GIRL. Kenya Hunt

In the fashion world, European brands were casting a multitude of Black models of all skin tones to sell their clothing on a scale the world hadn’t seen since the Seventies when designers such as Saint Laurent, Halston and Valentino regularly employed a diverse cast of women of colour ranging from Donyale Luna to Pat Cleveland, Iman and Bethann Hardison.

      Meanwhile, fashion magazines began casting Black celebrities as cover stars of big issues in unprecedented numbers, after years of mostly quarantining any woman of colour not named Rihanna or Beyoncé to the smaller ‘low risk’ issues of the year (January, February and August, for example), indicating that publishers finally viewed them as bankable enough to do so. In August 2018, so many magazines featured Black women as their September issue cover stars that it made global headlines and inspired a wave of celebratory memes. The BBC and Sky News called asking me to comment on this new phenomenon. Major media outlets began referring to this shift, as well as any other wave of inclusion in predominantly white spaces, as the Wakanda Effect.

      Wakanda became a synonym for Black excellence and represented all of its possibilities, yes. But it also became a qualifier mainstream media used to reduce the idea to a trend, a fleeting ‘moment’ that raised the inevitable question: ‘When will it end?’

      To me, the decisions to feature Ruth Negga, Lupita Nyong’o, Tracee Ellis Ross, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Zendaya, Yara Shahidi, Slick Woods and Tiffany Haddish on the covers of magazines ranging from British ELLE, a title I worked for, to Grazia, Harper’s Bazaar and American Vogue seemed like a no-brainer. These are all beautiful and accomplished women with a proven track record of appealing to a mass audience. Women who have the body of work, the major cosmetics contracts, the interest of powerful fashion houses — women who tick all the boxes. It galled me that their accomplishments could be reduced to one superhero film.

      The impact of the film’s enormous success could not be denied, but Black Panther was a highlight in a groundswell that had been building for years, rather than the instigator of it. For example, before Black Panther, there was Get Out, which broke records as the highest grossing original debut ever. The actress, director and screenwriter Lena Waithe summed it up well: ‘I think Black people in this industry are making art that is so specific and unique and good that the studio heads have no choice but to throw money at us. They’re saying, “How can we support you and stand next to you?” The tricky part is that they want to be allies and they want to be inclusive, but they also want to make money.’

      And like Black Panther, her 2019 film, Queen & Slim, a sumptuous love story and heartbreaking reflection on the politics of Black Lives Matter, written and directed by two Black women, probably wouldn’t have been as successful without a global tribe, connected by social media, supporting it.

      I saw the film in a special preview in Shoreditch, hosted by BBC personalities Clara Amfo and Reggie Yates. The theatre was filled with London’s homegrown Black excellence, most of them women including model sisters Adwoa and Kesewa Aboah, photographer Rhea Dillon, designer Irene Agbontaen and more. At the end of the screening, guests, eyes wet with tears, all congregated in the lobby for a group, family reunion-style photo, which made the rounds on Instagram in the following days.

      It was a moment, and one that was no longer an anomaly in my life. That’s mostly because I had long bedded into life in London, and connected with the city’s diverse network of Black creatives. What I hadn’t imagined, is that Black creativity on both sides of the Atlantic would be as in demand by the mainstream as it currently is.

      When we featured Lena in ELLE magazine several years before, she described it as a new version of the Harlem Renaissance and used the analogy again when talking about Black Panther in an interview with the New York Times. ‘We’re definitely in the middle of a renaissance, make no mistake. In twenty years, people are going to be writing about what you’re writing about. But for me, I want more.’

      Who doesn’t? We all want to see more of ourselves in places where we aren’t and deserve to be, whether it be on the walls in a British museum, on a screen in a movie theatre, or in the White House. To find our tribe and rally, arms crossed in salute. Wakanda Forever.