Islandista we love- Sharmadean Reid

 





[caption id="attachment_1636" align="alignright" width="283" caption="Photo credit: Wah-magazine.com"][/caption]


 




Sharmadean Reid is one of the coolest girls around.

Says who?

Well, us for one and that should be enough for you. :)

  But if you insist... the New York Times' The Moment Blog said pretty much the exact same thing about the 25 year old islandista-descended Brit, who is the sportswear editor of Arena Homme Plus.

 Dazed and Confused loves her hot online magazine WAH (as in wahgwan or in her words 'we ain't hoes'. Good to know).

 The Independent listed her as one of the '15 People who will define the future of arts in Britain' (no pressure!)

 And Elle UK loves her nail bar, WAH Nails. So does style.com.Good enough?

 Ok, so why do they love her so much? Well, she's just effortlessly cool. Despite being the editor of a menswear magazine, she's still girly, which is why she opened the WAH nail bar, as she told Elle:

"I love menswear, I was brought up on Arena Homme Plus, but at the end of the day I’m a girl!"

Her style, as reflected in WAH the online mag and WAH the nail salon is a tongue in cheek mix of street style and high end style.

For instance, you can get a Balmain-inspired nail design or even the classic Chanel logo, as seen below.

 





[caption id="attachment_1637" align="aligncenter" width="242" caption="Photo credit: The Moment"][/caption]


 




[caption id="attachment_1638" align="aligncenter" width="283" caption="Photo credit: Elle.co.uk"][/caption]

The style influences and trends she champions are right on the cutting edge of what's hot - early 90s hip hop culture and style, vintage, body con, Shoreditch (it's a London thing) and hot sneakers - among other things!

Not to mention - did you check the line up of all the girl has going on right now? Magazine editor, nail salon owner, online magazine publisher ... oh and she's a stylist and a consultant for Nike, as well.

Really, who can top us islandistas for drive and hustle?

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Islandista we love- Sharmadean Reid

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Bits and pieces - Leona's race ban, red carpet sightings and Rihanna to speak out

You know every now and then we have to do a pelau post when there's so much going on that we need to put it all in de pot! This is one of those - we have news from all over - on Ri-ri, Leona (Le-le?) and islandistas on the red carpet from Rio to London to L.A.

So to start with - islandistas have been all over people's red carpets over the last week - from the premieres of the Michael Jackson This Is It movie in London and Los Angeles, to Fashion Rocks in Brazil.

Check out a few of the looks below.

[caption id="attachment_1644" align="aligncenter" width="306" caption="Former Sugababe Keisha Buchanan was hot at the London premiere of This Is It in a jewel panelled LBD with a jewelled halter neckline."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="222" caption="Nia Long in textured black leggings and a black leather jacket at the LA premiere."][/caption]

For more looks and news on Rihanna's first public interview and Leona's racism run-in, read on.At the other end of the globe, islandistas like Estelle and Jeneil Williams represented at the annual Fashion Rocks showcase, which was held this time in Brazil.



[caption id="attachment_1653" align="aligncenter" width="196" caption="We love Jennifer Lopez' sequinned black dress but the unnecessary knee high boots dragged it down. Knee high boots on a dress that is just hitting knee length just don't have much impact."][/caption]

 


Jeneil was the only black model on the catwalk for the show while Estelle hit the red carpet in one of her now trademark 'hmmm do we love it or hate it' dresses.



[caption id="attachment_1649" align="aligncenter" width="216" caption="Estelle wore this sunset hued dress by Indian designer Manish Arora."][/caption]

Ya got to give it to 'Stelle though - she always pushes the fashion envelope. Sometimes it pushes her back but she does take a chance and we rate that.

In more news... nine months after she was beaten by Chris Brown in the wee hours of the morning of the Grammy Awards, Rihanna is finally going to speak out on it.

If you notice, she has not done a single interview or said a single word since the whole messy business unfolded on February 8th.

We have seen her out plenty and she has performed but that has been it. And truthfully, we think that is her prerogative. God knows the turmoil she has been going through after dealing with such a painful experience in front of the whole world.

But now she's going to talk and it's on ABC's Good Morning America. She also set to return to GMA on November 23rd (the day her album drops) to perform her most recent single, the controversial Russian Roulette.

On to Leona now, she is also speaking out about a terrible experience she had a few months ago, where she and ger black, Guyanese father were kicked out of a high-end London boutique ... and she strongly suspects it's because of race.

According to Leona, she and her dad were shopping for photo frames when the ugly incident happened:

This woman told us, ‘get out of my store right now’. I asked her ‘are you joking?’

