Kai Williamson, 37, of Los Angeles, is an interior designer for celebrities and owner of the all-female firm Studio 7 Design Group. The firm counts athletes, including Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons, Denver Broncos cornerback Patrick Surtain II, Denver Nuggets guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Philadelphia 76ers forward Robert Covington, as clients. Williamson describes using texture to create luxury in her home.

My journey into interiors started with a love of fashion. It’s where I began to understand the joy of composition, and I have been able to translate that joy at scale at this point in my career. 

Everything in your closet should make you feel amazing when you get dressed. When you have this idea, you don’t allow things that don’t quite meet the need, and it doesn’t mean it all has to be occasion-based. In terms of fit, quality, and feel, it should not occupy space if it doesn’t bring you joy. That’s true for me and interiors, as well. 

I enjoy the process of creating a style, and my style is a huge part of my signature and career. In the beginning stages of my career, people trusted my fashion style to guide their home decor, so ultimately, that aesthetic is where I build trust from my clientele.

I’ve done a bunch of sneaker closets and custom closet designs. That’s where we get to have a lot of fun. We have one project that inspired me. I went to Tokyo, went through the shopping districts, and went to all the sneaker stores to see how they displayed [items]. So I became a Japanese retail display student and brought some of those concepts back to projects here where we were working with our pro athletes who not only sometimes have 200 pairs of shoes and up. But, they’re also like size 13, size 15. It’s a different accommodation. You have to consider how you’ll take a retail display where you only have to display one shoe and make it functional because you need to display both of these pairs of size 13 and size 15s to fit and still feel clean.

One of our clients, an NBA player, has a secret door. So we had a door with an access panel that only he noticed, so the kids didn’t even know where it was for quite some time.

Sometimes, our clients are willing to spend a lot of money on what I call a high-profile piece, which lives in the foyer when you first enter the home or the dining room, even if they don’t use it a lot. They’re like, “I want this to be amazing,” because dining rooms are often one of the first focal points when you walk into the house, especially in more transitional architecture. When it’s in high use, I suggest investment pieces.

We customize for many of our clients, so custom fabric choices are called CLM, like the customer’s own materials. We want to customize items that are going to be high-use. For me, the family room section is super-important. For our pro athletes, we raise the height. So, the standard seating height is 18 inches. So we have some pieces made at 19 inches, some even as high as 20 because when you have, for example, a client who’s 6 feet 6 and the wife is 5 feet 11. They’re tall.

Recently, I designed a new sectional for my home. I talked about how important that family room sectional is, so I designed a large sectional made of mohair.

Mohair is a very luxurious material. It ranges [in price] at the lowest end, $190 per yard, and it can go up to $350 per yard. There are even some vendors who can exist above that. I needed 44 yards of material for my sectional. That fabric investment alone was significant. Then you have the labor cost. What a lot of people don’t know is that when you’re dealing in custom furniture, there’s a cost to construct the piece and then the cost for your furniture.

For example, when looking for more retail, they come with what they call graded-in fabrics. You’re going to get what they have, which is probably ivory or gray or something neutral, and then you can get that level of customization, sometimes even at retail. Still, I would rather get exactly what I want for that time, right? The piece also has an integrated marble table.

The mohair is a bluish color, and I’m really into color. Calming tones are amazing, but having something that feels more curated and collected for you is about the careful infusion of color. So it is a bluish-grayish tone mohair. As a designer, I’ve always just admired mohair. It’s a very soft fabric, but it has a higher pile [a process that locks individual fibers into a lightweight knit backing] and a bit of a sheen. It transforms in different lights.

I’ve specified it for projects but have never done anything for myself. And I remember even, you know, when you’re selecting for projects, sometimes you’re still like, ‘Hey, this is expensive. Like, I want to tell you all this is expensive, right?’ We have clients who can afford that, but it was a treat. I said the next piece I designed for myself would be exactly what I wanted.

Gillette SkinGuard Razor

After a group of Black Gillette employees voiced their concerns about not being able to use the brand’s razors, Gillette introduced its SkinGuard line with blades that have minimal contact with the skin, preventing ingrown hairs and irritation — perfect for the father figure in your life.

$20

VII(N) The Seventh Estate Ode to Soul Wine

In May, NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony and co-founder Asani Swann launched their first offering under the wine brand VII(N) The Seventh Estate: Ode to Soul, a decadent red wine years in the making, in collaboration with Robert Mondavi Winery.

$275

Chamelo Dusk Classic sunglasses

Carmelo Anthony isn’t the only former New York Knicks player trying to upgrade your father figure. Stephon Marbury’s new eyewear brand, Chamelo, sells sunglasses with “app-enabled tint-adjustable with built-in audio.” If that doesn’t scream “dear old dad,” we’re not sure what does.

