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Celebrating Pride 2022

To celebrate Pride all summer long, we’ve invited five creatives from five cities to show their work in five of our stores.

Meet Yasha, Djamila, ShayShay, Stella, and Hanna, as they share their perspectives on re-envisioning the world through art, existence, and style.

New York

Paris

London

Berlin

Stockholm

Commitments

Yasha Lelonek
Soho store, New York
June 20–27

Yasha Lelonek is a New York-based actress, filmmaker and fine artist. In 2021, while in quarantine, she documented her transition and her life as a trans woman in her series, Transition Diaries Vol 1.

“I’m very proud of where I come from and who I am. And I love every part of myself. And I want that to be exuded in the way that I present myself to the world.”

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What do you want to express in the way you dress?
“Clothes and accessorizing are important for my existence in my identity as a trans woman. They help me feel comfortable and express femininity in a way that’s empowering. I’m very proud of where I come from and who I am. And I love every part of myself. And I want that to be exuded in the way that I present myself to the world.”

How would you describe your style?
“I love to experiment with timeless pieces and make them a little bit unorthodox with the way that I style them or what I’ll pair them with. I also love to reference countercultural times and fashion. I love punk. I love disco. I love the hippie movement of the ’70s, and I also love all the modern queer aesthetics pouring into the fashion landscape recently.”

What does Pride mean to you?
“I think that my entire existence is a prideful one. Pride is a beautiful season where LGBTQ+ individuals around the world get to celebrate themselves and their community. And I love to do that during Pride, but I also love to do that every day of every month of every year. I think every moment and every second is an opportunity to grow and access the beauty and the transcendence of this life.”

What creative work do you do?
“I’m an actress, but I have branched into filmmaking, fine art, and costume design. I recently launched my own production studio called The Y Suite, where I want to create a new aesthetic canon where transness is not only included but is in the DNA of everything that we make. Through my studio, I will help other trans creatives cultivate their own work and access creative resources that they typically would not be able to access through bigger production studios.”

What is femininity to you?
“Femininity means so much. It is powerful, wide, and unwavering. It feels like comfort, but it also feels like a challenge. Through femininity, both in the way that I express it myself and in the ways that I found community through other feminine people, there’s endless potential for growth and love. Femininity feels like so much possibility.”

Djamila Imani
Le Marais store, Paris
June 20–27

Djamila Imani is a multidisciplinary artist, model and performer from Paris. She refers to herself as a chameleon, where her art and drawings portray the plurality of feminine identity. In the way she dresses, she creates her own definitions of clothes and style, building her own gender-fluid fashion landscape.

“Femininity for me is not about being born as a woman. It’s about strength, bravery, wisdom, and a way to be more aware of who you are and what you want to say about yourself. As gender-fluid, I also embrace feminity, just like masculinity."

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How do you express yourself through style?
“In the way I dress, there are two things I want to express. First of all, be yourself. Be authentic. Find a way to feel comfortable in your clothes. Secondly, dress despite your gender. If you’re born woman, man, whatever, we don’t care. You can play with it because, for me, I see fashion as a puzzle. If it doesn’t match, it doesn’t match. You can be who you are and who you want to be, you are your own hero, and you can write your story as you want to write it. And it’s the best thing ever.”

What is femininity to you?
“Through the way you dress, you can say many things. I love mixing 'femininity and masculinity' in the way I dress. I’m gender-fluid, so I don’t see myself as a ‘total woman'. Femininity, for me, is not at all about being born as a woman. It isn't about your gender. It’s about strength, bravery, wisdom, and a way to be more aware of who you are and what you want to say about yourself. Feminity is what you believe in and a deep expression of your feelings.”

What’s your relation to Pride?
“I remember the first time I went to Pride events in Paris. I took a risk going there, but I felt so much love between people, it just amazed me. I was super young, and I felt then and there: I need to take part in this, I want to feel free, and I just want to be me. It made me feel so good, alive, to be in a space where you are not judged. Where unknown people open their arms to you because they know what it is to feel and be rejected. They know what it is not to be able to be themselves, so there's only love and support. Today, the LGBTQAI+ community is so important to me. It’s my family. I’m completely aware of my privilege of not being discriminated against, harmed, or even killed because of my sexual orientation. Thus, it’s important to celebrate Pride and recall the fights and suffering that other members of the community have undergone and still do.“

Do you have any style advice?
“Do what you want to do and always follow your gut. Do not hesitate to experiment and even go into fashion faux pas, as we say in French. Do not be scared of being rejected because of what you are wearing. Live life through your emotions, have fun and adapt your style to your mood. Live through the expression of your identity.“

ShayShay Konno
Regent St store, London
July 11–18

ShayShay is a writer, director and co-founder of the Pan-Asian cabaret collective The Bitten Peach, whose mission is to empower the queer Asian community by providing safe spaces, diversifying Asian representation, and educating non-Asians on racial issues.

