About Michaela Angela Davis
Michaela Angela Davis has believed in the power and beauty of urban and hip-hop style and culture for over 15 years. She began her service to the industry as assistant fashion editor at ESSENCE magazine in 1991. She then went on to be the founding fashion director at Vibe magazine after which she began a dynamic career as a celebrity fashion stylist and journalist. She contributed fashion features to numerous publications, bringing “color” to magazines like Mirabella and Vanity Fair. Davis has lent her image-making prowess to a host of artists and cultural icons, such as Beyonce, Prince, Oprah Winfrey, Maxwell, Alicia Keys, Diana Ross, Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Al Green and Pink. Davis served as style advisor on the urban cult classic film “Paid in Full”. She was and continues to be tapped to write fashion and culture commentary for magazines and books like, Everything But The Burden: what white people are taking from black culture, edited by Greg Tate. She authored Beloved Baby (1995, Pocket Books), a scrapbook and journal for alternative families.
In 2003 Michaela inevitably returned to magazines as fashion director and ultimately editor-in-chief of Honey magazine, then back to work under her mentor Susan L. Taylor at ESSENCE as executive fashion and beauty editor, also top-editing the magazine’s CULTURE section. While at ESSSENCE she spearheaded the breakthrough initiative TAKE BACK THE MUSIC a movement to bring awareness and balance to the disproportionate amount of hyper-sexualized images of young women of color in mainstream media. As a result, she has spoken at prestigious institutions such as Spellman and Yale colleges; she’s appeared on CNN, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly Show, BBC, MTV, and VH1 (where she coined the now classic response to the most predictable explanation for the plight, that being, ”Sex sells”. Her retort? ”Crack sells too, that doesn’t make it good!”), Americas’ Black Forum, BET and more. Davis hosted a session at the 2005 Congressional Black Caucus. She was invited as a special guest speaker at the first Young Feminist Summit as part of N.O.W.’s 50th anniversary. Additionally, she co-produced and moderated “Who You Calling a Ho?: Sisters Take Back Their Sex” as part of the 2006 Essence Music Festival’s Empowerment Seminar Series garnering record-breaking attendance. She is also very active on the issue on a community level, serving as a board member of ImageNation: a Harlem-based film festival and cinema house dedicated to films and filmmakers of the African diaspora, Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School and Black Girls Rock! a mentoring foundation which launched this fall with an all female youth hip-hop panel and performance to a standing room only crowd at The City Museum of New York and awards ceremony and celebration for the legendary DJ Jazzy Joyce and McLyte in partnership with NYC’s premiere VH1 Hip-Hop Honors Week. BGR! produced the week’s only programming honoring women in hip-hop.
She also serves as a frequent commentator and style expert on Metro TV and Women’s Entertainment Television’s Full Frontal Fashion and E! and hosts a progressive internet-broadcast fashion news show, The Rogue Fashion Report. She was the urban fashion expert advisor on Black Style Now on exhibit at CMNY. Davis is currently producing a documentary film “Something Like a Phenomenon: How Hip-Hop Dressed the American Dream” and developing an “Urbanista” television show.
Raised in Washington, D.C., Davis attended New York University and The New School and currently resides with her teenage daughter in Brooklyn, N.Y. A performer at heart, Michaela also studied acting at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts as a National Arts Scholar, and has trained at Stella Adler Acting Conservatory and the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.