The September Issue
Meet the Black Press by Tahirah Hairston Contributing Writer
Sydne Bolden Long, Contributing Style Editor, Instyle
Sydne Bolden Long is a veteran in the world of fashion. She has been working in publishing and styling for 20 years, now, but her love for fashion began as young girl growing up in New Jersey in the ‘80s. Long said she didn’t know there was a fashion industry, but she loved the vibe of New York City. “I was inspired when I was a young girl when I would go into the city and see so many people express themselves. I wanted to live that life,” said Long. Her icons were people like Madonna, Cindi Lauper, Michael Jackson and Lisa Bonnet. She started her collegiate career as a biology major at Howard University, where she found herself sewing and reading fashion magazines at night to help her escape from studying. When she graduated from Howard, she got accepted into dental school, but knew her heart was in New York City, so she got a job as an editorial assistant to the managing editor at Vogue. She said one of the most frequent questions she gets is ‘how did she land a job at Vogue?’ Long had just one answer – she studied all things Vogue, and since this was during the times of pre-internet, she spent a lot of her time in the library. “Doing fashion you have to know what you really love and it’s not just picking out cute clothes, but really knowing the history and where it came from,” said Long. The work that Long did at Vogue was far from glamorous, but it did get her noticed by the people like Andre Leon Talley and Polly Mellen. After Vogue, Long was asked by Polly Mellen to become her fashion assistant along with, now Elle Creative Director, Joe Zee at Allure and then moved to Los Angeles for a change of scenery, and started styling film industry executive and their wives. “I like styling real people, older people, people that have real bodies, boobs, they’re a little over weight. It’s so easy to put something on someone who’s a size two, but to make someone look great and style them different, was fun,” she said. Eventually, she became the West Coast fashion editor for W and Women’s Wear Daily; after three years she returned to New York to become the fashion director for Honey magazine. After one year, she left Honey, because was putting in 16 hours a day and she wanted to date and longed for a family and children. “It was a challenge for me, and at that point in my life it was just so much for me to do. I wanted to get married and have kids, I was 33 and I wasn’t dating anyone,” Long said. InStyle gave her a call and she became the senior style editor for eight years. During her time as editor, she revamped the Instant Style pages and styled celebrities. Now, she serves as the contributing style editor at InStyle.
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As the fashion industry is a small world, the world of African Americans in the fashion industry is even smaller. The Hilltop wants to introduce you to some of them on the mastheads of the glossy magazines that hit newsstands every month.
Zandile Blay, Fashion Editor, Essence.com
Journalism was always the plan for Zandile Blay – fashion didn’t come until later. Blay grew up in a family full of reporters – her father and uncle owned the top two political newspapers in Ghana, so she knew she wanted to go into political reporting. It wasn’t until her junior year at Syracuse when she spent a semester in D.C. for a political journalism program, and was taught about reporting from a man who used to work for the CIA, that she changed her mind. “He happened to tell us that everything in the news was misreported and I just said to myself what can I write about that doesn’t lie so much to the world and that was fashion,” said Blay. Blay spent a summer interning at VIBE magazine and worked her way into the fashion department. “Being in the fashion closet was just exciting to me, it was overwhelming, it as colorful, it was beautiful and most importantly it was light,” said Blay. After graduating from Syracuse with a BA degree in broadcast journalism and a BS in political science, Blay went to New York to become the readers editor at Seventeen. There she found her mentor, then senior beauty editor, Tai Beauchamp. Another mentor she found while working at Vibe, was Bevy Smith who was the former fashion editor at large. “When you’re a certain age and at a certain level you only think a certain way, but people who have been through it eight times over and over can help you along the way,” said Blay. Two other fashion journalists that Blay said she looks up to are Sally Singer (Editor in Chief of T Magazine) and Robin Givhan (Fashion Editor at Washington Post). Blay has done so much throughout her years in the fashion industry, but doesn’t see them as big accomplishments, just a part of her journey. “Accomplishments are nothing but one good days work,” she said.
Photo Courtesy of Zandile Blay Zandile Blay
Photo Courtesy of Kahlana Barfield Kahlana Barfield
Getting accepted into Central Saint Martins College in London to get her Masters in Fashion was one important milestone in her journey. She said London is a necessary education, so you make contacts and seeing as much as possible from a global perspective. Another milestone is her blog, the Blay Report, created in 2006 and selected by British Vogue as one of the best fashion news blogs. One thing that Blay learned early about the industry is that there is not much that is glamorous about it – everyone has to pay their dues to get to the top. “We need to realize that there isn’t a whole lot of money in what we do. We actually can’t afford the nice clothes with our salaries. We need to be able to separate, at a younger age, the glamour from the grit,” she said. Blay said a lot of people who follow her on twitter only see 10 percent of her “fabulous” life that she spends the other 90 percent working. Recently, Blay just left her job as the Fashion Market Editor at Paper Magazine and has become the Fashion Editor for Essence.com, while remaining a style columnist for the Huffington Post, which made Fashion Week crazy as she was writing for various publications.
