Ericka Hart walks the runway during the Chromat x Tourmaline Spring/Summer 2022 Runway Show on Sunday in NYC. (Photo: Sean Zanni/Getty Images for Chromat)
Ensuring that New York Fashion Week 2021 went out with bang, sexuality educator, activist and breast cancer survivor Ericka Hart made a powerful statement on Sunday, modeling a red one-piece swimsuit on a beach runway and pulling the top down to expose her post-mastectomy scars and reconstructed breasts as she walked.
Hart, who modeled on the last day of New York Fashion Week, and is known for proudly bearing her scars — whether at AfroPunk, fashion shows (she's done several others) or in magazines — captured the moment in an empowering Instagram post, noting in the caption, "They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it's worth a little more or less depending on how you look."
"Fashion weeks," her post continued, "put such a high premium on whose body is worthy to be seen — even the shows that include one small fat, racially ambiguous person are sending a message. There's no way you can be a part of the fashion world and not critique it. Well I'm sure there's a way and perhaps that’s how it mostly just stays the same — from the folks designing the clothes to the models to the folks who are granted a seat to watch — no one should be feeling like s**t over some damn fabric!"
Hart adds, "Even as many Black queer trans non binary fat and disabled folks are granted access to a space that was created to exclude us, we have to still critique it and consider why we even want access to that space. And who am I if I don't or can't participate."
Finally, she thanks the designers behind the show — artist and activist Tourmaline, who collaborated with Chromat, the inclusive swimwear line founded by Becca McCharen-Tran — for "creating a show that didn’t disrupt a sacred space."
Hart, at center, wades in the Atlantic with other swimsuit models after walking in the Chromat x Tourmaline Spring/Summer 2022 Runway Show at Riis Beach Park on Sunday. (Photo: Sean Zanni/Getty Images for Chromat)
That space, the eastern end of Jacob Riis Park, a beach on the peninsula of the Rockaways in Queens, has long been a queer beach, particularly for LGBTQ people of color. As it gets discovered by others, Hart warns in her post, "is currently at risk of being gentrified."
"Gender euphoria" and the beach were themes of the show, Hart tells Yahoo Life. "Chromat has done swim for a very long time and has always included queer and trans and nonbinary people in their show… and it was great to bring it to Riis to honor what is a very sacred space and have folks in suits that were gender-affirming." The show was inclusive of all sizes, shapes and gender expressions, and the new swimwear line being premiered, collaborator Tourmaline explains in her own post about the show, is "designed for the girls who don't tuck, nonbinary and intersex people…"
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