$225

‘Rise of the Black Quarterback: What It Means for America‘

For the dad who is rooting for everybody Black, Andscape senior NFL writer Jason Reid explores the history and rise of the Black quarterback.

$11.97

Chris Collins Kingmaker Extrait de Parfum

Black “scent storyteller” Chris Collins’ Kingmaker extrait de parfum is sharp and distinguishing, with Italian bergamot, lavender, rose petals, oud, and patchouli notes. It’s for the man in your life who owns every room he walks into (or needs the reminder to take up space).

$300

Jack Black Oil-Free Sun Guard Sunscreen

We know that Black doesn’t crack, but it does burn. So, if you value a Black man in your life, ensure he wears sunscreen that can go the distance. It’s water-resistant, which means he can work out in it or work in the yard and be protected.

$24

Ebbets Field Chicago American Giants 1926 Road Jersey

Before the MLB was integrated, the Chicago American Giants were one of the most dominant teams in the Negro Leagues, winning five pennants in the first Negro Leagues. The Ebbets Field jersey makes a fitting gift considering the league’s recent decision to incorporate Negro Leagues stats.

$215

Uncle Nearest 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey

In 2017, Fawn Weaver debuted a whiskey in honor of Nearest Green, the formerly enslaved distiller behind the Jack Daniels recipe. Since then, it has won 125 awards and can be consumed by the man who likes a little taste on the rocks, neat, or in a cocktail.

$59

Tiffany & Co. Makers Narrow Money Clip

Upgrade the old-school dad who insists on using cash for everything with this silver money clip from Tiffany & Co. Makers (you can have it engraved!). He’ll look sophisticated while peeling bills from his wad of money.

$275

Cotton BKc Thinkers Cap

Your dad may ignore fashion trends (as he should), but this cotton cap from Brooklyn Circus, a Black-owned brand, will bring him up to speed with its cool, casual logo.

$49

“We’ve known that we’re dope,” Wallace said. “But we’re glad the rest of the world is catching up. This collection pays homage to those who built this — the players, the creators — everyone who knew we were dope and did the work to get us here.”

The summer 2024 collection features a creme hoodie and T-shirt with the phrase “If You’re Just Now Tuning Into Women’s Basketball, We Told You So” in the WNBA orange colorway. The pieces will be available on the brand’s website Friday. The tagline describes Wallace’s work with Playa Society and her commitment to elevating the players.

This is the latest WNBA collaboration in a month for Wallace, who also designed the new apparel line for the Golden State Valkyries. The Valkyries are the Golden State Warriors’ WNBA affiliate team and the first of the two new expansion teams introduced into the league since 2008. Named after a host of female warriors in Norse mythology, the team will play its first season in 2025. The apparel has already sold out twice since it was first released.

Wallace told Andscape there are no words to describe the opportunity to work so closely with the WNBA, but it was a long time coming.

“I don’t even think flattered is the word,” Wallace told Andscape. “I don’t know what words to use. To [initially] get the email from Golden State Warriors” — both teams share a front office — “to be in on those early conversations like ‘we don’t have a name yet, we don’t know what it’s going to look like yet, but we know we want some Playa Society merch,’ that was cool.”

Wallace wasn’t stressed about how everything came together for her Valkyries apparel collection. Yes, she created pieces before the team had a name, but these are her favorite projects. Everything she’s been doing with Playa Society prepared her for this.

“It’s like you’re playing in the clutch, right?” Wallace said. “Fourth quarter and have to get this design done, then just to see everybody’s response and how much everybody loves the product that was cool because it’s like, OK, I did it in the fourth quarter and came away with the win. It was special.”

Wallace knew as a child she wanted to design apparel. “I was that kid walking around with a sketchbook,” she remembered. “I took it everywhere. It was my whole childhood.” She began to make outfits for herself and even assumed she would go to the Fashion Institute of Technology for college. 

“However,” Wallace said, “I happened to be very tall.” While people around her pushed her to play basketball, she insisted she would be a designer. “I was very stubborn.”

It wasn’t until she dropped out of the performing arts high school, where she was enrolled to learn costume design that she began to consider what life on the court could look like for her.

“All of my friends went to the regular public school, and I dropped out after like, three days, and ended up going there,” Wallace said. “I didn’t realize that school had the No. 1 girls’ basketball team in the state and some of the top-ranked basketball players in the country. Of course, I didn’t know that because I didn’t care about basketball at all.”

She was convinced to start playing basketball during her sophomore year and attended a basketball game at the University of Massachusetts (Wallace is from nearby Springfield). UMass was playing against Temple, which was a life-changing experience for her.