“What I wear has been so important to me since I came out for the first time as queer. Instead of trying to blend in, I started to stand out.”

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Tell us about your creative work!
“Since moving to London eight years ago, I’ve gotten myself involved in the queer scene, the theatre scene, and the cabaret scene, which is where my work lies. I consider myself a creature of the night, a nightlife curator creator – I write and I direct, I perform, I do drag, and if you need suggestions for what to do on a night out, I have dozens for you.”

What role does the queer community have in your life?
“I consider the queer LGBTQIA+ community to be my whole world. It was within this community that I first rediscovered who I was; I say rediscover because I think I knew who I was when I was young, before all the things that you’re fed from society tell you that you need to be different from who you are. But finding the queer community made me fall back in love with myself. I have made amazing connections and friendships and created a new family around me.”

What do you do during Pride?
“I celebrate Pride at events for marginalised communities within the greater LGBTQIA+ community. Like Trans Pride in London is a highly inspiring day to be a part of, you’ll find me there, and you’ll find me at smaller Pride events like cabaret shows that are specific to show off queer POC talent or queer, non-binary talent.”

What does femininity mean to you?
“It’s so freeing to be able to embrace femininity as part of my everyday life. I sometimes take for granted how much it means to not feel shame around being feminine because I did feel way so much shame for so long. To be able to weave femininity into my everyday life is a lifeline for survival.”

Is expressing yourself through style and clothes important?
“Clothes have always been so important to me since I came out for the first time as queer. I started dressing so that instead of trying to blend in, I was trying to stand out. I’ve always been passionate about trying to express myself and how I feel with my clothing. My gender identity is fluid and changing, like yes, I’m non-binary, but I also see myself as gender-fluid. It’s complex and multi-layered, and one of the best ways that I can show that to other people is through what I wear.”

Stella Zekri
Kurfürstendamm store, Berlin
July 25–August 1

Stella Zekri is a Berlin-based French DJ and singer known for her genre-defying and wide-ranging sets. As the co-founder of the expansive club Body Language, she’s passionately involved in creating queer spaces in the Berlin nightlife scene. This June, she’s releasing her debut EP Détends - toi.

“I had a moment when moving to Berlin and discovering my queerness and the queer community where I managed to feel freer and more expressive in how I dress and express myself.”

READ INTERVIEW

What do you do during Pride?
“I live in Berlin, so I celebrate Pride by partying! This year, I’m throwing an event with my collective for the Berlin Pride weekend, focusing on femme. In a world where masculinity is very present, I love the femme, female, energy. So we’re throwing a femme focused party with a femme-only lineup!”

What music do you play?
“I’m a DJ and I play only vinyl records, so I love going to record shops hunting for hidden gems. I’m also a vocalist and a singer, about to release my first record on the 17th of June. It’s a disco-oriented record, influenced by ritual music, ’80s style boogie, and zouk.”

What role does the queer community have in your life?
“My community, The LGBTQIA+ community, is everything to me. It’s so special because when you enter a queer space, you can feel that the majority of the people there already had to do the work of finding themselves and getting to know themselves. So when you enter one of these spaces, everybody’s fully themselves, and everybody can be their most fabulous self as they want – that’s what queerness is to me.“

Is expressing yourself through style important?
“I see fashion and style as tools to express yourself and how you want to approach the world on that day, at this very moment. My relation to fashion is also influenced by the fact that I’m a big girl and I’m plus-size, so it hasn’t been easy to find clothes that I like and can express myself in. But I had a moment when moving to Berlin, discovering my queerness and the queer community, where I managed to feel freer and more expressive in how I dress. Today, I try less to please some projection or idea of what society wants me to be.”

READ FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Tell us about your world, what creative work do you do?
K BAILEY OBAZEE: PRIM is about providing access. We want to offer space for people to be able to breathe, to feel whole and to be their authentic selves.

FINESSE ONYE: My biggest project so far has been the Author’s catalogue that we have on our website – a great resource to find Black multidisciplinary authors of African, Afro-Latinx and Caribbean heritage.

