Sam Fine + Fashion Fair. What Are Your Thoughts? Like this article? Read the full story: Sam Fine + Fashion Fair. What Are Your Thoughts? | Afrobella

By Afrobella.com

Makeup lovers have been buzzing this week over the big news — venerable cosmetics brand Fashion Fair has hired legendary makeup artist Sam Fine to be their creative makeup director.

Photo above and info below via WWD:

“Fashion Fair Cosmetics has appointed celebrity makeup artist Sam Fine as its creative makeup director. The Chicago-based prestige cosmetics brand for women of color is tapping Fine, a 20-year industry veteran, to bring his experience with the fashion editorial world, global beauty brands and celebrities to Fashion Fair’s consumers. Fine will also advise on the creation of new products and, in 2012, Fashion Fair will unveil Sam Fine for Fashion Fair trend collections.”

I literally gasped and clutched at pearls I wasn’t even wearing when I read the news. Fresh life hs been brought to the Fashion Fair brand and I’m truly excited to see what this brings. I hope this brings big, exciting change for Fashion Fair, for the beauty scene in Chicago, and for we, the consumers.

I hope that Sam truly gets to execute his vision as he sees it, because I KNOW whatever it is, it’s an awesome vision. I’m psyched to see some true innovation coming from a brand that has been a favorite in my family through the generations.

When I think Fashion Fair, I think of classic cosmetics. Those beautiful vintage ads. Pink marbled packaging. Vantex. I also think of a very finite range of colors in terms of eye and lip cosmetics. So I hope this means Fashion Fair steps up and truly becomes a brand that younger women of color can look to as a trendsetter at the department store counters.

I hope to see the brand stepping away from the traditional coppers and browns and bronzes and moving towards some truly HOT new shades of eye and lip colors. I’m hoping to see lighter blends of foundation in a wider range of shades. I’m expecting awesomeness. And I am SUPER excited for Sam, because he is just all around a great guy.

What do you think, bellas? What do you hope to see from the new Sam Fine for Fashion Fair collections?

Like this article? Read the full story: Sam Fine + Fashion Fair. What Are Your Thoughts?

Every Ebony Issue from 1959 to 2008 Now Online

The Future Forward points out a fun way to waste away the few hours left before the weekend: Every issue of Ebony, from 1959 to 2008, is now available online. To the right is one from February 1970, featuring a stunning Diana Ross.

The magazine partnered with Google to launch the project. As you can tell, it’s a work in progress, as not every issue is available just yet.

Check out a collection of our favorite covers after the jump.

'Oprah Winfrey Show' Ending May 25

The final original episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" will air May 25. Winfrey's Chicago-based Harpo Productions confirmed the date Friday. Winfrey announced live on the show in November 2009 that she would end its run after 25 years. She since has launched cable's Oprah Winfrey Network.

"The Oprah Winfrey Show" has been in reruns for the last few weeks. But Winfrey tweeted Thursday that she was "hard at work planning the final shows" and new episodes would begin April 7.

The final episode brings an end to what has been television's top-rated talk show for more than two decades. It airs in 145 countries worldwide.

Read more: Jennifer Hudson says "I do" to Target when Lady Gaga wouldn't

by Ed Stych

Pop star Lady Gaga may not want to form an exclusive arrangement with Target Corp., but other music stars aren't following her lead.

Target announced Monday that Grammy Award-winning singer Jennifer Hudson had signed an exclusive deal with the Minneapolis-based retailer for a deluxe edition of her new album, "I Remember Me."

The deluxe edition, which includes four additional songs and bonus video material, will only be available at Target starting Tuesday, the company said in a news release.

It was widely reported earlier this month that Lady Gaga had ended her deal with Target for exclusively selling a deluxe version of her new album, "Born This Way." Lady Gaga said Target wasn't doing enough to help gay and lesbian causes.

Target was still offering customers the opportunity to pre-order the deluxe version on its website on Monday. But so were other retailers, such as Amazon.com. The album will be available May 23.

