In certain parts of the country, it’s a well-worn joke that you can be longtime neighbors with someone and never know each other’s names. But in recent times, the polite distance between many of us has closed — even if, thanks to the pandemic, we’ve never been more physically far apart. We’re beginning to recognize just how important our support systems are to keeping us healthy and safe.

Counting on others applies to how we make change happen, too. We’ve witnessed the power of on-the-ground organizing in the past, but seldom with this emotional ferocity and perhaps never before in a period that has so tellingly exposed the limits of the institutions we believed we could rely on. We’ve seen what listening, coming together, and pitching in can do, and we’ve only just begun.

To accelerate and sustain positive social change across America, the Gucci Changemakers program provides donations to community-based organizations in 11 U.S. cities, three of which we’ve recognized here. Ahead, meet the leaders of these groups — pictured wearing GUCCI VS. EVERYBODY, a collaboration with designer and Changemaker Tommey Walker of DETROIT VS. EVERYBODY — and find out how their work has directly improved the lives of an expanding circle of families, friends, colleagues, and beyond. Because when one person acts as a change-maker, it sets off a chain reaction; and when we empower those around us, all of us rise.

For many at Custom Collaborative, a New York City-based nonprofit that helps women from low-income and immigrant communities launch careers in fashion, lockdown has meant learning a new skill set digitally for 30 hours a week with other program participants spread across more than 20 countries. And yet, according to executive director Ngozi Okaro, even amidst the cultural differences and so much pandemic-related loss, program participants have also found it within themselves to make and donate masks, find their classmates housing, and offer guidance to one another with honesty and generosity.

“The stories they share are so much more meaningful than anything I could say because it’s peer-to-peer,” Okaro says. “In one of our Tuesday makers’ meetings, someone said, ‘I want to be rich’ and then quickly followed up with, ‘And I want all of us to be rich. I want all my soul sisters to be rich.’ It’s this collective spirit that excites me and makes me feel like there’s not one person who makes this thing go. It’s everybody’s collective energy that’s creating opportunity for the rest of us.”

On her end, Okaro has set up an organization that’s agile and “trusted in the community, because we’ve built ourselves from the ground up with their input.” This means surveying the population and moving quickly to respond to needs like food insecurity, a model Okaro says she would like to eventually scale to as many as 10 cities domestically. Her plan for the near future also includes establishing a flagship in Manhattan’s Garment District to act as an all-in-one learning center (complete with drop-in childcare) and a hub for small and emerging designers, but Okaro says she’s ultimately building with the intention of one day rendering her own creation obsolete.

“The final iteration of Custom Collaborative would be when the industry has transformed in a way that pays people fairly, doesn’t pollute the earth, and provides people with clothes that make them feel good about themselves. And so when we’ve done all that, I’ll check off the box that we can close Custom Collaborative.”

Detroit’s Cass Tech is the largest high school in the city, with 2,479 students, a 99% percent graduation rate, celebrity alumni, and a 100-year legacy that Lisa Phillips, its principal of 11 years, says she refuses to rest on.

Instead, Phillips has made pivotal changes, like implementing a med-school-track program that has ninth graders shadowing surgeons in the operating theater and a philanthropy-driven curriculum that saw students driving in a caravan to deliver water to Flint. But beyond ensuring that her students are exposed to different career paths (while caring for others along the way), Phillips has introduced a culture of radical openness in an educational structure that has traditionally flowed only from the top down. In these halls, impact moves in all directions.

“Principal Phillips approaches her work as a mother,” says senior Lamont Satchel, Jr. “It’s not all pomp and pageantry; it’s ‘If you need to talk, let’s go.’ It’s that ability to be fluid with your title so every person from student to faculty to custodian can confide in her.”

Satchel, whom Phillips in turn calls “a voice of resolve,” knows this firsthand. As a student leader who often acts as a bridge between the adults and students at Cass, he’s a member of Phillips’ Focus Group initiative, in which representatives from each class bring an on-going issue to an open forum attended by faculty and students. In one recent meeting, the representatives ended up shifting Phillips’ attention from test scores to her high-schoolers’ mental wellbeing — and strengthened her conviction to always hear them out.

