MILAN – After delaying it once, the sophomore edition of the Black Carpet Awards eventually took place Friday night during Milan Fashion Week at Teatro Manzoni, with emotional award acceptance speeches and a sense of community.
“We are really, really grateful for what we are doing, and we are building together,” said Michelle Francine Ngonmo, the founder of the Afro Fashion Association and the mastermind behind the awards.
“Like we always say in the Black corporate teams, when you see a battle, you have to pull up. You need to understand if those battles have values and can trigger sort of a change in the society, and then you pull up, no matter your color, your gender,” she said.
Aimed at honoring the leaders of change based in Italy and belonging to underrepresented communities who are active in creative and entrepreneurial industries, the night drew the likes of Off-White creative director Ib Khamara, model Marias Borges, influencer Sita Abellan, vice president of human resources at Versace Fabrizio Cometto, Anna Wintour, and Carlo Capasa, the president of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, among others.
Anna Wintour with the nominees of the second edition of the Black Carpet Awards
Courtesy of Afro Fashion Association
“What Afro Fashion Association is doing for the Black and brown community in the Italian space is unprecedented,” echoed designer Edward Buchanan, a founding member of the association. “This association is a beacon of light for young creatives, business owners, entrepreneurs, anyone in this community that needs guidance, mentoring and most importantly, community, which is why we’re here today.”
The awards recognized talent from across fashion, design, food, music, sport and cinema, among other fields, in hopes of furthering the diversity, equity and inclusion conversation globally.
Ten awards were handed out across the entrepreneurship, legacy, community, culture, and creativity categories, presented by a diverse group of executives and fashion professionals.
“As a very white, privileged woman, I don’t think I can say that I understand what you’re talking about when you speak about the need of the community, because I am a very privileged person who has never had to ask [herself] such a question,” said Sabina Belli, chief executive officer of Pomellato. “My duty today is to absolutely try to support as much as I can, to use the visibility we have as privileged people to promote and to support what you guys do, which is absolutely paramount to belong to some place you feel safe.”
Supermodel Maria Borges at the Black Carpet Awards
Courtesy of Afro Fashion Association
Together with Nana Brenu, an Afro Fashion Association advocate and collaborator, as well as founder of the 1981 fashion brand, they awarded Ada Ugo Abara, a podcaster and information and communication technology expert, with the leader of change, entrepreneurship award.
Summoned on stage to bestow the prize in the creativity category to actor Alberto Malanchino, Off-White creative director Kamara, also part of the awards’ jury, recalled that he moved to Europe at a very young age from his native Sierra Leone.
“Because of where I’m from, I’m able to contribute to fashion from my perspective. And I think having so many voices here… it does add to fashion. It makes it much richer; it makes it much more colorful and much more brilliant… Let’s make sure Black kids globally are empowered at every single second, and they can be free and make amazing things,” Kamara said.
The award ceremony was spaced out by three-look fashion shows from a group of young fashion talents with diverse backgrounds including Delvin, Udeesha Singh, Khalifa Farhat, Zineb Hazim, Paul Zenam, Phan Dang Hoang, Karim Daoudi, Taste of Moon from Luna Tsuki, Victor Hart and Steve French.
The other awards for culture, community and legacy were presented to Danielle Madame, Johanne Affricot and Justin Randolph Thompson, respectively. In addition to the jury prizes, five people’s choice awards, one per category, were bestowed based on online voting.
The nominees of the 2024 Black Carpet Awards
Courtesy of Afro Fashion Association
In their acceptance speeches, winners took pride in building safe spaces for the Black and underrepresented communities to be welcomed, and seen trough their voices and entrepreneurial ventures
“For a long time I didn’t know where I belonged,” said Alessia Reyna, the people’s choice award winner in the community category for her D.E.I Futuro Antirazzista non-profit collective.
The ceremony wrapped on what turned out to be the night’s emotional zenith.
As Buchanan introduced the one-time Virgil Abloh Award, bestowed on fashion designer Romy Calzado, he praised the late creative for his contribution to Black representation.
“It’s the unity of two things that are very close to my heart, young creatives, young visionaries that were like me, that were looking in the creative sphere for someone that looked like them, so that they could see a reflection of them,” said Buchanan. “Virgil was a very special person to me…. Virgil was a friend. Virgil was a boss. Virgil was a visionary. Virgil was a father and a son. He gave so much to me, and he saw all of us… he would be so proud of us to celebrate these young creators that work within the Italian space, as he was always there with us since the beginning,” he said.
The inaugural Black Carpet Awards were held in February 2023 and although organizers were hoping for a second edition exactly a year later, they ultimately decided to push back the event to Friday.
Last February, the Afro Fashion Association hosted instead a warm-up cocktail reception to unveil the 2024 nominees. The organization has been active in Italy since 2015 spotlighting talent of different backgrounds with an original focus on the African continent drawn from a database of more than 3,000 professionals based on the continent.
