Erykah Badu received the Fashion Icon award at the 2024 CFDA Awards this wek, joining the ranks of names like Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Zendaya. For the special occasion, which took place Monday, October 28, Badu wore a suit by CFDA Chairman Thom Browne, accessorized with a headpiece from CHRISHABANA.
“Erykah is one of the most original and unique human beings I’ve ever known,” said André 3000, who presented Badu with the honor. “Her style is truly original. She’s an inspiration to everyone she meets. She’s an iconoclast, an outcast, a warrior, rule breaker, educator, activist, magician, seer, songwriter, singer, mother and a great, great friend.”
In keeping with Badu’s rule-breaking, she created her CFDA look with a forward-thinking approach. An AI-generated image by Italian Art Director Parallel inspired a headpiece and septum piercing by CHRISHABANA, who was tasked with bringing the complicated design to life. They started collaborating a week prior to the event and it took three days to complete.
Below, CHRISHABANA brings PAPER behind-the-scenes of the production process.
You were asked to reinterpret an AI image in order to create this design. Talk us through the process.
Erykah first called me about the project and said that she had seen this AI-generated image by a digital artist named Parallel. She was inspired by his image and asked if she could have the AI-generated image made in real life. He agreed, so she asked us to realize it. Erykah and I have worked on some pieces, and have forged a friendship throughout the years, so this was a great challenge to accomplish within a week.
Erykah wanted a headpiece and septum to both evoke a sense of the future and the past. After seeing the image, my mind quickly turned into creating a piece for a nomadic, global traveler who travels both space and time, collecting personal treasures from different lands and even time periods, connecting them together to form this futuristic yet tribal head and septum piece.
What does it mean to you to be a "global traveler"?
For me, the narrative of the global traveler conjures up ideas of a person who is open to learning from and experiencing different cultures, making a respectful attempt to understand the contexts of such cultures and re-contextualizing them in a new, celebratory way. When you first glance at the pieces we created with Erykah and Parallel, you first see influences of Berber/Amazigh and Turkish and even Rabari traditional culture. But once you look at the piece, you can see that it is in fact a bunch of amoebic forms that aren’t necessarily reminiscent of one culture more than the other.
How did you approach collecting all the different materials for this headpiece?
AI-generated images don’t show too much detail, so we had to interpret a lot of the pieces on our own. This is when we had our fun with the creation of the pieces. We wanted to be respectful and not carve or source any charms that were referencing other cultures too directly. The timing was super tight, so we had to think and act quickly. Instinct was important in this respect. Me and my project lead Sierra quickly carved some organic forms that we cast in sterling silver. To make up the balance of the look, we sourced sterling silver and steel chains, a few charms and a lot of semi-precious and lab grown cz stones. I also wanted to offset the look of the piece even more, so we also sourced out random steel hardware pieces like buckles, dog tags and rings.
What about Erykah Badu's style inspires you?
I am convinced that I was at that same exact concert that the “Tyrone” video was shot so many years ago in the ’90s (and fun fact, she debuted that song to the audience back then and we all went wild, even hearing it for the first time). That just illustrates how much I have been inspired by Erykah and her music. Her style influence is undeniable. What I find most inspiring about her style in particular is that she owns it, all of it. Her style was always distinctive when she started out, but it has evolved much like the idea of that “global traveler” we were talking about. She has collected ideas and inspirations, and has remixed and outputted them into her own unique style. This style is clearly reflected in the headpiece and in the overall look with the beautiful Thom Browne look she wore with it.
What elements of CHRISHABANA do you see reflected in this piece?
This whole project just felt so aligned from the beginning. Even when I saw the AI image and saw that there was a septum cuff, I felt it was a perfect match to our own brand. Sterling silver is a language we use with CHRISHABANA, so it went well with the silver tone of the metals in the reference. Throughout the years of us making jewelry, I have also delved into re-contextualizing tribal cultures, especially in our My Enemy diffusion line, so this piece feels like an upscale interpretation of that look.
Photos courtesy of CHRISHABANA/Erykah Badu
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