“You can’t say, ‘Let’s listen to the young people, but we make our own decisions,'” Phillips says. “They have to play a major role in our community. In a lot of decisions that are made on a local or national level, they’ll have maybe one kid to represent all of them — no, it has to be systemic.”

By practicing direct communication and encouraging her students to use their voices to uplift others, Phillips is helping to raise a generation of dreamers and doers like Satchel Jr. 

“When we talk about social impact, we talk about accountability,” Satchel Jr. says. “But I think the first thing is understanding the meaning of community. It extends beyond a ZIP code or the color of your skin. In my activism, what keeps us moving is hope. We’re being the change-makers. So knowing that there are people out there with hope, courage, and love inspires me and Principal Phillips. So listen and invest in us. That won’t just make life better for my generation — it’ll make life better for all.”

What many of us will remember about the summer of 2020 is the vital pull that kept calling us back to march, night after tense night. But now that those same streets ring less loudly with cries for racial equality, we might find ourselves wondering: Even when so much else demands our attention — even when so much else has happened in the meantime — how do you maintain momentum?

For Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana in New Orleans, the fight to end mass incarceration, educate voters, protect reproductive freedom, and above all, defend “the right to live and breathe without being targeted” is powered by the people — including those whose experiences don’t make headlines.

“What we’re doing is hearing the stories of brutality and abuse, filing cases, and creating a repository of community narratives, not just in Louisiana but across the country,” Odom says of Justice Lab, the ACLU’s police accountability project. “To address many of these issues, the first thing I did when I came to the ACLU was sit down with members of the activist community and think about how we take grassroots activism and bring that power to the statehouse and the courts.”

But what can the average person do to propel these causes forward? The answer, according to development director Maggy Baccinelli, lies with listening, “building your foundation of understanding” by reading and studying, and advancing — through volunteering and donating — the work of “Black and Brown people who know firsthand the perils of structural racism and are uniquely qualified to address it.”

Only through allyship and widespread cooperation can we remake the world — one in which everyone is treated with dignity and fairness. To Baccinelli, getting there looks like inventing a “first-of-its-kind model for connecting supporters and major donors to the reparations movement.” And for Odoms, it’s “a dramatic and radical re-imagination of our criminal-legal system” as a means to “get to the heart of a lot of other, more pressing social issues of our time involving race.” But none of this will be possible unless we put our malaise aside and keep going.

“I can relate to feeling like the problems are insurmountable,” Odoms says. “But the moment we’re in is only matched in significance by the civil rights movement in the 1960s and Reconstruction. So history has its eyes on us right now. I really do believe that each of us have a power to contribute to this greater movement for equality and freedom. We don’t have to have formalized degrees to do it. We don’t have to be bona fide community activists. But we do have to use our spheres of influence as best we can to catalyze change.”

VS EVERYBODY and DETROIT VS EVERYBODY are registered trademarks of Detroit vs Everybody LLC.

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On Tuesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that the state’s COVID-19 restrictions —including a mask mandate and limited capacity at restaurants — would be lifted in full. “We must now do more to restore livelihoods and normalcy for Texans by opening Texas 100%,” he said. “Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.” The executive order will go into effect next Wednesday, at which point Texas will be completely open once again.

The announcement goes against both advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and desperate pleas from many Texans, who are still seeing an average of over 7,000 new cases and 232 reported deaths a day. Abbott said that, if a county’s hospitalizations rise over 15% of its hospitals’ capacity for seven consecutive days, judges can choose to implement their own “mitigation strategies.” But they will still not be permitted to enforce mask mandates. And he will not enforce one either.

Abbott’s decision has also received pushback from local leaders of various parties. “You don’t cut off your parachute just as you’ve slowed your descent,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, an Independent, wrote on Twitter. Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, a Republican, didn’t outright criticize Abbott’s order, but warned that it was “premature” and urged him to focus on the state’s vaccine distribution before reopening.

