Welcome Back to Slice of Life

WE❤️NEW YORK CITY

Thanks so much for attending our NYFW Creatives Dinner Party! Access our Guest Photo Album here! We can’t wait to host you again!

Les Adore, adores Valentine’s Day💌💘

It’s LOVE season, Harvard!

Still don’t have a Valentine’s Day date? Datamatch didn’t go out? Don’t worry! Les Adore has you covered — we’re hosting a blind date happy hour the night before V-Day (with a live harpist!). Take the excuse to dress up and come to Adams Pool Room alone or with a friend, enjoy some red wine with us, and leave by midnight with someone else. This year, we’re making sure no one walks home to Valentine’s Day alone. 

RSVP here before spots run out!

BYOB (BUILD YOUR OWN BOUQUET)💐

Calling romantics, cynics, and coffee addicts alike

Looking for a convenient and last-minute spot to buy flowers for your friends, romantic partners, and loved ones on Valentine’s Day? Come to Barker Cafe!

Les Adore will be hosting a pop-up BYOB (build your own bouquet) from 10am-2pm on Valentine’s Day in the Barker Center Cafe with roses and baby’s breath, starting as low as $4 per bouquet. Each bouquet includes a custom handmade card. 

Barker will also be selling special Valentine’s Day drinks, so be sure to pop by when you’re buying your morning coffee! And who knows, maybe you’ll meet someone new to buy flowers for while you’re there 👀

NYFW | Sergio Hudson🎩

NEW YORK − Black excellence is in the building.

For his New York Fashion Week runway show on Friday, Sergio Hudson brought out the best for his front row, including Keke Palmer, who has become somewhat of a Hudson muse and has been making the rounds all Fashion Week.

Muni Long and Tamron Hall also sat front row at the show, with all three looking like tall glasses of milk in various shades of white.

Palmer stunned in a creamy floor-length coat with large lapels, pairing it with a caramel turtleneck, cream trousers and large tan belt; Hall was cinched at the waist with a white double-breasted coat with satin lapels; and Long leaned into suiting with a white hourglass tuxedo jacket with a dark blue pocket square and a white button-down shirt and pants, topped with a white bow tie and glasses.

Sergio Hudson understands how to dress powerful women: It's proven by his references (he's often inspired by Robin Givens' character Jacqueline Broyer in the 1992 film "Boomerang"), his clients (Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, Keke Palmer, Lizzo, Beyoncé and Kamala Harris) and, of course, his clothes. The latter never fails strike to a unique balance between aspirational and wearable. 

His eponymous brand's core lineup of monochromatic separates, corseted tailoring and sharp suiting is striking, yet also inherently wearable and practical. It's what a strong, boss businesswoman wears while running her empire.

As for the looks, Sergio Hudson F/W 25 Captures 60s Classical Glamour. "This season I really just wanted to show American sportswear in a very luxe way," he told Fashionista backstage pre-show. "I feel like everyone is down and so depressed, so I just wanted somebody to see something beautiful and be inspired to say, 'We can dream, we can still go forward [and] we can still push.' To me, I would call [the collection] American sportswear in an opulent fashion."

It is the month of love again. May you find it wherever you look under the interminable February skies. I, for one, have discovered and rediscovered it, time and again, in the intensely rich archives of Black authors and writers — I invite you to do the same.

1. Open Water˙༄.°Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut novel beats like a heart I can hold in my hands. Its poetic prose rings out from every page, every line; if I could take a year to study every word, every admission, every declaration, I would. “At some point,” Nelson writes, “you must breathe.”

2. Beloved ♥︎ I’ll make this quick: if you haven’t yet read (one of) Morrison’s masterpiece(s), you must; if you have, do it again. “We need some kind of tomorrow,” and where else to start but here?

3. Haruko/Love Poems 🕮 June Jordan’s work leaves me aching. This collection of her love poems leaves me stunned, breathless, with too many words and too little time with which to speak them. In“Poem for Haruko,” she writes, “How easily you held / my hand / beside the low tide / of the world.”