“This is Temple when Dawn Staley is coaching,” Wallace explained. “So I see Dawn Staley on the sidelines, Candace Dupree, who was playing at the time, and all these Black girls. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.’ ” All it took was seeing Staley and her team for Wallace to forget about design.

Wallace thought she would play basketball as long as possible and then coach. She played overseas while she was getting her master’s degree. “I did my master’s thesis on the misrepresentation and the underrepresentation of women’s sport when it comes to sports advertising.”

Though Wallace maintains that she wasn’t thinking about starting a business at the time, “someone at some point was like ‘why don’t you solve this problem?’ ”

From there, she started to imagine what it would be like if she could design and impact women’s basketball instead of coaching. Wallace returned to the United States in 2014 and got to work. 

“I started playing around with my own screen designs, I tried to build my own printing press, but that was a disaster,” she said.

Instead, Wallace designed the pieces and took them to be printed. In 2017, she developed a simple but direct T-shirt. The word “Female” was crossed out over “Athlete” on a separate line. Business took off.

“When I designed it, I had a feeling this could probably be big,” she said. “So at first I was nervous to put it out because I wasn’t sure, but I finally put it out and all of a sudden I was selling hundreds of this T-shirt.”

Initially, she printed the shirts in batches of 40 to 50, and when those sold out, she increased the number of shirts to 100 at a time. The shirts just kept selling out. “When I started selling them, it was at the farmers market tables. That kind of thing, but when I put it online, I was selling hundreds of them.”

This was when it became clear to Wallace what she wanted to build a brand around. She gave herself two months to develop Playa Society as a concept, name, and branding. 

Wallace said she knew she needed a deadline. Otherwise, she would never have decided to put anything out. “I was like wherever you’re at, it’s going to be good enough. That’s what I kept telling myself,” she said. “I’m such a perfectionist and I just could pick things apart forever.”

Playa Society was launched in January 2018. The company’s name was inspired by a scene in the movie Love & Basketball.

“Like many young Black girls, I was obsessed with Love & Basketball,” said Wallace. “There’s that scene where Monica is hyped-up in the car, she’s like, ‘I’m a ball playa.’ That conversation was always the essence of what I wanted to create — just her standing up for herself in that moment, that was the energy I wanted. The ‘ball playa’ part really stood out. I wanted [my brand] to be rooted in community, so I played around with what that language could look like, eventually landing on Playa Society.”

Wallace launched her brand, and WNBA players embraced it almost immediately. In April 2018, WNBA All-Star Candace Parker wore the “Female Athlete” shirt on former NBA player Kevin Garnett’s Area 21 show on TNT. It was a big moment for Wallace, personally and professionally.

“The message connected with her for some reason. It gave me a little bit of energy and more momentum to keep pushing,” she said. “I was giving shirts to all the players in the NBA during a time when no other brand was giving any thought to the WNBA or women’s basketball, so I was building these connections.”

At one point during the summer of 2018, all the WNBA players were wearing Wallace’s apparel because the Women’s National Basketball Players Association purchased them from her, and it meant a lot to earn the players’ support. “Sue Bird was one of my first customers. Sylvia Fowles. Natasha Cloud is always purchasing,” Wallace said, naming a few of her earliest supporters.

For Wallace, having that support just made her want to go harder for her girls. In 2020 (pre-COVID-19 lockdown), she left her job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked in marketing. It was the biggest risk she’d ever taken, but that summer, she was selling “thousands and thousands” of the “Female Athlete” T-shirt, which was still her primary product at the time.

The following summer, Wallace had the chance to speak to someone at the WNBA and pitched the idea of a Playa Society collaboration. Wallace said she approached the conversation as practice for what could come in the future, but the WNBA liked her ideas. “They were like, ‘yes!’ and I was like ‘really?’ ”

Her first WNBA collection was launched in September 2021. It included a hoodie, a pair of sweatpants with the corresponding team logos on the pants leg, and a T-shirt with the WNBA logo.

“I remember it selling out,” Wallace recalled. “This is back when I used [e-commerce platform] Shopify, and the Shopify notifications would make the cash sound. I just remember it going off, and off, and then it started to die down.” That’s when Wallace checked and noticed her first release had sold out in the first hour.

She said that was a big day, and she has continued to respond to the demand. “It’s just been a matter of building this whole thing, as the community was growing, as women’s basketball was growing. Responding to the need and desire for better merch, but also exploring new designs.” It’s been a challenge as Wallace mainly has operated as a one-woman team.

While the designer is excited that the WNBA is shining under a new spotlight, she wants to be clear that the attention shouldn’t be fleeting. “The WNBA, the product has been good. It has been great, and it will only get better,” Wallace said. “That needs to be at the forefront of everybody’s mind here, so it’s not like we suddenly have a good product. There’s a lot that has gone overlooked and underrepresented.