COVID-19 numbers have been down in the U.S., but as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky pointed out, case numbers are still alarmingly high — even if they’re plateauing. We might be doing better than we were in January, but as a nation, we’re still averaging more cases and deaths than we were over the summer. “I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19,” Walensky said during a White House briefing on Monday. 

The reality is this: Business owners and essential workers in Texas are afraid for their lives. “This is the second time that our state leadership has put us in a bad position by reopening too early,” Michael Fojtasek, an Austin-based chef, told the Austin American-Statesman. “We had made some progress, and now it’s all going to be walked back.”

Experts are also concerned that several new strains of the virus could throw a wrench in the goal to reach herd immunity within the next year. “At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” Walensky said. And Texas is one of several states that have been affected by the newer strains: On Monday, a team of experts announced that Houston had become the first city to record instances of every major variant.

Abbott claimed that Texas “now has the tools to protect Texans from the virus” — specifically, a supply of vaccines. But aside from the fact that vaccinated people still need to mask up and follow precautions, Abbott’s decision is misguided given Texas’ uniquely dismal vaccine distribution plan. Compared to an increasing number of states that have administered at least one dose to over 20% of the population, Texas is lagging: Just 13.4% of Texans have received their first shot, making Texas the fourth-slowest state at vaccine rollout. Mississippi, which also rolled back on all regulations shortly after Abbott’s announcement, isn’t faring much better.

What is clear now is that Texas leadership — under the guidance of Gov. Abbott — is failing. Badly. In January, Democratic members of the Texas House of Representatives wrote an open letter criticizing Abbott’s unclear vaccination plans. “Texans should be celebrating the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccination, but instead are frustrated that information from [the Texas Department of State Health Services] and the Governor’s office conflicts with their own conversations with vaccine providers when trying to make appointments,” wrote Rep. Vikki Goodwin.

All Texans are harmed by Abbott’s negligence, but certain communities are likely to face graver consequences. According to a recent study, Black Texans are 30% more likely to die of COVID-19 than their white counterparts; Hispanic Texans are 80% more likely. Even if Abbott had a stronger vaccine plan, his choice to fully reopen the state would sacrifice thousands of lives, and it’s undeniable which groups will be hit the hardest — especially since vaccination locations across the country are predominantly located in whiter, wealthier regions. Texas is one of the states with the highest disparities, reported NPR, and this can also be traced back to state leadership: According to the Texas Tribune, even when Dallas County tried to prioritize distribution to zip codes with mostly Black and Latinx residents, state officials threatened to cut the county’s vaccine supply altogether. 

Some Texans will survive Abbott’s dangerous decision, but many won’t. Although some people are quick to blame voters in red states for our country’s embarrassing COVID-19 response, the responsibility ultimately rests with state leaders. And it’s no surprise who will bear the brunt of Abbott’s failed leadership: It will be the same communities most impacted by last month’s power outages. The same communities struggling to access vaccines, forced to work in dangerous conditions, and dying at disproportionate rates. America doesn’t deserve better than Texas. Texas deserves better from America.

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Dolly Parton, the country music legend beloved by all, is working way more than 9 to 5 to make sure that as many people get the coronavirus vaccine as possible. While in Nashville on Tuesday, she got the Moderna vaccine, a treatment she helped fund, and released a special video of the process.

“Well, hey, it’s me,” she says, addressing her fans — which is everyone — in the video. “I’m finally gonna get my vaccine. I’m so excited. I’ve been waiting a while. I’m old enough to get it, and I’m smart enough to get it.” She posted the video on Twitter with the caption “Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine.” The video quickly racked up more than a million views within the first few hours after posting it (obviously). 