Kennedy Center Honors 2010: Paul McCartney, Bill T. Jones, Oprah Winfrey honored

Winfrey has become our national confessor, our friendly, neighborhood billionaire philanthropist, the wizard who sprinkles magical dust over every author, entrepreneur, do-gooder and politician within her orbit. What Winfrey doesn't do is as powerful a statement as what she does. How dare she not interview Sarah Palin! The culture, it seems, has declared ownership of "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Winfrey begs to differ - but only to a point. "I feel it's very much my show in that every decision you see on the show has come from that desk," she says, gesturing toward the pale green, bean-shaped table in her office. "The part that belongs to the culture is every single person who has watched . . . who has found or discovered a piece of light from it. Flecks of light, that's what I call it."

The Scottsboro Boys: Racism and razzle-dazzle

By J. KELLY NESTRUCK

No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern Railroad freight run on March 25, 1931. Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left.

Fast forward to Fall 2010, in their two most famous works, Cabaret and Chicago, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb used popular forms of entertainment as metaphors for our tainted world. A resigned Sally Bowles insisted that “life is a cabaret,” while cocksure Billy Flynn asserted that “it's all a circus … the whole world, all show business.”

The Scottsboro Boys, Kander and Ebb's troubling new musical, begins with a slightly less definitive pronouncement. “Everyone's a minstrel tonight,” sings the Interlocutor (Tony Award winner John Cullum, the only Caucasian in the cast) at the start of this show that repurposes the trappings of minstrelsy to revisit a racial injustice from the not-so-distant past.

Now getting its Broadway premiere in a powerful and unsettling production by Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys is in fact the final collaboration between Kander and Ebb, assuming the former doesn't have any unfinished shows hiding away in a drawer somewhere. (Ebb died in 2004.)

Under the command of the Interlocutor, a company of dynamic African-American performers perform the true story of the Scottsboro boys with a little help – and hindrance – from the sadistic stock minstrel characters Mr. Tambo and Mr. Bones (the formidable caricaturists Forrest McClendon and Colman Domingo),

Riding the rails in 1931 Alabama, nine black boys aged from 12 to 19 were arrested and accused of the gang rape of two white women. After they were sentenced to death, their objectionable convictions became a cause célèbre that led to the Supreme Court and, at one point, to 300,000 Americans protesting in 110 U.S. cities.

As the illiterate Haywood Patterson, who eventually learned to write and penned a book in prison, Winnipeg-born Joshua Henry gives a tremendous lead performance. Throughout his incarceration, Haywood remains defiant and tells the truth even when, in a cruel paradox, a lie would set him free. Henry plays him with a quivering, furious integrity, but also enough flawed humanity that he never turns into a symbol.

While Henry showed off his tank of a body in Green Day's American Idiot earlier this year, he now gets to prove what kind of dramatic ammunition he is packing in numbers like Nothin', in which, stuck in an impossible situation, Haywood performs a brutally slow, mocking shuck-and-jive.

Kander's catchy music – a mix of ragtime and American folk song – is effectively undercut by Ebb's lyrics. A song like Southern Days is beautiful, even as its ironic lyrics aim to wring all the nostalgia out of standards like My Old Kentucky Home that owe their origins to minstrel shows.

Stroman, who showed that nothing succeeds like excess with The Producers, here directs with impressive economy. With a few quick movements, the cast transforms the simple set of chairs and wooden planks into, for instance, a train chugging out of Chattanooga with tambourines for wheels.

Her most chilling staging comes during Electric Chair, a dream tap ballet in which the youngest of the boys (the naturally talented Jeremy Gumbs) has a nightmare about his upcoming execution that turns into what seems like a mad Mickey Mouse cartoon (Mickey being one of the few remaining pop-culture icons still to bear the traces of minstrelsy and blackface).

While Stroman's choreography and the energetic performances keep tempting you to enjoy The Scottsboro Boys's spectacle, the form the show takes never allows you to do so with a clear conscience.

The minstrelsy aspects – including a scene in blackface – have proved controversial, with small protests organized outside the show on recent weekends. But the cast's twisted portrayal of the women who made the accusations and the boys' Jewish lawyer are more potentially offensive than anything involving the African-American characters, whose side the show takes unequivocally.

Burlesque - the movie

CHRISTINA AGUILERA

• Cast: Cher, Cam Gigandet, Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell, Alan Cumming

Cinematical has the movie poster for Burlesque starring Christina Aguilera and Cher. In the movie

, Aguilera plays a small town girl with big town dreams who moves to L.A. where she gets a job as a waitress at The Burlesque Lounge with dreams of one day performing. Blah, blah, blah, she becomes a star. I’m sure you’ve heard the story a thousand times, since it as old as Cher. We’ll have to wait until November, however, to see if it has aged as well. Continue reading to check out the poster.