10 Hidden Perks of Your Amazon Prime Membership

In the past, we relied on paper lists and brick-and-mortar stores, but Amazon Prime has revolutionized the way we shop. While free shipping and exclusive shows are great, don't miss these 10 hidden perks that can enhance your membership.

See Perks

It’s getting hot in here! That’s right — Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Whether you’re having a Galentines Girls’ Night or a romantic evening with your boo, I’ve picked the perfect Savage X Fenty lingerie pieces that will make even Cupid blush. 💌😋

Note: Each price tag reflects the new member 60% off discount

Loveline Satin Half-Cup Demi Bra: $19.98

Les Roses Lace Teddy: $23.98

Nite Shade Lace-Trim Sleep Teddy: $29.98

Loveline Underwire Basque: $25.98

Catch Me Cupid Lingerie 3-Piece Set: $33.98

Black History Month | Movies to Watch, now and everyday🖤

Moonlight, 2016

Where to watch

Barry Jenkins’ 2016 drama Moonlight portrays a young African American grappling with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the struggles of growing up in Miami in the 1980s at the height of the war on drugs. The modern masterpiece, with a stellar cast featuring Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders, and Alex R. Hibbert, received eight Academy Awards nominations and won 3 Oscars – including Best Picture. 

Do the Right Thing 1989

Where to watch

Spike Lee has long been among the filmmakers responsible for landmark films depicting race relations in America. Lee’s monumental 1989 drama Do the Right Thing brilliantly captures racial tensions on one blistering hot day in a Brooklyn neighborhood. The film, regarded as one of the best films of the 1980s, received two Academy Award nominations, including one for Lee’s screenplay.

I Am Not Your Negro, 2016

Where to watch

I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 documentary centered on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House, in which Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America. The film, directed by Raoul Peck, a Haitian filmmaker who was the Minister of Culture of Haiti for a period in the 1990s, offers a snapshot of Baldwin’s keen observations on American race relations, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. 

If Beale Street Could Talk, 2018

Where to watch

If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins’ 2018 drama based on the book by James Baldwin, portrays a young pregnant African American woman setting out to prove her lover innocent of a crime he did not commit. The film received three Academy Award nominations, and Regina King won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance.  

Kendrick Lamar Wins the Superbowl🦅🦅

With actor Samuel L. Jackson acting as Uncle Sam, Lamar performed some of the hits from his most recent album, GNX—“GNX”; “Squabble Up”—alongside background dancers dressed in red, white, and blue. Between song transitions, he rattled off phrases like “The revolution [is] about to be televised” and protested racism through defiance, continuing on as Jackson’s Uncle Sam interrupted his—in Jackson’s character’s words—“too ghetto” display. Instead of backing down, Lamar had his background dancers get into a color-coordinated formation of an American flag as he launched into hits “Humble” and “DNA.”

But Lamar was well aware of what we all really wanted to see, and he addressed the elephant in the room with a callout of Drake during his first tease of “Not Like Us”: “I wanna perform they favorite song, but you know they love to sue.” He then pivoted, introducing his frequent collaborator SZA to perform the more melodic song “All the Stars.” It wasn’t until Uncle Sam’s next interjection—“That’s what America wants: nice, calm”—that Lamar, characteristically defiant, turned it all the way up.

Lamar is canny. He knows that it’s a balancing act to be able to chide the U.S. for its anti-Blackness and respectability politics, and he knows that what’s needed on the opposite end of the scale is a gold bar of drama. That’s what he accomplished with his performance, which was full of attention-drawing slights at Drake. He brought out tennis legend Serena Williams, an ex of Drake’s who inspired a different beef between Drake and rapper Common, to C-walk during the big song, and he wore a diamond-encrusted chain featuring a lowercase a, most likely to represent the lyric “A minor.” (This was accompanied by dancers running across the field holding flags depicting children pointing to the same lowercase a.) As if that weren’t enough, some fans also believe that the other tunes in Lamar’s set list were intended as sneak Drake disses.”

And with that, Happy Black History Month!🤎

💌 lesadore.com | @lesadoree 💌

_{See you next week!}