For Yuliya Suleymanova, being beautiful just comes naturally. But then, as she sees things, every one of us is beautiful, and fashion is how we show it. And she speaks with some authority, as a professor of Fashion Marketing at the Art Institute of Seattle, and Social Media chair for Fashion Group International, as well as the founder and brand strategist for SULÉY GROUP, a branding agency that deals with the range of digital imagery, from web graphics to short films.
“We need to think of fashion as allowing us to express ourselves,” she says. “I think fashion is one of the main tools we have to express ourselves.” And Yuliya advocates for an expansive definition of fashion.
“What I mean by fashion, expressing oneself is not just the clothing, but your hair style, make-up, body tattooing, your mannerisms, your demeanor, your language—all of that is fashion. It’s the way that humans choose to express themselves, and to find their tribe.” People, she says, who say they have no interest in fashion are misunderstanding what it encompasses. “Where you live, what you drive, where you eat, who you eat with, that’s fashion.”
Honoring the special struggle to see themselves, and have the world see them, as beautiful experienced by those who have been outcasts for who and how they love, Yuliya is mounting a new project, which she has dubbed, #IAmHuman—Everyone is Beautiful.
“The LGBTQA community has had to fight for their rights,” she says, referring to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender, queer and questioning, and the asexual and allied. “#IAmHuman is a reference to the self-expression, that we are all human—at the end of the day, we are all beautiful.”
#IAmHuman is envisioned as a human rights movement advocating, as well as celebrating acceptance of humans who identify with the LGBTQA community, and helping them to withstand hatred, prejudice, discrimination, and abuse.
“Within the LGBTQA community, there are local designers, local make-up artists,” Yuliya says. “I want to have a beautiful installation of them—to show them as individuals, in beautiful black-and-white photographs inspired by them. I want to take the installation to other
The #IAmHuman Project;
Because: We Are All Beautiful
By Manny Frishberg