Not only does she walk the walk, but Parton even wrote a song about it. “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine,” Parton sang, giving her famous song “Jolene” a viral rewrite. “I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate. Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”

Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine. @VUMChealth pic.twitter.com/38kJrDzLqC

— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 2, 2021

Before the doctor arrived to give her the inoculation, Parton doubled down on her message: “I know I’m trying to be funny now, but I’m dead serious about the vaccine,” Parton continued. “I think we all want to get back to normal — whatever that is — and that would be a great shot in the arm, wouldn’t it? I just want to say to all of you cowards out there: Don’t be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot.”

It’s comforting to see Parton get the vaccine, which she actually helped fund. Last year, the singer donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Together, with drug maker Moderna, it developed one of the first coronavirus vaccines to be authorized for use in the United States. According to the leader of the research effort, Dr. Mark Denison, it was the Dolly Parton’s donation that funded the project in its critical early stages before the federal government invested $1 billion to create and test the vaccine. Not only that, last month Parton told USA Today that even though she likely could jump the line to get the vaccine — she did play a big part in funding it after all — she planned to wait her turn just like everyone else. 

For someone whose fame spreads as far and as wide as Parton to be sending such a strong message about the vaccine is so important. There are few people who are universally beloved by so many different communities and demographics in the U.S., and it seems Parton knows the power of her influence — and she is using it for good. What we want to know is how many people will be humming the tune to “Jolene” and hearing vaccine now? We suspect quite a few.

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The “baby boom” predicted at the beginning of the pandemic is now widely acknowledged to have been a baby bust. Though there was an assumption that people would take the opportunity to procreate while stuck at home, instead states have reported large declines in birth rates for December 2020, nine months after lockdowns began in March. 

This shouldn’t come as such a shock. As long ago as June 2020, the Brookings Institution predicted that there would be up to half a million fewer babies born in 2021 than in 2019 (3.3 vs. 3.8 million) due to the economic recession resulting from the pandemic. (They recently announced they believe that prediction is still on track.) They based this expectation on fertility trends during past cataclysmic events like the 1918 Spanish Flu and the 2008 recession; after the latter, the birth rate decreased by 9%. This would make 2021’s birth rate an all-time historic low.

This isn’t exactly surprising to economists, who say that financial stability plays a huge role in the desire to have kids. Meanwhile, higher unemployment, like the historic job losses we have seen in the past year, particularly among women; high-mortality events such as the pandemic; and the stress resulting from both, are all associated with lower birth rates. 

The “unromantic” part of fertility is that it’s always primarily been driven by economics, says Dr. Hannes Schwandt, an economics professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, who researches the connections between economics and fertility. What appears to be new during COVID, however, is that among wealthier and more financially stable people, fertility actually seems to have shot up. There is no firm data for this yet, and Schwandt said there isn’t likely to be for a while. But a survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute in spring of 2020 shows that at least some people saw the pandemic as an optimal time to get pregnant. While one-third of surveyed women wanted to delay pregnancy or have fewer children because of the pandemic, with Black, Latina, and lower-income women more likely to say they want to do so, 17% said they wanted to have a child sooner or have more children.

“For some people, like those with the ability to work from home and who have reduced work travel, this may be an easier time to have a child,” study author and Guttmacher Institute Principal Research Scientist Laura Lindberg, PhD, told Refinery29. “Additionally, some families are increasing their savings — those with steady paychecks and less opportunities to spend their income on things like travel or dining out. This may also make those families feel more secure having children during the pandemic.”

Anecdotally, I’ve noticed quite a lot to support this phenomenon. I’m a white woman in my mid-30s who is financially stable — I am one of the people Lindberg has described as increasing their savings, though I wouldn’t classify myself as wealthy — and able to work from home, and I’m pregnant. I’ve also seen a deluge of pregnancy and baby posts among my friends on social media for months now, which makes sense based on all my demographic info. I had to ask Schwandt why that may be.  

