Fashionistas Put Harlem on the Map | Bankers Back Bolsonaro

Led by Black women, Harlem’s new fashion renaissance is here. And it’s drawing the world’s attention.

Inside Pearl Studios in the heart of Manhattan’s Garment District, Yvonne Jewnell sat beside her mother, Tandra Birkett, as Amatula Jacobs unpacked her trunkload of pieces. Jacobs had flown all the way from California for the casting call. She explained the symbolism behind every ethnically inspired item of clothing she and her husband, a leather craftsman, had created: the Mudd Cloth she used and the ancient Asante tribe symbols she featured, both derived from West African culture.

Many casting calls might not have cared much for that history and storytelling. But Harlem Fashion Week, started by Birkett, the executive producer, and Jewnell, the creative director, in 2016, is far from ordinary. In an industry notorious for its elitism and high barriers to entry, the mother-daughter duo selects emerging designers from across the world to show their work at starting packages of just $700, compared to mainstream shows in New York Fashion Week that generally average between $80,000 and $100,000. But Harlem Fashion Week — with notable participants like the daughters of Malcolm X — is not the only brand building buzz around the historic New York neighborhood’s influence in the global fashion sphere.

Increasingly, prominent collections from around the world are being shown in Harlem, attracting celebrities and building Harlem’s reputation as a modern epicenter of design, and Black women are leading it.

This may, at first glance, look like a group crashed out after a party. But take another look.

Do you see an intimate group of male friends and partners, sleeping over after a night of partying? Look closer, and you'll see that some men are sitting up, unable to squeeze in between the overlapping limbs of others.

This is Quezon City jail in Manila, Philippines, where the night turns the cracked cement floor of a basketball court into a bedroom for an overflowing prison population. Prisoners take turns to sleep here. Built six decades ago for an inmate population of 800, the prison now houses 3,800 — a symptom of a larger malaise.

The candidate’s misogynistic and racist comments have many worried, but the front-runner in Brazil’s presidential race is finding support from financiers.

The dramatic surge in Brazilian markets is not the only factor lifting animal spirits among senior business leaders and financiers in São Paulo this week. The prospect of right-wing congressman Jair Bolsonaro winning the presidency and implementing a liberalizing economic program has kindled hopes among many that decades of Brazilian statist policies are about to be reversed.

“The first thing you have to do is take a deep breath,” comments one senior banker of Bolsonaro’s strong showing in last Sunday’s first-round presidential vote, in which the former army captain, even though he has praised Brazil’s military dictatorship, captured 46 percent of the vote. “He was not my first choice,” the banker says, “but certainly a lot of my clients are pleased.”

Paulo Guedes, Bolsonaro’s economic adviser, a University of Chicago–educated investment banker, is reportedly seeking other high-flying financiers to join the transition team should Bolsonaro beat Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party in an Oct. 28 runoff vote.