Ade Samuel: Celebrity stylist lands ESSENCE magazine cover story with Black Panther cast

Celebrity stylist and designer Ade Samuel lands a career coup by styling the Black Panther cast for the cover of ESSENCE magazine.

Celebrity stylist and designer Ade Samuel lands a career coup by styling the Black Panther cast for the cover of ESSENCE magazine.

The stars of the highly anticipated film Black Panther; Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Daniel Kaluuya, Forrest Whitaker, Letitia Wright are the cover stars of Essence Magazine's March 2018 Issue.
ALSO READ: Ade Samuel on Fashion Inspiration, Challenges with Skin Color

Read excerpts from the interview below:

Danai Gurai on playing Okoye, the head of the Dora Milaje, a powerful all-female army of bodyguards

The idea of creating a scenario where you're seeing very powerful, empowered Africans is really thrilling to me, something my heart, soul, and spirit yearned to see

Director Ryan Coogler on what it means to be African

I had really been studying the effects of colonisation and the African Diaspora, specifically as it relates to African-Americans and Africans, and what I hit on was this concept of what it means to be African. I pitched that to the studio as a main theme of exploration, and they were totally interested, which is, to their credit, really cool.

Angela Bassett shares how Coogler called her up to play the character of Queen Ramonda

But a queen is a queen is a queen of a Black nation. Just to have that opportunity to portray that image—me, a little Black girl from the Florida projects.