“It could well be that this is the first time in a recession where some groups have increasing fertility,” Schwandt said. “This is something that is ahead of research, even though it’s almost certainly true, and it’s something very special about this recession and pandemic.” Unlike millions of others, this group hasn’t lost their jobs and still enjoy higher salaries. Many of them are able to work from home in their pajamas and take midday naps when they’re tired — no trudging through long commutes while pregnant. These workers are also more likely to have access to benefits such as parental leave through their companies. The wealthiest among them are able to pay for nannies, private tutors, and homeschooling, taking the childcare responsibilities off their plates during work hours — a constant burden on many working mothers during this era. And some have enough financial support not to work at all if they so wish, without worrying about dwindling savings or losing out on wages. Schwandt said that though scientists haven’t analyzed data about this group yet, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if his colleagues took it up in the near future.

“Being pregnant during the pandemic, I felt, was the perfect time,” Jocelyn Nemett, 34, in Centre Wellington, Ontario, told Refinery29. She is almost 38 weeks along, has two small children, and works part-time as a nurse in a family physician’s office, where she has proper PPE and isn’t exposed to actively sick patients. Plus, “because pregnancy can be so exhausting at times, I haven’t felt as though I have been missing out on much since there just isn’t much going on,” she says. “If we had waited for the pandemic to be over to become pregnant with our third baby, the timeline I had always hoped for would be severely delayed.” 

There are certainly upsides for pregnant people who are able to work part-time, like Nemett, or even from home, as well as for parents who can afford childcare. But in the long term, Schwandt said, this inequity could contribute to already-existing structural inequality and systemic racism, both of which the pandemic has already exacerbated. “Babies in a ‘normal’ recession become [on average] whiter, unfortunately, because economic disadvantage is strongly tied to race in the U.S.,” said Schwandt. “These distorting impacts are probably even more dramatic this time around.” Plus, unlike in a typical recession, we’re seeing a stronger imbalance of who is affected across industries because of the logistical differences between work-from-home jobs and jobs that require people to be physically on-site, like those in the service industry.

But the reproductive choices of many of those who do work from home have been affected by the economic downturn, too — in part because there is a stigma at some companies against remote workers, despite the fact that staying home is safer during the pandemic. Jen*, 35, told Refinery29 she was laid off shortly after the pandemic started and she began working remotely. 

At that time, Jen and her husband were set on having a third child — they currently have two small children — but now, she said this prospect is looking more and more impossible. Jen has been unemployed for 10 months, feeling increasingly hopeless with each job interview that doesn’t go anywhere. Money is already tight in her family, so unless she gets another job soon, having a third child will take a huge financial toll. She’s had to cut a lot of corners. “For my kids’ birthdays now, we don’t do gifts — everybody just gets one little trinket from the front of Target, that’s like $3 or whatever,” and long-wished-for home-renovation projects are on hold, she said. She describes often feeling frustrated by the uncertainty of the experience. “It doesn’t really feel like my choice that this delay is happening, it feels forced on me and that’s frustrating.”

For some women who got pregnant before the pandemic and have given birth during it, staying home has proved to be a big advantage. 

Anita Patel, MD, 38, a pediatric critical care doctor and professor in the D.C. area, had her daughter Sita after IVF treatments in April 2020. While she experienced many difficulties — a last-minute emergency C-section, postpartum anxiety and depression — she says she feels lucky because she both gets to work from home and has a part-time nanny.

“One of the huge silver linings of the pandemic has been that when I’m not seeing patients in the hospital, I get to work from home,” Dr. Patel told Refinery29. “I do a lot of research, and I ended up writing a whole grant three months postpartum. My husband has been working from home the whole pandemic, too. We have both had steady jobs, and while we’ve had some loss of income, it hasn’t been as significant as what many others have experienced. We’ve also been privileged to have a part-time nanny to help out, and my parents [who live in the area] help out as well. So we have someone to help with childcare five days a week, so we can effectively work from home, but we also get to take our lunch break and play with Sita. I also truly don’t know if I would have been able to continue breastfeeding her if I had to be at work every day, because pumping is just a pain in the butt. The fact that I get to directly breastfeed her during the day has been just such an incredible, incredible gift.”