“Hopefully, I can do a lot more of that because I know a lot of people are going to focus on what’s happening right now. I just want to celebrate the game and women as a whole beyond just like the moment.”

“I’m so grateful that beauty brands are partnering with women athletes,” Johnson told Andscape. “I’m so excited, not just partnering with a beauty brand like Parfait but a brand that Black women own. That means a lot to me.”

Parfait co-founder and CEO Isoken Igbinedion is a huge fan of Johnson — she is all Igbinedion’s little sisters can talk about — but she’d been thinking about the inequities between the opportunities for male and female athletes. She wanted to set a precedent with a NIL partnership between Parfait and Johnson.

“We fundamentally believe brands have a responsibility to amplify these female voices in spaces where these inequities live and exist the most,” Igbinedion said. “That’s why this partnership agreement is so special to us. It marks a historic first in the hair industry to help us set a new standard for how female athletes should be treated and how they can maintain and express their personal style without compromise.”

One of the coolest things about the partnership is how organic it will be: Johnson will learn about the products as she uses them, and Parfait will be able to create products that fit Johnson’s lifestyle.

“You know how they say if you look good, you play good?” asked Johnson. “That is so true. I’m always in the mirror. My hair has to be slayed.” She said she loves wearing long hair on the court, especially once her wigs are in what she calls “sport mode.”

Johnson described her hair in sport mode: “There’s a thing on the wig that has a strap on the back, and it makes the wig tighter. And you have, like, this comb in the wig that you can put under the band that you tie and it makes it like tighter. It makes it secure so that the wig won’t go anywhere. It’s good for athletes.”

That’s her game-day beauty routine — lashes, lip gloss, wig in sport mode, and she’s ready to get on the court.

“I like to get fly. I think that’s the Atlanta in me,” Johnson said of her style. “You have to look good.” Johnson plans to wear her hair in Parfait pieces like the U-part curly wigs and half-up, half-down.

In July 2020, Igbinedion launched Parfait with her sister Ifueko Igbinedion. The line of wigs and extensions can be customized to customers’ head sizes based on their skin tone, using artificial intelligence. Isoken Igbinedion was inspired to make the connection between AI and Black women’s hair care after attending a panel at AfroTech in 2019.

“At AfroTech that year, there were a bunch of different panels from industry leaders, folks like Google, Meta, Twitter. It was just so interesting seeing how they were using their platforms and their positions of power to solve a lot of the inequities that they were seeing as they were building physical products,” Igbinedion said.

Inequities can arise from AI bias, such as the soap and water dispenser in the restroom not recognizing darker skin tones and failing to turn on when Black people put their hands under the sensor. Igbinedion and her sister wanted to be sure the Black community was a part of the revolution.

“That’s really where the genesis for Parfait was born, with this mission to create beauty experiences with technology that truly recognize and prioritize everybody,” Igbinedion said. “We ended up with wigs and hair extensions as the first category. We want to solve problems for women because of how difficult that experience can be and because of the lack of education that a lot of our communities have not had when it comes to how we care and protect our natural hair.”

The name Parfait resembles the build-as-you-go dessert, she said. “The actual dessert, a parfait, is a very layered experience,” Igbinedion said. “You can build a parfait any way with any toppings, and it’s special and unique for you so it’s similar to the hair experience.

“We already knew this as Black women, but Black women aren’t a monolith, right?” Igbinedion said. “We are all very different, we come from very different backgrounds. We have different preferences. We have different hair textures. We have different experiences.”

And there are so many different reasons to wear a wig. “It could be for a protective style because you just don’t have the time to manipulate your hair safely because of the beauty of day-to-day life,” Igbinedion said. “Or because you just had a baby and have postpartum shedding and for the first time you don’t know how to manage that experience for yourself, or you are just using it as a fashion accessory in between styles.”

Parfait creates custom pieces with the aid of a selfie. Customers take four selfies and allow the camera to scan the biometric information on their face. The selfies help the AI process understand the curvatures of the hairline and the circumference of the head. It also captures the color palettes of skin tones, and Parfait uses that information to fuel its production capabilities.

Once all the information is captured, Parfait custom-creates a cap unique to the head’s measurements. “And then we make sure the tone of the lace actually matches your skin tone and so we can continue to serve more consumers,” Igbinedion said. “We’re going to be able to learn more about the true depths and ranges of Black faces and skin tones that may not exist in the beauty industry so that we can continue to evolve and develop products that truly fit all of our unique profiles.”

