Stephanie Watkins has a full plate. For most of every day, she’s a nursing professor at a Maryland university, with 15 years of experience in her field. The rest of the time, she’s a full-on creative, the mind behind Casa Watkins, a lifestyle, interiors and content creation site that serves as an outlet for all of her many creative endeavors. Her other major outlet for the past 11 years, has been her home - a gorgeous, 3100 square foot single family home in Aberdeen, Maryland. 

As anyone who’s ever been there will tell you, North Carolina is a beautiful place. Rolling hills, fantastic beaches, and a sky that seems to go on forever are just the start of its charms. It’s also one of the nation’s largest banking hubs. That makes it a natural place to find someone like Marie Cox. An accomplished executive and one of the few female Vice Presidents in banking, her Raleigh home is the perfect blend of comfort and culture, all presented with Marie’s eye for beautiful details and a remarkable collection of art. 

Sarai Reed is the woman behind Apron Saint, a design and lifestyle brand that offers home consulting services. The brand’s tagline, “home is wherever you are and whatever you make it”, sums up Sarai’s approach to design - home can be created absolutely anywhere, no matter how big or small one’s space is. In Washington DC, Sarai has made her apartment, that’s just a little over 500-square-feet, into a beautifully curated home for herself, her girlfriend April and their dog Lambo.

Pride marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, multiple demonstrations as a result of police violence at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, Stonewall patrons and community members clashed with police after officers stormed the bar, arresting, violating, and beating people as part of their routine raids on queer establishments. The escalation turned into two days of rebellion and protest, and what is considered to be one of the greatest movements in queer liberation.

Stephanie Summerson Hall is the founder of Estelle Colored Glass, a luxury brand of colored glassware that’s handmade by artisans in Poland. Jewel-tone stemware, decanters and cake stands are all part of Stephanie’s collection that has a cult following. Oprah, Hoda and Martha are fans.

In 2016, Charles Harbison was everywhere. He was a favorite designer of Beyoncé, Solange and Michelle. He had been featured by coveted fashion magazines and was in the spotlight at New York Fashion Week. And then suddenly, he was gone, relocated from New York to Los Angeles, and placing the brand on an indefinite hiatus.

Life is about passion, finding it and pursuing it. So when life in the corporate sector failed to ignite his, David Quarles IV set off to find it on his own. What he found was that he was a man of many passions, among them his new careers in jewelry design, interior design and fitness. With so much pursuing to do, he needed the right space to do it in, which he found in an artsy mid-century ranch, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Once the most important seat of Spanish power in the Americas, Cartagena, known then as Cartagena de Indias or Cartagena de Poniente (“of the West”), is one of Colombia’s most populous and visited cities. A stunning mix of natural wonder, intriguing antique architecture, and contemporary flavor, it’s a place where the cannons of centuries-old fortresses still overlook the water, and symbols of imperial power line streets walked by the descendants of conquistadors, slaves, and indigenous people alike.

Centuries are like decades. The first few years of one are mostly indistinguishable from the last few years of the one before. But eventually, new ideas and directions develop — often by recognizing the limitations of what came before — and slowly, an identity emerges. We are now firmly into the second decade of the 21st century. Despite several pivotal moments, this century has yet to fully define itself or honestly evaluate the problems that have developed with ideas, systems, and paradigms that have run their course — and we continue to suffer for it. The year 2020 was a masterclass in the shortcomings of our society in many areas that we consider permanent. But they all had beginnings, so they can have ends. Here are a few things we need to admit that we’ve outgrown in the 21st century.

There’s nothing more mysterious than a dream - and nothing more meaningful. An entire world made up of only one mind, a place where anything can happen and all that does is a reflection of that mind alone. In dreams the emotions are laid bare, though they come wearing guises picked from all the corners of our minds. Like the emotions, dreams can be bewildering, frightening, and most of all, instructive, though the lessons may be hard to grasp. To help us better navigate our own inner worlds, fine art photographer Fares Micune graciously offers us a tour of her own.