Hannah Morrison, 28, a lifestyle blogger from a suburb of Dallas who lives with her husband and two children, gave birth to her son Rory in April 2020 and says that, although she has always worked from home, the pandemic has meant she is able to spend more time at home while pregnant, and with the baby and her three-year-old son, Knox. “There have been so many silver linings, to be honest,” Morrison told Refinery29. “Being a work-from-home mom, I have always done the parent-from-home with a laptop nearby thing. However, I think the way I parent has been deeply impacted. I find myself having conversations with my three-year old I never thought I would have at such a young age, and it honestly has been really special.”

Economic privilege isn’t the only type that’s played an increasingly important role during the pandemic. Many women who want to have children but are dealing with fertility issues, have had to put fertility treatments on hold, delaying or canceling them due to clinics being closed or prohibitive costs. In this way, the crisis has exacerbated yet another inequality.

Christina Yannetsos, 37, an ER physician in Denver and the co-founder of Colorado Fertility Advocates, was diagnosed with a condition called hypothalamic amenorrhea in her 20s which contributes to infertility. In the beginning of the pandemic, Colorado stopped performing elective procedures, including IVF, which put an indefinite hold on Yannetsos — who, at the present time, has been through three unsuccessful rounds of IVF — and her husband’s goal of having a baby. At the same time, Yannetsos was facing an overcrowded emergency room, treating patients who were on ventilators and having to tell children that their parents had passed away. Layered on top of the punishing physical difficulty of fertility treatments, this was unbearably stressful. 

“[It was] intubating patients, putting them on ventilators, then coming home, disrobing in my garage, and jumping in the shower immediately hoping that I’m not going to bring something home to my husband,” Yannetsos recalled. “I remember having conversations with kids being like, ‘Your mom is really sick and we’re going to put her on a ventilator,’ and them asking me, ‘Is she going to die?’ And here I am, trying to become a mother and taking care of mothers who were being taken away from their kids. It was really tough.”

Finally, the treatments have been a struggle, too: She still has major student loans to pay off from medical school and has never had a job that provides insurance to cover fertility treatments — so she has had to diligently save in her flex-spending account and occasionally max out credit cards. 

Just as Yannetsos was about to attempt another round of IVF in November, the second wave of COVID hit and her emergency room filled up again. Soon after, Yannetsos tested positive for COVID the day before her egg transfer. “I got the result back and it was positive. I hysterically started crying. I mean, like absolutely ugly-cried because I was anticipating this so much, this hope that something good will happen. It was crushing,” she said. Yannetsos ended up recovering after two weeks of moderate illness, and subsequently getting vaccinated. She was then able to undergo her most recent round of IVF, which was unsuccessful. This spring, she plans to try again despite the setbacks.  

The “pregnancy privilege” divide is only one way in which the pandemic has made the lives of parents and pregnant people more difficult and even more unequal. Pregnancy discrimination is widespread, maternal mortality rates are some of the highest in the developed world, childcare costs are high, and the U.S. is still the richest country in the world with no mandatory paid parental leave. At the same time, women do a disproportionate amount of childcare and other unpaid domestic labor, which has contributed to why so many women have left their jobs during the pandemic. One in four women is considering either downshifting her career or leaving the workforce because of COVID-19, according to a survey by Lean In and McKinsey. 

So while there has been a lot of alarmist talk of how low birth rates are terrible for society, the real crisis is that this pandemic has further eroded our social safety net and created an even bigger economic and class divide. Why should people have more children when our government hasn’t prioritized policies that benefit parents and children for ages? As Moira Donegan recently wrote in The Guardian, “Pro-natalism arguments such as these are never entirely devoid of sentimentality about family life, and they tend to make assumptions about women’s roles and responsibilities that are grounded in regressive, sexist and simple-minded ideas.” 

