If you aren’t familiar with SSENSE, it’s the online epicenter for buying luxury brands and high-end streetwear. Founded by the three Atallah brothers, the goal was to take away the obstacles and headaches that could arise from purchasing high-end fashion and democratize the latest, coolest brands.
More than any other platform right now, SSENSE does curation right. They’re painfully aware of which pieces from new collections are a fit for their audience. They show you what’s relevant and hot right now — prioritizing pieces you’ll genuinely like rather than what’s just being pushed by the brand. Now, SSENSE carries brands of all price points from Adidas to Versace.
Another highlight: SSENSE is known for its brand diversity. They often highlight Black-owned brands and showcase collections from people of color and lesser-known designers. To close out Black History Month 2024, SSENSE is teaming up with none other than ESSENCE: a pairing that makes perfect sense.
ESSENCE, the lifestyle publication geared towards Black women, is helping feature three designers and artists: Bianca Saunders, Mowalola, and Stanley Raffington. The series will showcase their designs and tell their story.
According to SSENSE’s site,
“The two brands are turning ESSENCE’s “In The Studio” print franchise into a video series hosted by Lynette Nylander. The series will spotlight the achievements and creativity of Black designers who have significantly impacted the menswear realm. With three episodes, each featuring a distinguished designer, the series offers exclusive insights into their creative processes and journey,”
Meet The SSENSE X ESSENCE Feature Designers
Bianca Saunders
Bianca Saunders
British GQ
Bianca Saunders’ clothing embraces masculinity in womenswear. Her jackets will always be a bit oversized, or the style will mimic a classic streetwear bomber that could have been borrowed from boys like Jeremy Allen-White and Jacob Elordi — a girl can dream.
“The essence of Saunders' clothing lives in the details, which point to how she subverts ideals often associated with menswear.”
Finding the intersectionality between workwear and streetwear, Saunders clothing is genderless and trendy. Some of her signatures include layered shirts, tucked waists, and somewhat minimalist designs.
@babyboyflame Buying Black: @Bianca Saunders #streetwear #menswear #blackownedbusiness #fashion #fashiontok #fashiontiktok ♬ Oldschool - Cookin Soul
Mowalola
Mowalola
Joyce NG
Mowalola, a highly sought after designer whose pieces have been worn by the likes of Rihanna and Naomi Campbell, is a bit of an icon in the fashion world. Her mantra for fashion is “do what you want to do” and that’s exactly the kind of energy Mowalola’s clothes give off.
Much like Bianca Saunders, Mowalola is known for her gender bending designs. Inspired by cinema, many of her collections revolve around movies. And this is on full display at her cinematic runway shows.
She brings an edge to her designs through textures like leather and intentionally placed cutouts. She’s not afraid to make public commentary on race and gender, making her runway shows incredibly popular.
“The British designer has shifted the cultural zeitgeist with her boundary-pushing collections inspired by the world around her.”
@i_d Replying to @JAC So are we! #ferragamo #maximiliandavis #tiktokfashion #mfw #mowalola ♬ original sound - i-D
Stanley Raffington
Stanley Raffington
ESSENCE
In a world where the Chanel black-and-white aesthetic hails ever-popular, especially amongst those emulating Old Money Style and Sofia Richie’s closet, it’s hard to find designers who aren’t afraid of a bit of color…enter Stanley Raffington.
Often incorporating Rastafarian colors of red, yellow, and black as an ode to his Jamaican roots, Raffington isn’t going to shy away from any hue. He quickly rose into fashion prominency when Madonna and FKA Twigs attended his show, which included 3D printed accessories.
Constantly inspired by his Jamaican roots and the nostalgia of past trends, you will see lots of Y2K nods in Stanley Raffington’s clothing. He’s embraced tech in the fashion world by utilizing 3D printing in many of his designs and runway shows, and he’s not slowing down now.
@yungstanz Process behind my 3d printed curve bag. Taking inspiration from the architecture of Zaha Hadid, mixing new technology with natural materials and craft. Available now exclusively at @SSENSE ♬ Never Lose Me - Flo Milli
Is the Next Housing Bubble About to Burst?
The 2007-2010 housing crisis was caused by large banks selling tranches of subprime mortgages, many of which were–in a move that can be described at best as morally ambivalent–rated AAA by Standard and Poor's. These loans, given to buyers with startlingly bad credit, were gradually defaulted on, causing a major financial crash. Now, ten years later, there's cause for concern once again.