“She said, ‘No, I want both of you to remove yourselves from my store’. I asked why – and pointing at my dad she said, ‘I don’t like the look of him. I want him to go now’.

“I said: “What do you mean? She said, ‘I know why you’re coming in here’. She was implying we were trying to steal stuff.”

“I was so angry my dad had to drag me out of the shop. I’d never experienced anything like that. Being judged by the colour of your skin is horrible.”

The boutique is only referred to as an "unnamed London store" but we want to know! Talk de tings dem Leona! It is only by exposing them that they can be shamed into changing their ways.

Amazing to think this would happen - not so much the racism bit but the fact that you think the store twit would recognise Leona Lewis.

But girl, if it happened to Oprah... let's just say, we're not quite in a post-racial world quite yet.

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Bits and pieces - Leona's race ban, red carpet sightings and Rihanna to speak out

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Islandista on the rise: Speech Debelle

Because we love to read stories about islandistas doing well and even better yet, doing well against the odds... today we bring to you... Speech Debelle.

Who's she?

Well, just the under-underdog winner of one of the most prestigious awards in British music - the Mercury Prize.

Her story is the break-out, fairytale story of this year's prize, which went down last week.

With just 1500 copies of her album Speech Therapy sold thus far, the underground rapper burst into the mainstream when she won the Mercury, which is given for the best album in the United Kingdom.

Speech Debelle came up as Corynne Elliot (so much more West Indian sounding, isn't it?) in South London. Her back story is unfortunately, not that unusual among British Caribbean people. She was born to Jamaican parents. Her father left her mother when Corynne/Speech was 6 years old. He went on to be the village (or council?) ram, having eight more children with six women.

They don't get on, to say the least. In her song Daddy's Little Girl, she raps:


'Daddy, I think I love you cause I hate you so much that I must love you.'


She kicked up trouble at school, getting suspended 11 times and getting expelled at 15.

Her mother, a housing benefits officer trying to raise her on her own, was not amused.

On top of that, Speech/Corynne started using weed, which made her moody and depressed. She and her mother got into it all the time and she eventually moved out when she was 19.

She bounced from friends' places to hostels, was essentially homeless and committed petty crimes to keep clothed and fed. She admits now that she was too blasted hard-ears to return home to her mother, telling the Times:


“I didn’t want to. You don’t, if you feel like nobody really gives a f***. I wasn’t talking to my mum; I never talk to my dad. I’ve got my aunts and uncles doing their nuts. When you’re like that, you really don’t care about anyone. It’s hard to get out of that frame of mind.


Eventually, years and maturity brought her to her senses and when she was 23, she made back up with her mother and moved back in.

 Her outlet of  course, was music, which brings us back to the present day and her big win, which many say is the biggest surprise ever sprung even in the usually unpredictable Mercury Prize.

Speech is looking forward to her musical future. She's planning to start a record label with the £20, 000 first prize and she told the Daily Mail:

 


"There's a lot of music that sounds the same, all day on the radio and my album don't sound like their album and it's still won the Mercury Prize. Hopefully this will throw a wrench in the system and people will hear this album and realise they don't have to make music that sounds the same - they can make music that sounds good."


[caption id="attachment_1481" align="alignleft" width="214" caption="Photo credit: Getty Images"][/caption]

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Islandista on the rise: Speech Debelle

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Islandista on the rise: VV Brown

Islandistas, have you heard of VV Brown?

If you haven't, you probably will soon.

The British-born soul rocker of Jamaican and Puerto Rican parentage has only been on everyone's Hot List for 09.

Seriously.

The Guardian, the Daily Mail, the LA Times, the Independent and BBC all placed her on their lists of ones to watch in 2009. 

Her musical style is a bit vintage, like that of other female stars of this new Brit invasion such as Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele.

[caption id="attachment_1114" align="aligncenter" width="327" caption="photo credit: Ben Yacobi"][/caption]

 However, unlike them, VV draws more on  more up-tempo, 50s and 60s era doo-wop and rock, as heard in her breakout hit Crying Blood which is easily the most cheerful sounding song about a heart-wrenching break up that we have ever heard.

If that is not enough for you, VV (real name Vanessa) is well set to take her place among the ranks of other islandista it girls such as Rihanna and Vashtie Kola, whose sense of style is so quirky, fierce and yet independently theirs, that fashionistas are falling over themselves. 