Schwandt said that a lower birth rate is, indeed, not as disastrous a thing as some would suggest. “Everyone’s screaming about, ‘Oh God, fertility is going down. That’s so bad,’” he said. “No, that’s not bad. People always want to make a bad story out of everything because that is what sells, that’s what gets your headlines. In the really long run, we have to keep in mind that exponential population growth is one of the biggest dangers for the planet, in terms of the depletion of resources, extinction of species, civil conflict — all those things happen if we have continuous population explosion.”

Schwandt has a point — overpopulation is thought to be a big contributor to climate change, among other catastrophes. And yet, looking at the current baby bust in a holistic way means losing sight of the individual toll the pandemic is taking on those who just want to build their family, something which Schwandt notes is unequivocally bad. Because while I feel both relieved and fortunate to be in a position to have a baby right now, I’m also acutely aware that everyone who wants to have children should feel secure in their decision to do so — without having to worry that it will bankrupt them.

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When I heard the news that Hayley Kiyoko was releasing a perfume, I said out loud to no one in particular, “Thank Lesbian Jesus! Somebody has finally found a way to bottle gaydar.” Much like the synthpop music that made her famous, Kiyoko’s energy is upbeat and fun, but at her core is radical, unapologetic inclusivity. For many queer people, her music is like a warm hug of acceptance — so her new gender-inclusive fragrance, Hue, is a perfect next step. Created with Kiyoko’s style and audience in mind, Hue (made in partnership with Slate Brands) toes the line between masculine and feminine so beautifully that it stands to be armor for legions of young people, gender notwithstanding, for years to come.

Conveniently, that’s exactly how Kiyoko wants her fragrance to be used: as protection, a way to make its wearers feel fearless when facing the world. “I find a lot of comfort in fragrance,” she tells me over the phone. “Growing up, I would douse my body with Elizabeth Arden Green Tea. It would give me the courage to be myself, speak to girls, and be more social. I’ve never left the house without spraying on perfume — it’s my armor.” Kiyoko always gravitated towards fragrance as a boost of confidence, and now, she wants to give other people that same feeling.

At first sniff, Hue starts out somewhere between floral and clean laundry. As it dries, it settles into citrus and musk, a breezy combination that’s not overpowering in a way that feels intentional. “The scent is complicated. The official notes start out with blood orange and freesia,” Kiyoko explains, “then it transitions into special rose, lychee, and pink magnolia. Once it dries down, it turns into a musk and a special cacao. It’s all over the place, but it all works so well together.”

Kiyoko, who identifies as a gay woman, has always battled with her feminine and masculine sides, so her goal for this gender-neutral perfume was to bottle both those extremes. Fair to say, I think she nailed it: Somehow, it makes me — a gay woman who has barely worn perfume since it was cool to smell like an Abercrombie store — feel a mix of sexy, approachable, and safe.

And then there’s the actual bottle. I’ve always thought of perfume bottles as delicate pieces of glass that I’d be scared to break, but Kiyoko has made a bottle fit for aesthetic value and clumsy folks alike. Deep red with gold detailing, the chunky bottle is made of hearty glass, and fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. “I don’t really use a purse, so I wanted a bottle that I could carry just in my pocket,” Kiyoko says. “I also wanted it to be bold. The red is powerful and volatile, but also vulnerable. Wherever you keep it, I want it to stand out.”

Hayley kiyoko releasing perfume so us gays can recognize each other by scent🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏻‍♀️🤩✨

— Lana (@budgiesarecute) January 30, 2021

In a time when we’re barely going outside (and probably showering less), Hue is a welcome, comforting scent that I can’t wait to wear everywhere from the supermarket to my eventual return to the office. Kiyoko has successfully brought gender inclusivity to a space that hasn’t always welcomed fluidity, and the fragrance feels both powerful and calming in a way I foresee needing as we reenter society. I feel a deep sense of pride as Kiyoko and I end our conversation talking about snow and my recent gay wedding.

For both the way it smells and the care and thought behind Hue, I can’t recommend it enough — and for all you queer women out there, you definitely need a bottle so we can finally identify each other in the wild.

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Hey hey!