Ali (Christina Aguilera) is a small-town girl with a big voice who escapes hardship and an uncertain future to follow her dreams to LA. After stumbling upon The Burlesque Lounge, a majestic but ailing theater that is home to an inspired musical revue, Ali lands a job as a cocktail waitress from Tess (Cher), the club’s proprietor and headliner. Burlesque’s outrageous costumes and bold choreography enrapture the young ingenue, who vows to perform there one day.

Soon enough, Ali builds a friendship with a featured dancer (Julianne Hough), finds an enemy in a troubled, jealous performer (Kristen Bell), and garners the affection of Jack (Cam Gigandet

), a bartender and fellow musician. With the help of a sharp-witted stage manager (Stanley Tucci) and gender-bending host (Alan Cumming), Ali makes her way from the bar to the stage. Her spectacular voice restores The Burlesque Lounge to its former glory, though not before a charismatic entrepreneur (Eric Dane) arrives with an enticing proposal…

Burlesque opens November 24th.

United Airlines Unveils Oprah Winfrey Plane

United Airlines has unveiled "The Oprah Winfrey Show" farewell season plane to honor the iconic talk show host's 25th and last season on CBS before embarking on running her own cable channel.

The Boeing 757 aircraft is newly painted with imagery from the TV show. The interior also has been redecorated and passengers will be greeted by a special onboard video welcome from Winfrey.

At a send-off event Thursday at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, customers heard a special message from Winfrey before boarding the flight. One passenger will win enough United Mileage Plus miles for a trip around the world. Each customer on the inaugural flight also received a monogrammed "Oprah 25" fleece blanket.

In conjunction with the unveiling of plane, United is launching the "Million Mile Giveaway" -- a sweepstakes that will award one million United Mileage Plus miles to one winner each month through May 2011. Additional prizes include Oprah Store e-cards. Details for the sweepstakes can be found at the airline's dedicated microsite for the promotion: www.unitedmillionmiles.com.

United will fly the plane to and from cities in United's domestic network through May 2011. At the end of the show's season, the plane will be repainted.

Customers and "Oprah" show viewers are encouraged to take photos of the plane and upload them to the plane photo gallery on the sweepstakes Web site. Initial photos on the site include shots of the artists painting the outside of the plane.

Q&As about the plane on United's Web site include: Q: Will Oprah Winfrey be on the Plane? A: No. Oprah Winfrey will not be on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" Farewell Season Plane. However, unique to the plane will be an onboard video welcome from Oprah Winfrey.

"As Chicago's hometown airline, United is proud to celebrate The Oprah Winfrey Show's Farewell Season with our customers, employees and 'Oprah' show fans," said Mark Bergsrud, senior vice president of marketing for United, in a statement. "This unique plane represents the global reach of two great Chicago icons."

The End of an Era in Black Fashion

Fashion Fair
By Margena A. Christian

On Januauary 3, 2010, Mrs. Eunice Johnson, producer and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair and secretary-treasurer of Johnson Publishing Company, died of renal failure at her home in Chicago. She was 93.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art honored her work on January 11th as a philanthropist and fashion icon. The tribute, was planned some time ago, and several months in the making. “Mrs. Johnson elevated the image of Black women being fashion conscious, fashion forward and affluent,” said Kenneth Owen, assistant producer of Ebony Fashion Fair, who was handpicked by the fashion pioneer 26 years ago to work alongside her.

Born on April 4, 1916 in Selma, Ala., Mrs. Johnson came from a prestigious family. Her sophistication and fashion sense wasn’t bought. She was born with it. Mrs. Johnson’s father, Dr. Nathaniel D. Walker, was a doctor who practiced medicine for five decades, while her mother, Ethel McAlpine Walker, taught education and art at Selma University. The institution was founded by Dr. William H. McAlpine, her maternal grandfather, who also founded the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. and was close friends with Booker T. Washington.Education was important in the Johnson household. She graduated from Talladega College with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in art. A master’s degree was later earned in social work from Loyola University in Chicago. Mrs. Johnson was working as a social worker when she quit her job to support her husband John’s vision of starting a magazine that focused on Black life.