Amidst the collapse of Bear Stearns and the bailout of AIG, it's easy to forget about the federal government's hand in creating the 2008 recession. Back in the 1990s, Barney Frank, with the help of the United States Department of Housing and Development, decided to raise Fannie Mae's quota for purchasing loans from low income buyers. Over the course of about 15 years, from 1992-2007, these rates jumped from 30% to 55%. By the early 2000s, Fannie Mae was offering no-down payment loans and had bought over a trillion dollars in subprime mortgages. Of the 27 million outstanding subprime loans during the 2007 crisis, 70% were owned by the federal government.
The sudden fall of Bear Stearns' stock
Last year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac redefined the term subprime, lowering the credit threshold for what constitutes poor credit from 660 to 620, almost as if these agencies suddenly contracted amnesia. To make matters worse, the Federal Housing and Finance Agency's goals are to finance loans on about 400,000 low income homes each year from 2018-2020. While these loans aren't necessarily subprime, it's safe to assume that a good portion of them are. On top of this, Fannie Mae has also raised their debt-to-income (DTI) ratio limit from 45% to 50%, and the share of loans with high DTIs has jumped from 6% to 20% over the past year. The argument for these incredibly lax regulations is that many people had their credits decimated in 2008 and that millennials, the newcomers to the housing market, have more debt than other generations. It makes sense for the government to help struggling people find homes, but raising the DTI threshold while lowering credit requirements for mortgage loans is one of the riskiest methods conceivable.
The private sector isn't much better though, and investment in subprime mortgages is back; they've just been rebranded as nonprime (which isn't even a real word). Some companies, like Carrington Mortgage Services in California, are offering loans to people with FICO scores as low as 500, about 250 points shy of the current average for agency-backed mortgages. Obviously, there's a higher down payment associated with these lower credit scores, but the resurfacing of subprime loans is disturbing, particularly when a spokesman for Carrington says something like, "We believe there is actually a market today in the secondary market for people who want to buy nonprime loans." Never mind that this isn't a sentence, listen to what this person is saying. Banks are also latching onto this idea, and some have been known to offer mortgages for 0% down.
Fico credit score chart. During During the 2008 financial crash, a credit score under 650 was considered subprime.
Another disturbing development is the current popularity of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans. Currently, the FHA controls 21% of the total mortgage market and 35% of loans purchased by Millennial homeowners. These loans are traditionally designed to help lower income Americans buy houses. Nowadays, their loan limits don't necessarily reflect this. Loan limits, depending on the area, range anywhere from $294,515 to $679,650, and for buyers with a credit score of 580 or higher, these loans only require a 3.5% down payment. If someone's credit score is between 500-579, they can purchase a home for 10% down. Even if a mortgage company tacks on a 1.5-2% fee, this gives large swaths of people with ostensibly terrible credit the option to put only $25,000 down on a $500,000 home. The DTI threshold for an FHA loan? 57%.
To compound things further, 93% of FHA loans issued in 2016 were handled by mortgage companies, not banks. These companies, for obvious reasons, are much less resistant to liquidity issues than big banks, and there is research to suggest that mortgages issued by nonbank lenders tend to be associated with much lower credit scores. Not only are these companies woefully unprepared for an uptick in delinquencies–an uptick that's almost certain with the Fed increasing the interest rate–they're actively selling loans to high risk candidates. In the event that homeowners default on their mortgages, there's no way these companies can eat the cost. This is bad news for the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), the agency that manages and insures the FHA. While lenders dealing in FHA loans have considerable financial responsibility, if they can't foot the bill, the worst thing that happens is their company goes under. That financial responsibility doesn't disappear, it just gets passed up the ladder to Ginnie Mae, who would in turn be required to consolidate the tsunami of debt.
1.7 Trillion in outstanding loans...
It's worth noting that American citizens, unlike the federal government, have learned from their mistakes. For a while, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) were undesirable, shunned for the hand they played in the housing crisis. Over the past few years people have slowly warmed to the idea of purchasing these loans, but it's unlikely that this will have any major effect on the economy for some time. That said, subprime lending is back up to 2006 levels. FHA loans have also taken a small dip, as quarter four of 2017 marked an increase in 'seriously delinquent' FHA loans in all but three states. While these things aren't necessarily harbingers of another economic apocalypse, there's definitely some reason to worry. The U.S. is over 21 trillion dollars in debt, and if there is another housing crisis, it probably won't end in a government bailout. The volatility of the housing market has been amplified to a deafening volume, and if we're hit with another subprime mortgage crisis in the next five years, the American economy will be decimated. The dominoes are in place. The only question is: what will tip the first one?