It’s 2009, again.  One, because I’m excited to post on CurlyNikki.com (do you like the new lay out?!), and two, because I’m rocking a bantu knot out on stretched hair. It’s been a minute since I’ve revisited this style, and I fully remember why it had been a trusted go-to for years. Only on damp or dry hair, tho. Bantu knot-outs on wet hair are a BIG no-go. They never never ever dry.

The revisit was triggered for many reasons:

1. I need a cut.  My shape is off because I haven’t been able to get to my stylist, Marie Simone, in St. Louis since late 2019! I’ve been trimming my own ends, but yeah, I miss my precision situation! I also miss my bob! My hair is at its fullest-looking when its sitting pretty between my chin and collar bone.
2.  I am usually in NO mood to wash, detangle and re-style my hair.  If I get a moment to myself, I use it to meditate, read, or sleep. I’m actually never in the mood to wash, detangle, and re-style my hair. But here we are.
3. When I MUST wash, detangle, and style, I need at least the styling portion of the session to be quick af. I usually opt for my 8 or 9 flat twists on damp hair (for a flat-twist out), but the shape and my ends have made it very difficult to get away with this go-to style.
4. I want full looking curls without the hassle of hair rollers of any kind. Hair rollers take entirely too long to install, the drying time is disrespectful, and if I sleep wrong on the first or second night, the set is trashed and all of that hard work was for not.
5. I require a style that will last through at least several nights of my kinda sleeping.

So yeah, with all that, here we are in 2009, where I am knotting my hair once a week! And when the set turns out lopsided or otherwise not-cute, I do what I did in the above pic–bang it and pull up the rest.  Since I was on IG Live, you can’t tell, but the hair in the back is anything but styled, lol. I pulled it back with a bunch of bobby pins and a banana clip and tried to remember to stay facing forward!I’ll quickly walk you through my bantu knot-out routine depending on where I am in my wash cycle!

Easy 3rd Day Curls | Bantu Knot Out on Stretched Hair

Freshly washed hair

1. I tie my naked, wet hair up in a t-shirt for about 20 minutes to rid myself of all the drippies.
2. Apply Jane Carter Leave-in for a bit of moisture and heat protection
3. Tension stretch in sections with my blowdryer on warm/low heat (I do it in 4ths– 2 sections in the front and two in the back– I take each section and pull it taught while using the blow dryer angled down the hair shaft.  Since the hair was just barely damp, it dries quickly and gives it just enough stretch.  It never gets a full on Diana Ross look– Just bushy. There’s till quite a bit of texture.
4. Create 10 knots using Nairobi Setting Foam. I’ve tried all of them. My second runner-up, especially if you want a more natural product would be Jane Carter’s Twist-out foam (the set doesn’t last as long), or Creme of Nature Style and Shine Foaming Mousse (excellent shine, decent staying power).  I use one or two pumps of product per knot.
5. Sleep pretty.
6. Take down and allow to air dry for a few minutes, if any parts are still holding moisture.
7. Gently separate the curls with my fingers and fluff at the roots.  I then split the curls in equal halves and pull down into low pony tails using banana clips to secure near my nape.  This stretches the curls so they hang more naturally and add volume.
8. Release the clips, fluff some more to reveal bantu knot out perfection!

I can usually get 4 days out of my bantu knot out, sometimes more! When it starts looks strange, I’ll do what I did above and pull it up and fashion it into an I Love Lucy inspired updo!

Old Set

I do this when my hair was previously in a flat twist-out… around day 3 or 4.  

1. Gently finger detangle as I go.
2. Apply one to two pumps per knotted section. The Nairobi foam doesn’t flake at all, even on dry hair.
3. Create 8-10 knots total.
4. Sleep pretty.
5. Repeat steps 6-8 from above!

I can usually get 2-3 days out of this style before I have to wash, detangle and style again.  Trying to re bantu knot-out on previously knotted hair will make for a detangling nightmare.

That’s all I got!

With you in and AS Love,

Nik

When was the last time you rocked a bantu knot out?