What inspired you to create/join PRIM?
JOSH WOOLFORD: I went to my first OKHA book club in 2019 that PRIM was hosting at The Curtain hotel in Shoreditch. Tai Freedom Ford read poems from their book & More Black and there was a photography exhibition by Bernice Mulenga. I remember feeling so grateful for the space K had created and wanted to support in any way I could.

K: We wanted to find an alternative way to build community, and make reading cool! Too often I felt I was surrounded by nightlife when connecting with my community. And I knew that it wasn't enough for me to fully grow, as a person with other interests. There were other things I loved too!

What impact do you wish PRIM to have within the community?
GRACE SAMBA-BANDZA: I hope PRIM inspires people to heal through reading. It’s important to keep sharing our stories. I also hope that OKHA continues to become more than a book club, but a community that makes a difference to young Black queer lives.

K: We hope that PRIM will encourage people firstly to engage in reading as a practice, secondly in reading authors of Black ancestry. And finally to ensure people see queer Black people authentically. You know, as real humans existing on this earth, deserving of all the good things!

How has being a part of PRIM changed you?
DESIRE DESRÈE: Being part a of PRIM has educated me & made me more open minded, PRIM has also made me more confident as a person and introduced me to talents I had that I hadn’t yet explored.

FINESSE: PRIM has been a constant and consistent reminder that our stories matter. Representation matters. Visibility matters. PRIM is legacy. PRIM is our past, present, and future.

What role does fashion play in your life?
GRACE: As a French Congolese babe, fashion is everything! In my culture we really take pride in our clothing. Not because of the brand names but because of how it makes us feel and the story we’re trying to tell. Commonly known as Les Sapeurs, Congo has some of the best dressed individuals you’ll ever meet.

FINESSE: Fashion is exactly what you make it, and it should always centre you. As somebody who has always been plus size, this is not a fact that I have been allowed to be accept but at this point of my life, I understand that I get to be the main character in my fashion show. I wear what I want now.

K: The role of fashion and style within the queer community definitely stems from a desire to express who you are and where you are in your journey. It's also something that leads you towards finding other people who share your values, your desires and maybe who have had similar experiences in life.

If you were to give some advice to a budding storyteller what would that be?
K: I would say start with what genuinely speaks to you, it will make your work so much more authentic. And reading is extremely important to be able to expand your horizons and see who might have been working in a similar vein to you.

JOSHUA: My advice would be to focus on the things that you can’t avoid thinking about, and to find ways to share them.

Why is storytelling important?
JOSHUA: When I started reading fiction I fell in love with Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and Giovannis Room by James Baldwin. These books made me think “yo, it’s not just me that has these internal monologues running through my mind, everyone else is constantly thinking and feeling too!”

K: We need to tell our stories because we have to come to a place where queer black people aren’t misrepresented. We need to be the most trusted source for our own stories.

DESIRE: Storytelling is important because every individual is different, every perspective is different. No one can tell your story better than you!

“At & Other Stories, we believe that sharing stories from diverse perspectives helps us grow and learn. We’re proud to celebrate Pride together with five amazing artists from the LGBTQIA+ community who, in their unique expressions, share their work with us. We’re constantly aiming to evolve as a company and expand our work in inclusion and diversity. Following our I&D plan, we keep on working with the community, listening, learning, and collaborating all year round, so everyone always feels safe and welcome at & Other Stories.”

– ROMA BRACEY
Inclusion and Diversity at & Other Stories

For Pride 2022, we are donating to UN Human Rights’ global public information campaign for LGBTQI+ equality, the UN Free & Equal campaign. Get to know more at unfe.org.

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Celebrating Pride 2022

Celebrating Pride 2022

To celebrate Pride all summer long, we’ve invited five creatives from five cities to show their work in five of our stores.

Meet Yasha, Djamila, ShayShay, Stella, and Hanna, as they share their perspectives on re-envisioning the world through art, existence, and style.

Celebrating Pride 2022

Celebrating Pride 2022

To celebrate Pride all summer long, we’ve invited five creatives from five cities to show their work in five of our stores.Meet Yasha, Djamila, ShayShay, Stella, and Hanna, as they share their perspectives on re-envisioning the world through art, existence, and style.

To celebrate Pride all summer long, we’ve invited five creatives from five cities to show their work in five of our stores.

Meet Yasha, Djamila, ShayShay, Stella, and Hanna, as they share their perspectives on re-envisioning the world through art, existence, and style.