends electrical elements with natural ones. It is very surreal, actually. We have these huge custom-made inflatable fruits that are inverted colors. They’re not the

Im neon by Nature t’s such a departure from Electra Heart. Sonically, it blends in with FROOT, but lyrically, it feels like the statement song for the people.

“Forget” seems to be a mea culpa.

Totally! “Forget” is a lifetime song.

It’s about recognizing all that you’ve been through and making a decision to turn a corner. “Can’t Pin Me Down” is pinpointing the frustration you feel when being pigeonholed or like you’ve already been defined before even opening your mouth. It’s about perception. There’s a line, “Do you really want me to write a feminist anthem” that’s not meant to start a debate about feminism. It’s more a declaration of not wanting to be confined to A, B, and C. We are all made of many different colors. We’re not black and white.

What’s the biggest misconception about you?It’s interesting because I don’t think there are as many because of FROOT. Maybe it’s good there aren’t? I guess I was cast more as a pop star and I don’t feel like that. I suppose that’s the one thing. It’s not a bad thing. I completely get why people might think that. Even with this album, which isn’t really pop sounding in the contemporary sense, they’re still saying I’m a pop star. I don’t mind. Just do you and go forth.

“Froot” definitely has the pop vibe.

It does; it’s just six minutes long.

What would you say is the most personal song and lyric on the album?Personal song would be either “Solitaire” or “Happy.” The lyric would have to be something from “Forget: “I’ll put my money

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Sweeten up your nail p

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Sweet

polish with candy color.

Written by Vidi Gomez Photos by Dan Richards.

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Updating your look is as simple as retiring drab darks to the back of your beauty arsenal (or the back of your closet with your heavy duty suede and leather winter footwear) Cotton candy pinks, gummy bear reds, and sugared watermelon shades light up fingers and toes and lips, and the effect is playful, fresh and eternally young at heart. Rock the candy nail trend with super-strappy nude sandals, with architectural heels that run the gamut from wedges to stilettos and then play up candy nails with a glossy top coat and even glossier cocktail ring. Or simply don a thick silver band on one thumb for a modern look.

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With Dylan’s Candy Bar, entrepreneur Dylan Lauren has crafted a veritable sweets empire—and now she’s putting her technicolor touch on our models nails as she explains her candy empire. Like Willy Wonka before her, Dylan Lauren believes the world should taste good—and look fabulous, to boot. The daughter of Ralph Lauren, the iconic American designer, Lauren merged her lifetime love for color and confections to create Dylan’s Candy Bar, the whimsical sweets emporium that debuted in 2001 on New York’s Upper East Side and now welcomes more than 2.5 million visitors annually. In the years since, Lauren has expanded her Pop Art-inspired brand to locales like Los Angeles, Miami, East Hampton—and, in May,

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"Candy nails

are here to stay"

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e merged all three into a curated museum of candy. When we buy for the store, we’re curating so that each piece really shows the packaging. I want things that are unique and not just like what you’d see in the deli or at Duane Reade. We buy things that look like art, or they’re stylish, and then we also keep up with pop culture, whether it’s a holiday or Fashion Week. We’ve had dresses made out of candy, we’ve had artists make mosaics using candy, and we also sell candy lifestyle products like pajamas, scented perfumes, and jewelry.

When it first opened, I was thinking New York and LA were the big hubs to capture, and definitely Chicago because it was the heart of the country. I was like, “One day I’ll get to Chicago.” Miami and East Hampton opened before because it was hard to find a great and affordable location [in Chicago]. I had been there in the most freezing weather trying to find real estate for years, and then the Tribune building was just amazing because it has all the different variables that I need in terms of candy retail. It happened a little bit later than I would have liked, but it’s worth the wait.

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Last Minute Looks see you again soon!

We know that we tend to take the fact that we can wear the same thing to the office as we would on the weekend for granted. But, we also know that in some industries, that’s not always the case — and in more corporate settings, things like sheer tops and miniskirts still don’t really fly. So, when we find someone who’s able to balance their own personal aesthetic with a strict dress code, we’re not just impressed — we’re inspired.

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