Welcome to Notes From Nikki, a quarterly column from me, Nikki, editor in chief of Marie Claire. In this edition, we’re talking about personal style—a topic I hold near and dear to my heart. I’ve always been a fashion girl, someone who loves to think about the way other people use clothing to telegraph messages about themselves. And so, for my inaugural column, I figured I’d turn the lens on myself and share some thoughts on how pop culture, art, and travel have influenced the way I get dressed. Let’s get into it.
Pop Culture
Television, movies, books, podcasts, celebrity style—I love it all. I’m a huge, unabashed, fan of pop culture. While some may find these topics to be frivolous, I think that how culture interacts with these genres, and is then influenced by the culture around them, can be fascinating. It says a lot about how the world will continue to morph and change.
Television and movies, specifically, had a huge influence on how my style has evolved throughout the years. Growing up with an older brother and sister, I spent a lot of time watching movies from the ‘80s, family favorites included Beverly Hills Cop (1, not 2, definitely not 3, love the reboot!) and Trading Places. I can quote lines from the films as if they’re Shakespeare. In Beverly Hills Cop, Jenny Summers (played by Lisa Eilbacher) and Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) both wear the most perfect heather gray short sleeve sweatshirts, now a key item in my personal wardrobe. Trading Places has a preppy Northeast-edge (the film takes places in the upper echelons of Philadelphia), and I fell in love with the blue blazers and tennis looks the characters in the film wore.
In the early ‘90s and 2000s, while I loved watching Living Single, Friends, and Sex and the City, the show I truly couldn’t get enough of was Girlfriends. Similar to Sex and the City, Girlfriends was about a friend group of four very different women in their 30s trying to find love and balancing their careers while they do it. Joan Clayton, played by Tracee Ellis Ross, and Toni Childs, played by Jill Marie Jones, had the best wardrobe, full of designer handbags, sharp suits, and sexy party dresses. To this day I often think of Joan’s collection of army fatigue cargo pants and find myself searching for a pair of my own.
Though Jenna Lyons is on television now, her reign as executive creative director and president of retailer J.Crew (from the presentations during New York Fashion Week to dressing Michelle Obama for television appearances) is probably the singular most influential moment in time when it comes to my personal style. The way Lyons mixes patterns, colors, and traditionally masculine and feminine styles, then and now, has always been expert-level and the Housewives don’t call her Jenna “Fuckin’” Lyons for nothing.
Art
Once a month, my friends and I try to have a culture day, stealing a few hours to walk around a museum or gallery to take in a new exhibit. Doing this not only gets me off my devices, but it also inspires my eye, encouraging me to examine how I can incorporate color and shape into my wardrobe in new ways. Artists like Toyin Ojih Odutola, Deborah Segun, Amoako Boafo, Nina Chanel Abney, Mickelene Thomas, and Stephen Tayo, though all very different in style, often use primary colors in their works and don’t shy away from intricate details that require a second or third glance. One can always find something new in their works to marvel over.
Though I wouldn’t consider myself to be a proper collector just yet, I do love to browse and shop on Avant Arte, a curated marketplace that collaborates with contemporary artists to create limited edition works. Avant Arte’s mission is to make “discovering and collecting art radically more accessible for a new generation” and through it I learned of artists like Ferrari Sheppard and Danielle Mckinney whose works continue to inspire.
Travel
A big perk of my job over the many years is that I’ve been able to travel all over the world. From Sydney, Australia and Tokyo, Japan to Lagos, Nigeria and Istanbul, Turkey, working in fashion has afforded me the opportunity to see so many different cultures. The eye has to travel, as the famous saying goes.
I find that my favorite thing about these experiences is the people watching. I could spend hours posted up in a cafe or sitting on a park bench just studying how the locals dress themselves. It’s an experience no social media platform could bring you.
While Paris and Milan are two cities I travel to the most, and the personal style there is indeed great, traveling out of the West takes things to a whole other level. I love the way these cultures embrace colors and silhouettes in new and interesting ways—like the geles of Nigeria or the many subcultures of Japan. Even if I don’t bring home an actual souvenir from my trips, there’s always a mental take-away that I can incorporate into my personal style.