But really, Igbinedion is excited about Johnson’s opportunity to build her brand and wealth. “[Parfait] is so excited to support her and give her opportunities that are not available to women. I know it’s starting to happen, but it’s not happening fast enough, and it’s not having at the speed it needs to. We’re excited to be one piece of this much larger movement.”

Naomi Schiff, 30, a former racing driver turned on-air personality and Formula One ambassador based in Paris, on the bag she was gifted, exchanged, and is still toting.

Growing up as a racing driver, my dad always inspired me because he used to race. But in this case, this is the perfect [opportunity to talk about] my mother because she was just always perfection, always dressed to the nines. She was always just really well put together and very stylish and my mom did model in the past. She cared a lot about, you know, presenting very well in that way.

In the past, I didn’t think I could maintain my own sense of style while driving. There was a sense of needing to conform, needing to fit in, and that’s thankfully really evolved. [Formula One driver] Lewis Hamilton’s been the pioneer of that change because he’s made his entrance into the Formula One paddock essentially a runway show. This is the area behind the pit lane and garages where the teams set up their motorhomes (or bespoke hospitality units for non-European events) and is the focus of F1 life for the weekend. Generally, it’s the place to see and be seen.

As with everything, change always comes through resistance. There was a lot of criticism, a lot of question marks and people saying that he needed to focus on driving, not what he was wearing. So that can make an environment like this intimidating to do your own thing over time, but thankfully, he’s persisted.  Now, it’s an environment where you can wear whatever you want, and I wish I could go back to being a racing driver in this era so that I could, you know, still evoke my sense of self and express myself in the way I wanted via fashion. But back in the day, that wasn’t possible. I think the only thing I had creative license over was my helmets, my fashion item to express myself in that sense. 

So today [as an on-air analyst], I can wear what I love within reason, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot. I wouldn’t call it pressure, but it’s a lot of work if you consider how many Grand Prix I go to over a season and how many times I’m on-air, and that’s a lot of outfits. I always wanted to deliver. As much as the most important thing that I do is what I say on TV and the analysis of the racing, I still want to represent myself in a way that I can connect with a part of the audience who maybe see some of themselves in me. I need to show up looking on point. That’s in the eye of the beholder, and it depends on whoever’s watching and identifies with my style.

I’ve had many stylists who are keen to work with me because of the strong correlation between sports and fashion today. Many brands sponsor Formula One, so it’s an exciting time to be in this space. The Formula One audience is 40% female, so we have to cater to that, and I’m happy to be one of the few young women in the sport in a forward-facing role.

The team I used to race for in the past had a tradition of buying a gift for a driver who won a championship, so that particular year, I won the championship. And so they were buying a gift for a woman for the first time. I remember my team’s boss asking his wife for advice, and they got me a stunning Louis Vuitton bag, but at the time, the Neverfull was like the bag. It was like the bag everyone wanted, so I politely exchanged what they had given me for a Neverfull. It was less expensive than the one they bought me. So, I managed to get a wallet out of that as well.

I don’t know what the original gifted bag was called, but it wasn’t my style. It was a little bit too mature for me. It was 2018, so I was 24. It wasn’t young and fun enough for me. So that’s why I changed it. And I still use the Neverfull today. It’s just like a staple piece that never gets old. It’s timeless. That was one of my travel go-to’s for the F1 weekends, but now I always bring my whole life. So it’s too small, and I’m looking for a bigger tote, like the Dior one.

Designers dress guests (handpicked by Vogue magazine’s longtime editor Anna Wintour) in a theme that corresponds to an exhibit at the museum’s Costume Institute for fashion’s biggest night. This year’s was “The Garden of Time,” a nod to the exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” and based on a short story by English writer J.G. Ballard, written in 1962.

As you’d expect, florals were a huge trend on the off-white carpet and, in some cases, perhaps groundbreaking. 

Here’s a look at our favorites from the night. 

Jooel Hera Gold Teardrop Earring

This minimal earring design packs a punch with its high-polish finish thanks to its nickel-free, 18-karat gold-plated brass — perfect for the mom who never wants to do too much. 

$82

Topicals Faded Eye Patches

Whether she’s a new mom or an empty nester, give her the gift of appearing well-rested with a six-pack of eye patches from Black-owned brand Topicals.

$22

Williams Sonoma Dirty Martini Juice

An artisanal olive brine to elevate her after-work martini. Frivolous, yes, but the best gifts are. 

$24.95

Officine Universelle Buly Huile Antique Eritrean Myrrh Body Oil

Shipped directly from the brand’s storefront in Paris, this nourishing body oil is scented with notes of jasmine, tuberose, and myrrh and arrives in packaging customized for the gift recipient.

$44

Curves by Sean Brown Spill Coasters

For the mom who won’t let you sit a drink on her furniture without anything underneath, we present Black designer Sean Brown’s architecturally fluid take on a coaster. 

