COUTURE Africa Magazine - 5th Anniversary Issue

In this issue

BLACK MAGAZINES ROCK
I can’t remember when I fell in love with magazines. It could have
been the Buda catalogues my mother had all over the house with
pictures of lean, blonde women in clothes that inevitably made their
way into her wardrobes. Growing up, there were no magazines for me
to dive into. And, they were also very, very pale the exact opposite of
my family and friends. I know it has become popular to say people
do not see themselves represented and so they start something to fill
that void. I did not realise there were no black faces. At least not until
I stumbled across a copy of Ebony. It was a shocker to me flipping
through the blackness and because this cliche fits, in all its glory.
Slowly, the pieces started to click. There were no magazines with
women like me. There was Viva for a while. My mum confessed
she had been asked to be a covergirl. She turned them down. I was
aghast. She showed me the black and white picture. It is framed and
hangs in both home. She is young, gorgeous, with a TWA and a top
I later discovered was striped pink and white. I could even see the
cover lines! Except she said at the time magazines were associated
with women of a certain character. I think these days we insist on
mistakenly calling them socialites. I wanted to shake her.