To say that Anthony Dunning has an eye for design would be an understatement. As the lead designer for his own company, Dunning is responsible for the creation of beautiful spaces in many homes and businesses. His own home is a living portfolio of his design ideas. His two-story apartment, located in the Riverdale section of The Bronx is a design-lover’s dream.

It is a tale of two sisters. One, the Rada Loa, Erzulie Fréda Dahomey, is the goddess of love, beauty, jewelry, dancing, and flowers. The other is Erzulie Dantor, most senior of the Petro Loa and goddess of motherhood, credited as the spiritual inspiration to Haiti’s famed revolution. Opposites in nature and rivals for the love of Ogun, the two are traditionally depicted as enemies. But for his SS20 collection, Haitian-born designer Prajjé Oscar Jean-Baptiste, painted a different story. 

Tobago is beautiful. With lush rainforests, towering mountains and endless beaches, it is beautiful in a way rivaled only by those few places equally fortunate to be located somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. It’s easy to believe that when Christopher Columbus first set foot on the island in the last years of the 15th century, that the beauty of the place was the first thing he noticed.

There is an old saying that goes: when white people get a cold, Black people get the flu. And unfortunately, the coronavirus outbreak has proved this to be true. More than 100,000 Americans have lost their lives due to COVID-19. And 40 million workers have filed for unemployment benefits in the last 10 weeks as they continue to lose work hours or lose their jobs altogether, affecting their wages and access to health care.

The summer of 2020 marks an incredible moment in history, seeing the birth of one of the largest civil rights movements the world has ever known. After years of what seemed like an endless cycle of Black death and white apathy, something new has happened. Cries of support for Black lives have begun to come from places that were once deathly silent as the terrifying immunity with which the police could kill Black people was proven over and over, one video at at time. The outrage of a community used to suffering alone has been felt by others and together they are beginning to stand up, not in one city or one nation, but all over the world.

Whether you’re looking to be an expert home gardener growing your own salads and herbs, or just a capable plant parent able to keep things green for as long as possible, the world of plants has become one of the biggest home trends of 2020. Sustainable, affordable, and with big benefits for health and wellness, plant life is attracting a growing number of homeowners — especially millennials — who are looking to breathe new life into their spaces. And with so many of us only able to watch the seasons change through our windows, who wouldn’t love to bring a bit of the outdoors in? Growing along with the trend, a whole new crop of brands have sprung up, ready to help you not only find the perfect plants for your home, but care for them as well. We sat down with Evann E. Webb, the woman who runs social media for the Detroit-based brand Bloomscape to discuss all things plants and wellness.

On a nondescript stretch of Broadway in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, stands a print shop empty of customers or seemingly anything to sell. It is a miracle establishment, not unlike the neighborhood it sits in. You wonder how it has survived Amazon and gentrification, and you wonder for how much longer.

One of the more interesting functions that my family house has served over the years has been that of a refuge for members of my family as they made the transition from one stage of life to another. My Uncle Allen — my grandmother’s brother — lived there for several months after leaving the Air Force. My uncle Rodney did, too, having served in the Air Force as well. Other family members came and went for a multitude of reasons. More than once the change in circumstances came after a fire had claimed another home. For me, the house was my first home. I lived there for a year before my parents moved first into an apartment, then into the house that I grew up in.

The world of Pan-Africanism in the 1960s was very different from the one into which the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams first introduced the term in 1900. Not only had 60 years passed, but with them two World Wars that had depleted the empires of Europe, loosening the stranglehold they once held on much of the rest of the world. But the impact of time wasn’t felt by Europe alone. Pan-Africanism had made its share of strides in that time as well.

Photographer Michelle Norris is one half of the creative team behind Tropico Photo. Norris runs the Atlanta-based photography company that with her husband and business partner, Forrest Aguar. Their 800-square-foot, one bedroom condo is proof that a small space can hold even the biggest design ideas.