$60

Brown Girl Jane Dawn Vanille Bourbon Eau de Parfum

You’ll want to hug your mom extra tight when she wears the warm vanilla bourbon fragrance by a Black-owned brand meant to evoke feelings of “unrestrained luxury and energetic warmth.”

$102

Louis Sherry 12-Piece Chocolate Tin

Legacy chocolatier Louis Sherry offers a decadent combo of truffle chocolates in a tin that can be filled with keepsakes long after the creamy candy is gone.

$40

Byredo Trois Encens

Swedish fragrance house Byredo is best known for capturing emotions with its perfumes. Now, it is offering a new sensory experience in the form of incense sticks in three iconic scents, complete with a ceramic holder.

$198

Scentered Sleep Well Aromatherapy Essential Oils Balm Stick

Gift this all-natural blend of lavender, chamomile, and ylang-ylang to the sleep-challenged who can apply it to pulse points to help them relax as needed.

$25

Coach Essential Vanity Case

For the mom who always has to get herself together on the go, a vanity case that will look better as it ages, thanks to Coach’s pebbled leather. 

$195

Sophie Ratner Crescent Stud Earrings

This stud is available as a pair or a single with two lab diamonds balanced on a 4-karat gold crescent. Either is a delicate addition to a jewelry box.

$390

Coach Passport Case

Crafted from Coach’s signature refined leather, which gets better as it ages, this passport holder (you can add a monogram, too!) will go the distance with your new grad who is marking this new chapter with a trip.  

$95

Dagne Dover Daily Tote

A vegan leather bag with a recycled lining is ideal for the new graduate who is commuting to the office. It can hold a laptop, gym sneakers, and a change of clothes. Bonus: This tote can easily double as a spend-the-night bag.

$295

Beastmode Blender

This particular blender was created in partnership with NFL running back Marshawn Lynch to not only “go beast mode” but also have a higher motor than other models offered, a sleek forest green hue, and be perfect on the go, whether in a dorm room or on a commute.  

$185

Curated by Alexis P ‘All the Feels’ Inspirational Journal

We all could stand to put more of our feelings into a journal, and Golden State Warriors point guard Chris Paul’s wife, Jada Paul, makes it easy with prompts to help the writer get into the habit of introspection. 

$42

Hugo Boss Chain Cuff

Maybe your graduate isn’t ready to wear a Hugo Boss suit like brand spokesperson Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, but the menswear brand’s silver-tone bracelet is a solid start. 

$69

Tile Mate Tracker 2-Pack

Whether it is used for college or a postgraduation trip, this pocket-sized tracker works with Androids and iPhones to show the location of luggage, keys, and whatever else you want to keep an eye on.

$39.99

Lego Wildflower Bouquet

Equally exciting for kids and the kid-at-heart, this build-your-own bouquet will last forever. 

$47.99

Le Creuset Signature Round Wide Dutch Oven

This Le Creuset piece isn’t to be given lightly. It’s for chefs who don’t play in the kitchen. Choose the color wisely, as it’s likely to be the starting piece in a pot collection.

$279.99

Fuji Instax Mini 12

This instant film camera is baby-sized, but it packs a punch: It automatically adjusts to lighting, has a lens that pops out for close-ups, and even has a front mirror for selfies, making it easy to capture memories on the go.
$78.84

“We center our community online because that’s where our girl resides the most, whether it’s her looking at content reels on Instagram or what is currently going viral on TikTok, she shows up there, so we want to be there with her as well,” Mbaye told Andscape. 

So, with that in mind, Mbaye’s team at Ami Colé tapped into their online community, encouraging them to vote on their favorite shade of Lip Treatment Oil in a March Madness-style competition.

In 2021, Mbaye launched Ami Colé, her clean beauty brand focused on melanin-rich skin tones, offering a skin tint, highlighter, and lip oil. Before launching her brand, Mbaye worked in marketing for L’Oreal and product development for Glossier. Ami Colé’s product line-up now includes a skin-enhancing foundation stick, cream multi-use stick products for lips and cheeks, mascara, eyeshadow, brow pencil, brow gel, and powder. Still, the lip oil—now available in six shades—arguably is the breakout star.

“We truly have grown so much over the last few years, I still pinch myself at how much we have,” Mbaye said. “We really pride ourselves on giving our community a front row seat into the world of Ami Colé. From when we first started to now, we have always given our community an inside look on the brand, specifically through social media. Our community has followed us from when I first started thinking of Ami Colé in my Brooklyn apartment, to now, where we are available at their local Sephoras. It has truly been a humbling and joyous experience to watch unfold.” 