When he was having trouble trying to find a name for a new magazine in 1945, he asked her for guidance since she had a degree in art. She chose Ebony because it means “fine black African wood.” The magazine would go on to define generations.

To read the whole story go to: Ebonyjet.com

Ex-Foster Child Now $1 Million Scholar

AOL News

Derrius Quarles cuts a sleek figure on the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta, GA. The 19-year-old freshman favors tailored suits, reported the Chicago Tribune, and hands out business cards emblazoned with the words "Student/Entrepreneur/Leader." But his route to higher education has been a rocky one, said the paper. His father was stabbed to death when Quarles was four, while his mother struggled with drug addiction.

He spent the rest of his childhood with relatives or in foster homes, the Tribune reported. At times he and his older brother would steal bread and snacks from nearby convenience stores. And by the time he turned 17, Quarles was living on his own. Yet he was determined to pull himself up by his own bootstraps, the Tribune said. "I've had people tell me that I ain't never gonna be s---," he told the paper. "That's not a scratch, that cuts deep. After so many people put me down, I said, 'I'm gonna show you.'" To that end, Quarles pushed himself to the limit when he enrolled in Chicago's Kenwood Academy High School. Not only was he earning straight A's by his junior year -- he also scoured the Web for information about scholarships.

His efforts paid major dividends, said the Tribune. Quarles won more than $1 million in scholarship offers, a rare feat accomplished by only about a dozen students nationwide each year. Along with his full ride at Morehouse, Quarles won a Gates Millennium Scholarship worth $160,000 and two others worth $20,000 each. As for his ambitions, Quarles is just getting started, reported the paper. He hopes to attend medical school, set up a tutoring program for low-income students in Chicago, get involved in public-health policy, and eventually become U.S. surgeon general. "I have no time to play around," he told the Tribune. He added: "I want to make a difference. I want to show people that I can be all those things people said I could never be."
2009 AOL LLC. All Rights Reserved

Fat Bitch!!! - The Girl called Erica

"Fat Bitch!" A One Woman Show by Erica Watson
Yes! Erica Watson is a "Fat Bitch!" but society made her this way!

Produced by 2005 NBA World Champ Nazr Mohammed
Hosted by Comedian Nore Davis (From MTV's New Show "Love Squad")

October 7-10th, 2009

The Tank 354 West 45th Street (9th Avenue)

New York, NY
7:30pm $10.00
Get Tix at the door or in advance

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/71301

"Fat Bitch!" is a funny yet thought-provoking look at how society’s
obsession with weight, race and class have formed the way the world views her shape,
and includes her interactions with men, from the boardroom to the bedroom. Written and
performed by Watson as a hybrid of theatre and stand-up, “Fat Bitch!” explores how black women and their bodies have always been subjected to admiration and ridicule, and shares images of “Mammy” and “Hottentot Venus.” The production runs about 90 minutes without intermission, and is for ages 18 and up (some limited profanity in show).

Through personal vignettes, anecdotes and video clips, “Fat Bitch!” also offers a humorous and honest glimpse at the American “fat and sassy” black woman stereotype. How these media images have impacted Watson’s self-esteem are covered - from PETA’s recent “Save the Whales” billboard campaign aimed at overweight women, to the current national “war on obesity” and the recent controversy surrounding President Obama’s nomination of a plus-sized black woman for Surgeon General. Watson is a Columbia College Chicago graduate, with a BA in Film and TV (1998), and a MA in Media Management (2005).

Influenced by the quick wit of Whoopi Goldberg, the blunt comedic observations of Wanda
Sykes, and the larger-than-life confidence of Mo’Nique, Watson (who is in the upcoming film
“Precious” with Mo’Nique, as well as 2006’s “Dirty Laundry” with Loretta Devine) creates a
universal point of view yet offers a new voice in comedy. “Fat Bitch!” has been workshopped at New York’s “The Tank;” first during the Black Comedy Experiment in March 2008, then in May 2009, and a pre-Chicago run from October 7-10, 2009.

“Fat Bitch!” is being produced by NBA champion, Charlotte Bobcats Center, and Chicago
native Nazr Mohammed, who Watson has known since elementary school, when they lived next door in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood (blocks from President Obama’s house)