Kahlana Barfield, Senior Beauty Editor, Instyle
Growing up in Seattle, Kahlana Barfield always worked in retail and wanted to be a buyer, until she came to Howard University where she realized her love for magazines. When she came to Howard, she majored in journalism, with a minor in fashion merchandising, because her parents wouldn’t pay for her to major in fashion. She said she knew if she majored in journalism she would have something to fall back on. During her sophomore year of college she found herself in love with magazines. She said she always bought Vogue and Instyle, with Instyle being her favorite, and would clip out pictures to create inspirations boards – “it’s basically my little fashion bible in my bag,” Barfield said. Barfield’s first internship was not fashion related, but she interned at a newspaper in Seattle to stay with her ,then boyfriend, and hated it—but the next summer she was back on track. Her second internship was at Suede magazine in the fashion department, where she was paid $15 a day and had to stay at her prophytes apartment on her couch, but really learned exactly how a
magazine works. “You start off as a intern and you have to pay your dues. It’s blood, sweat and tears,” Barfield said. Barfield’s biggest concern was finding a job after college. She said that this is a competitive industry, with a position usually only opening up after someone leaves or moves up. So, after she graduated from Howard, she became an intern at InStyle. “My parents were like what about a job? But I knew it was going to work out, it’s all about timing,” Barfield said. During her internship at Instyle, she filled in for her boss’ assistant and did everything over the top. She said if her boss told her to be there at 9 a.m., she was there at 9 a.m. and she never left before her boss. After her internship, Barfield left New York to go back to Seattle because she couldn’t afford to live there without an income. “She [her boss] asked me if anything ever opens in the beauty department would I be willing to take it, and two weeks later she called me to be her assistant,” she said. Like that, Barfield made her way into the industry and, since then, has been promoted five times at Instyle, where she is now the senior beauty editor, which is her dream job. Initially she wanted to work in the fashion department, but became intrigued by the role that cosmetics and hair play in fashion. She said it was really scientific and interesting, how putting certain things together could get rid of this or enhance that—it was all about making women feel beautiful. “I feel so blessed to be doing what I love to do, there is not a day when I go to work and don’t really love what I’m doing. I’m doing exactly what I want to do,” Barfield said.
Read more about these fashion journalists at TheHilltopOnline.com
What is the current state of the fashion industry? Barfield: Barfield said she has seen growth in the industry, with more diversity, but there is still a lack of diversity. She said what she does is continue to help young people trying to get into the industry. It is important for everyone to have someone to look up to. She said Daisy Llewellyn was that person for her, when she was breaking into the industry.
“This is a white industry we have to understand that,” Blay said.
Blay: “The fashion industry is more welcoming of us than we know. A lot of us [African Americans] have great expectations in the industry without putting in the work, so we don’t make it,” Blay said. She said you have to get very far into the industry before racism gets into play, and even she isn’t there yet.
“No one is ever going to say ‘oh this girl is fierce’ but say she’s black before,” Blay said
She said a main reason why black people don’t make it in the industry is because of a focus on the wrong thing like being the “best dressed.” When they hired Blay for Paper, she said they had never seen her or the way she dresses—just her work.
She said she has experienced the fact that white and black people don’t socialize the same way, but that’s not racism, it’s just how we’re socializing. “Black people and white people are different,
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sometimes,” Blay said. “We have to learn to socialize with everyone because sometimes we only let our hair down with ourselves.” Long: Fashion bloggers are taking over. Long said there was so much life at the fashion shows where she saw fashion bloggers sitting front row. She said they definitely add a lighter feel and bring fashion to life in a different way. As far as diversity, Long said she hasn’t seen much growth in the industry, as far as black women, but she has seen a change in the vocal power of people of color in the industry. She said people in the industry are being vocal to their designer friends when they don’t see any African American models
in their advertisements or fashion shows and telling them this is not right—it’s exclusion. “There are steps being made, whether they are big enough, I don’t see it in this way,” Long said. “I think that black people need to be vocal, assert their buying power and if you don’t use multicultural people in your advertising, then you should not your money with that company or brand.” But aside from seeing things in black and white, Long said there has to be a shift to become global and still remember who you are in all of that.
- written by Tahirah Hairson, contributing writer