Ami Colé’s head of influencer partnerships, Kamille Greenwood, joined the brand in October and worked closely with the vice president of art development and the head of graphic design to bring the bracket to life.

“March can be a slower month, and we talked as a team, like obviously March Madness is really big for certain people,” Greenwood said. “I’m not tuned in but my boyfriend always has it on, so what’s a fun way for the Ami Colé girls to participate as well.”

The goal was to have fun with the bracket while focusing on what would land in their Sephora cart because the Sephora Spring 2024 sale is happening this month.

“We wanted the bracket to last a couple of weeks to be a short sprint,” Greenwood added. “So we’re like, okay, it needs to last three weeks, so at least 16 shades, we separated the colors into shade families — pinks, browns, and shimmers. From there it became what does our girl like? We know Bliss is a top-selling shade. How can we vary the Bliss shade but not take away from Bliss at all? Just talking with our product development girl and making sure it was on par.”

Greenwood said it was exciting to see consumers interact with the bracket. “It was so fun to watch the numbers go up,” she said. “I had no idea it was going to be successful, we had over 700 votes on certain days and over 20,000 views to our site.”

She also said she was surprised to see the more vibrant shades, like hot pink and some of the shimmers, not be knocked out in the earlier rounds, while mauve didn’t last long with voters. “I feel like darker shades are something that Black women usually focus on so it’s interesting to see these brighter shades went farther.”

The Ami Colé Cup bracket is proof of the importance of listening to your audience because, Greenwood said, internally, the brand made predictions via their own brackets that were nothing like the voting results. “We had like, oh, everyone’s going to choose Eggplant, Eggplant’s going to be the winner. It ended up being something else.”

Brick Red was the winner but will not be available to purchase until 2025. “We have a lot of products already coming out this year,” Greenwood confirmed. “Brick Red will be in the works now, hoping to get the winning color out in 2025. Now that we know the shade, we can start figuring out the formula and the exact shade of brick red we can get.”

When the lip oil launched in 2021 in the shade Excellence, the brand’s signature rosy brown, Black women flocked to it because it was the perfect nude, pigmented without being sticky. Beauty writer Tembe Denton-Hurst dubbed it the “Telfar bag of lip gloss” thanks to its stylish and in-the-know fans – the comparison floored Mbaye.

“Talk about a jaw-dropping moment,” she shared. “It made me feel that Ami Colé was really filling up a void in a beauty industry where representation is necessary and has been lacking for so long. Growing up in Harlem, I was surrounded by the culture. From beauty, to music, to food — I was immersed in it all from when I stepped out my front door. For Black women, lip gloss has always been a right of passage into the beauty world from young.”

She continued, “I remember going to the beauty supply store to get my extra shiny lip gloss in my favorite flavor — it’s pure nostalgia. We all know that feeling of putting on your lip gloss and making you feel like you’re IT, So when I heard that the Lip Treatment Oil was becoming a staple for all of the girls, whether it was being pulled out at brunch or an event, I was over the moon.”

Mbaye considered the praise, confirming she was on the right path.

“I want Ami Colé to be that big sister that always keeps you up on the latest trends and always keeps you in the loop of what’s the best product out right now, and when I heard that headline, it reaffirmed that to me. Lip Treatment Oil definitely took our community by storm. I initially thought that it was going to be our Skin-Enhancing Tint, which also does very well and is loved dearly by our community, however, the girls took the Lip Treatment Oil and ran with it!”

“It was frustrating wanting to go to concerts and not having anyone I could convince to go with me,” she told Andscape. “Especially as I’ve gotten older, it feels more and more important for me to be able to be surrounded with people who share my identity in many ways.”

Holly G channeled her frustration into the blog Black Opry, a play on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, dubbed country music’s biggest stage. Three years later, the website has grown into a collective of people who are working to create a safe place for Black people to enjoy the genre and freely create country, blues, folk and Americana music.

“I started the blog April 1, 2021, and that first month, I wanted to highlight a different Black artist every day,” Holly G said. “So I made a few connections with artists that way but, honestly, by the fourth day of the blog even being up, there were a bunch of them reaching out to me, like ‘Oh my God, we’ve been waiting for a space like this. Thank you for putting it together.’ “

Over the past few years, the site has grown to include a national tour, the Black Opry Revue, which will make more than a dozen stops in the United States this year. But producing a tour has been a humbling experience.

“[Artists] are like, damn, no one usually takes care of us this way,” Holly G said. “I cannot find anyone else in any genre of music, not even like the musical theater space, that tours the way we do.”

Tanner Davenport, Black Opry’s co-director, agreed, highlighting the organization’s commitment to helping artists receive access to new venues and fans. “We had a group of people [on tour] in December 2022 who played the Troubadour. If we look back at the beginning of their careers, it’d be really hard to tell them one day you’re going to play the Troubadour in California. For them to do the kind of music they want to do in that space, just felt like it was not able to be obtained, like they wouldn’t ever be able to do that.”

