On June 12, Blackpanther star Lupita Nyong’o had me asking myself a question that made me rethink my entire existence: would I wear a mold of my own naked body?
After a short moment of deliberation before gazing down at my soon-to-be dad bod, I politely declined, but for Nyong’o who arrived at this year's Tony Awards in New York wearing a custom silver breastplate by designer Misha Japanwala, it was clearly a yes.
“Honored, humbled, strengthened, and energized to don this breastplate created by @mishajapanwala, which she cast and molded of my body,” the Kenyan-Mexican actress said on Instagram.
“Misha Japanwala is a Pakistani artist and fashion designer whose work is rooted in the rejection and deconstruction of external shame attached to one’s body. In her artistic process, she creates a realistic and true record of a person’s body as an act of resistance and celebration and an insistence on being allowed to exist freely in our bodies.”
The 40-year-old paired the armor-like silver breastplate with timeless formalwear, a velvet dinner jacket and wide-legged trousers, but in place of a classic shirt and tie lying quietly beneath the lapels, it was instead the Nyong'o's provocative metallic mold.
Lupita Nyong'o's look was as alluring as it was body positive. Everything bone down to her ribs were displayed in metallic drips of silver, as if her torso had been literally dipped into a pool of cooling metal lava.
Of course, breastplates aren’t a new thing in the world of fashion, anyone else remember seeing images of Yves Saint Laurent using them in shows as far back as the 1950s? Or when literal gladiators in the whenever the heck that time was were using them?.
But a bone-by-bone mold of your actual naked body? That’s a new one and Nyong’o's completed it.
