Beyoncé's Stylist Tears Down The Fashion In Black Is King

 

Zerina Akers took on a project of epic proportions, and still knows every last detail of every last look.You were the one posting all those [Instagram] Stories, right?”It’s three days after Beyoncé’s jaw-dropping, feast-for-the-eyes Black Is King visual album dropped on Disney+, and I’m on the phone with her stylist, Zerina Akers, the woman behind the fashion fantasies that dazzle in the film and on Beyoncé in general.“You were on it,” she says, referencing my obsessive identification of key looks on social media. No, Zerina, you were on it.Akers, who got her start as an intern in the fashion closet at W magazine, has been working with Beyoncé for the last six years. Growing up in Landover, Maryland, she used to test her fashion knowledge by flipping to a magazine page and identifying the designer credits without looking. The W internship led to jobs assisting stylists like Camilla Nickerson, Lori Goldstein, and B. Akerlund. It was on a shoot with B. Akerlund that Akers first crossed paths with Beyoncé. A few months later, she heard that Beyoncé was looking for a full-time stylist, and after a one-month trial, Akers was in. A match made in fashion heaven, their first collaboration was on the Beyoncé's Instagram editorials back in 2014, which have become part of Beyoncé’s visual storytelling. With every project they embark on together, they go bigger, harder, than the last. Black Is King is testament to that.It’s surreal,” Akers says about working on the visual album, which is the defining pop culture moment of the year (in my opinion). “It’s humbling. It’s exciting, and it’s scary, to be honest. I didn’t expect such a tremendous response. It’s a different thing when you’re in it. You’re kind of buried in it and you don’t know. You’re kind of putting one foot in front of the other, but now, for it to be out and so well received, it’s pretty tremendous.”