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
Automation and the Post-Labor Economy
Automation is set to replace a large portion of the American workforce. What do we do once it happens?
In his 1984 essay Is it O.K. to be a Luddite?, Thomas Pynchon predicted that "the next great challenge to watch out for will come when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular biology and robotics all converge." Nearly 35 years later, that convergence is upon us. Barring some sort of federally enforced halt on technological progress, automation of most basic services is inevitable.
Self-driving cars are continuing to improve. Automated checkout lines are being implemented all over the American retail space. There are even programs being written that may be doing the majority of our accounting work in the future. Sadly, the common claim that technological advances and economic growth go hand in hand with job creation is spurious at best. In 1964, AT&T was worth $267 billion (adjusted for inflation) and employed upwards of 700,000 people. Today, Google, which is worth roughly twice as much as 1960s AT&T, only employs about 88,000. According to the McKinsey Global Institute up to 375 million people could be out of work by 2030. Unlike the second industrial revolution, which gave us cars and airplanes in the 20th century, the third industrial revolution probably won't create many new jobs. In fact, by that same 2030 mark, the U.S. could be staring down the barrel of 35% unemployment.
The specific numbers, which I've thoroughly explored here, aren't nearly as important as how the U.S. government chooses to address the issue. Mass unemployment is coming, and it's hard to even imagine what it might look like, let alone how we're going to deal with it. In his piece A World Without Work, Derek Thompson attempts to tackle this issue, comparing the future United States to the present Youngstown, Ohio, a once prosperous steel town that lost 50,000 jobs to overseas manufacturing in the late seventies. In the years following the steel industry's evaporation, the rates of depression, suicide, and spousal abuse all jumped up radically. According to professor Jonathan Russo, "Youngstown's story is America's story, because it shows that when jobs go away, the cultural cohesion of a place is destroy." Thompson's thesis is that work is so ingrained in the American psyche that regardless of whether or not we end up with a welfare state to take care of the millions of jobless, there will be civil unrest. Kurt Vonnegut came to a similar conclusion 63 years earlier in his book Player Piano, in which the government was forced to not only provide complete welfare for the unemployed masses, but fake jobs as well.
With regard to the impending employment drought, the government is left with a few options. They can ignore the issue, allowing millions to slip into grinding poverty, turning Youngstown, Ohio into the norm. This type of laissez-faire capitalism would have made Ronald Reagan blush but the problem is, with no money, there are no consumers. Another solution that's been popularized in recent years is Universal Basic Income, a program in which the government pays all of its citizens enough money to live, regardless of whether or not they're employed. Plenty of tech moguls, from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, have embraced the idea that the money made from technological advances should be, at least partially, given back to the people. On paper, it's a no-brainer. People need money to live, and companies need people to have money or else no one would buy anything. This would, as it were, keep the trains running on time. The problem is, this plan ignores Thompson's point about the vacancy of purpose left by a post-labor economy. There's a feeling of despair attached to having nothing to do. Anyone who's ever spent a teenage summer vacation not working can attest to this, and as evidenced by Youngtown, this listlessness can be destructive, both physically and psychologically.
There is a third option however, one that's helped Germany lower its unemployment rate, called work-sharing. Essentially, the program cuts hours rather than employees. For example, if a company needs to cut 30% of its low level accounting staff, instead of firing 30% of its workers, it cuts everyone's hours by 30%. Conventional wisdom says that inoculating less efficient workers from layoffs while cutting the best workers' hours is a recipe for disaster, but we are entering a distinctly unconventional time. If employees are losing their jobs to hyper-efficient automation, the potential dip in productivity should be more than mitigated. That said, work-sharing doesn't completely fix the problem either. Unless major corporations suddenly start valuing benevolence over higher profit margins, less hours means less pay. Trim the hours enough and the results of work-sharing and the results of ignoring the problem altogether start looking eerily similar.
Matt Clibanoff is a writer and editor based in New York City who covers music, politics, sports and pop culture. His editorial work can be found in Inked Magazine, Pop Dust, The Liberty Project, and All Things Go. His fiction has been published in Forth Magazine. -- Find Matt at his website and on Twitter: @mattclibanoff