Solange Rocks Gravity-Defying Braids for ‘Evening Standard’ Cover
What isn’t there to love about Solange?
Since releasing her personal and politically-charged album “A Seat at the Table,” the 31-year-old has made a point of amplifying not only the messages behind her music, but manifesting them through her outer appearance, too. Today, the 31-year-old did just that when she unveiled her Evening Standard magazine cover.
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Adorned in intricate braids by Joanne Petit-Frére and Vernon Francois (who also works with Lupita Nyong’o), the Houston native sat down for a revealing interview, where she emphasized her love for the hairstyle and what it’s meant to her journey as a Black woman.
“It is an act of beauty, an act of convenience and an act of tradition — it is its own art form,” she shared.
In fact, she had a front seat to this transformative experience in her youth. Her mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson, once owned a salon in their native Houston, TX, where Solange would watch women come and go. She told Evening Standard that this ultimately shaped the creative process behind her music and outward appearance.
“I got to experience women arriving in one state of mind and leaving in a completely transformed way. It wasn’t just about the hair,” she continued. “It was about the sisterhood and the storytelling. Being a young girl who was really active in dance, theatre and on the swim team, the salon was a kind of safe haven.”
And although many would assume a Grammy Award-winning LP would open doors to an innumerable amount of opportunities, she also shared how having control over her image, both physically and musically, hasn’t always been met with enthusiasm.
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“To be honest, owning my body this year was really important to me,” she revealed. “And it isn’t always easy. I often lose opportunities based on my will to want to navigate through that ownership of my body in the most authentic way. And I really kind of attained a lot of that from my mother.”
This marks Solange’s second major hair transformation in 2017. Earlier this summer, the “Cranes in the Sky” singer sent fans into a frenzy when she traded in her brown curls for short, blonde ones. We can only hope that she’ll surprise us again before year’s end.