Instead of relying on booking agents, Holly G and Davenport choose the artists who will perform at each venue on the tour. They also treat artists as their own act instead of a part of a lineup. They pay for the artists’ travel and their time, including a guaranteed share of ticket sales at each venue up-front. Black Opry does it, Holly G said, because they want artists to concentrate solely on putting on a great show.

“When you’re dealing with marginalized artists, these are people who are not working in the industry a lot of the time,” she explained. “They have to take off work, and streaming doesn’t pay, so the only way you can hope to make money is through selling merch and performing.”

Davenport suggested that fans who want to learn more about modern artists in the genre should listen to women such as Denitia, Julie Williams, Roberta Lea, and Brittany Spencer, who have been in country music for years.

Holly G is excited about the current discussion about Black people, specifically Black women, in country music since Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter arrived in late March. But for her, it will take more than one album from a superstar to effect lasting change.

“I was at a country music seminar a couple of weeks ago, when those two songs [Beyonce’s ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ and ’16 Carriages’] dropped right after the Super Bowl, and the conversation [became] ‘We’re so proud of ourselves for the way we’ve embraced Beyoncé,’ ” Holly G said. “You have cowered to a global celebrity, as you should, but that’s not the same as respecting the women in this space.”

She likens it to President Barack Obama’s historic election as the nation’s first Black president, which was seen as progress. “Unfortunately, [Beyoncé’s success] might have the opposite effect, where now, they’re like, ‘OK, the work is done because we’ve had a Black woman go No. 1.’ ” But just as Obama’s second term was followed by the election of President Donald Trump, it’s clear that lasting change needs to be continually fought for.

To be clear, Holly G is critical of the country music industry, not Beyoncé. Black Opry champions artists’ right to make whatever kind of music they wish because gatekeeping what country music is or should sound like is how the industry has been able to keep so many Black performers out.

“We encourage what she’s doing. We also have to be very careful about the way we’re framing this moment so that it doesn’t end up looking like there was progress or effort made on behalf of people who never made it,” Holly G said.

That, and many country music festivals and concerts still refuse to be welcoming to Black patrons.

Holly G and Davenport are often invited to attend concerts and festivals as press, which she believes mitigates the experience they would have as regular Black fans.

“Since we’ve been doing this, there hasn’t been anything that’s changed substantially or significantly to the point where I would feel any different just going to these concerts as a fan,” Holly G said. 

When a new tour is announced, Davenport said he’ll often ask Holly G if she wants to go, and she flat-out says no.

Part of the reason: Holly G is adamant about not attending certain events because of how she’s been spoiled — she’ll get to go backstage or have a more comfortable experience as a member of the press. But the other part, the larger part, is because these spaces haven’t done enough work to improve the experience for Black attendees.

“I’m not going to subject myself to that,” she explained simply. “There’s not a single place in Nashville that deals with country music that we have not had a conversation with and I’ve not seen any actionable steps be taken.”

Holly G said institutions can do something as simple as addressing the cyberbullying Black artists often experience when they’re announced on festival and show bills, which could also change the culture at venues. She mentioned a popular Black female country singer who has talked about all of the death threats she gets after she plays certain shows. Holly G declined to name the artist or the venue.

“So I was like, can we make a statement on anti-cyberbullying?” she recalled. “You don’t have to mention race, gender, sexuality — but that is a step of good faith to show that you at least are gonna try to have her back.”

The institution declined.

“The only way to make these spaces safer is for you to say out loud, ‘We don’t want these people at our shows.’ The only person who’s done that — and this was a person and not a country music institution — was Jason Isbell, who does that all the time. He repeatedly says, ‘I do not want any a–holes at my show.’ “

For its three-year anniversary, Black Opry is honoring Alice Randall, the first Black songwriter to write a No. 1 country song, “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” which was recorded by Trisha Yearwood in 1994.

The celebration coincides with the release of Randall’s book, My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future, out this month. It showcases contemporary Black artists paying tribute to Randall and singing her songs.

“We can’t fix the industry but one of the things that we do have the power to correct is honoring and giving flowers to the people who have been in the trenches,” Holly G said.

For Black Opry, it’s important to create paces to celebrate Black artists because, while Holly G and Davenport are able to attend awards shows, they’re not typically able to see Black artists in those spaces because they’re not nominated.

“We have so much living Black country music history,” Holly G said. “We’re not the Country Music Awards but we hope that the level of respect and affection that we have for [Randall] is felt in a way that makes a difference for her, just in case no one else does it.”