Erykah Badu Is The New Face Of Givenchy

Erykah Badu can now add “muse” and “model” to her resume. The neo-soul singer has been named the new face of Givenchy’s spring 2014 campaign!

Riccardo Tisci, creative director at the French fashion house, spoke with Style.com about the new collection and gushed over Erykah, calling her an icon and “one of the most stylish women he’s ever met in his life.”

Tisci had known Badu slightly but had never worked with her. Still, he said, he’d had her image in the back of his mind when he was designing the Spring 2014 collection, a mash-up of African and Japanese influences. “She’s one of the most stylish women I’ve met in my life,” he said. “She’s got such a good sense of proportion, of colors.”

Who knew Riccardo Tisci was such a Badu stan?

On featuring the iconic singer, he revealed:

“Erykah, she’s an icon—come on! What I want to do with my advertising campaign is spread the love. Already now it’s been three seasons that I’ve been using people that express something—they are great artists, or beautiful women, or stylish women, or models that I really believe in. It’s kind of a family portfolio.”

The campaign is already making history, too. It’s the first campaign of its kind to exclusively use women of color.

On the topic, Riccardo says:

“There was a lot of talk this season in fashion [about designers not promoting diversity]. I was one of the persons who ended up not being touched by this. I discovered Joan Smalls, I discovered Maria [Borges]. I’ve always been supporting them. For me, I grew up in a family and I grew up in a culture, an education, that we are all the same.”

Hopefully, this inspires more fashion houses to step outside the box.

And in both “Models of Color Doing It Big” news, fashion house Christian Dior plans to honor Nelson Mandela by featuring South African Model Roxanne Jooste as the face of its next campaign.

Roxanne Jooste is a supermodel from Capetown, signed to Wilhelmina Models. The campaign, which was shot by photographer Mike H, is the first Dior campaign to feature a South African model.

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