At 5 "11 and with some seriously exotic looks (we're not sure but she looks to be a combination of Jamaican black chinese and hispanic) she was basically commandeered into modelling. She has done a shoot for UK Vogue and performed at London Fashion Week earlier this year, at the invitation of Indian designer Ashish, who is a big fan of hers.




The fashion pack loves her look, with her signature retro flat top rolled bangs and her charity/vintage shop dress sense. Amidst launching her album, she is also preparing to open her own vintage clothing store, VV Vintage.

So what is the 's' on this islandista-by-descent?

Well to start at the beginning, she is the oldest of six children born to a Jamaican father and Puerto Rican mother in Northampton, England. Her parents run their own school, Overstone Park, which VV attended. She got four As at A'level and turned down Oxford, LSE and a few other big name unis to pursue her music career.

By age 17, she was performing backing vocals for groups such as Westlife, Madonna and the Pussycat Dolls when they did live tv appearances.

She also ended up writing for both the Dolls and British girl group, the Sugababes. Record labels showed interest and she eventually signed a solo deal with Polydor but that ... didn't go too well.

She told the Times:

"The production took my songs somewhere I had never envisioned. The more strings they added, the more the music lost its honesty and innocence. I was too scared to say I hated it."

The deal broke down and she ended up broke and worse, in love with an "arsehole" as she so succintly puts it. As the relationship broke down and she became even more broke, she sold her keyboard to get a ticket back to London, moved into a teeny unfurnished flat, bought a one-stringed guitar and began to write and sing her heartache.

And that heartache is what has led to her debut album, Travelling Like the Light and her album deal with Island Record.

And now everything has come full circle as she is back in London where she first started her musical career and as it turns out, where fame would find her after all.

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Shontelle and Rihanna link up in London

Fellow Bajan islandistas, former cadets and of course singers, Shontelle and Rihanna have apparently linked up in London and it is causing a minor tweet-storm (I think I just coined that phrase) in the twittersphere witha few loyal fans (and apparently a load of paparazzi) parked outside the hotel where they are both staying, desperate for a pic or autograph and tweeting updates.

As you would know from our post on Friday, Shontelle is in the UK on tour with Beyonce as part of her 'I Am' tour.

Apparently Rihanna has flown out to London town as well which explains the pics of her at JFK airport on Friday.

She and Shontelle have been tweeting back and forth since last night. A snippet of their exchanges:



• @RiRiFenty pssst. Where r u?about 23 hours ago from twidroid in reply to RiRiFenty


• @Shontelle_Layne LONDON baby :-)about 23 hours ago from mobileweb


• @RiRiFenty me 2. I was jus makin sure. Hope I see u! Gonna DM u now :pabout 22 hours ago from twidroid


• @RiRiFenty indeed! After party 2? ;)about 21 hours ago from twidroid in reply to RiRiFenty

@Shontelle_Layne i'll see what i can do! aha i'm kidding! of course! :-)about 21 hours ago from mobile web

• @Shontelle_Layne we'll make sure of it! tomorrows concert? :-Pabout 21 hours ago from mobile web
  
      



According to fan/twitterer Patsy Travers, Rihanna left the hotel about two hours ago to go do a soundcheck, fuelling rumours that she will be performing in the London show of Beyonce's I Am Tour tonight. We'll stay tuned for that.

In other Shontelle-related stuff, here's a clip that her lil sis recorded of her performing her break-out hit 'Roll' in Birmingham over the weekend.

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 De wining start out a li'l social - I guess cos of the heels but she put down some respectably islandistas wining towards the middle and end!

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If only...

(photo credit: The Sartorialist)

*Sigh*... I adore this outfit. It's from the Sartorialist blog and was taken in London.

Everything about is so coolly individual - the bow tie, the brogue shoes, the stripey socks, the stripey dress that would ordinarily be rather ugly on its own but looks inspired paired with the other items.

Imagine if someone wore this fantastic outfit in the Caribbean. Individualism in fashion is not really celebrated. Being 'in style' is celebrated but having a unique personal style is often derided.

I must say one interesting exception to this is the dancehall culture in Jamaica where the stars be they dancers or performers are aggressively individualistic and flamboyant about their style.

And I happen to love that. When you see Elephant Man you might think he looks a damn fool with his two-toned hair and crazy outfits (I saw a vid of him performing in New York in a pirate's outfit - with an inflatable parrot on his shoulder and all!) but you know what - he isn't blending in. And he's an artist, a performer - he's supposed to stand out and look a little different and crazier than regular folk. He's not supposed to look like every other person that is at the fete, nor is he supposed to look like he's going to an office, he's supposed to capture your attention.



 

Doesn't that capture your attention?

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If only...

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