Aurora James Is Fashion’s April 2023 Cover Star
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Loading... - Beatrice Serra
- 20 Mar 2023
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As the founder of Brother Vellies and the Fifteen Percent Pledge, the Canadian-born entrepreneur and activist is shaping the future of economic equality. Meet the fashion industry's number one disrupter.
When her first book, Wildflower: A Memoir, hits shelves next month, Aurora James will be doing more of what she does best: empowering others while infusing the world with optimism. “You can totally mess up everything and still have the exact life you want,” declares the Canadian-born fashion entrepreneur and activist on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “I dropped out of high school and got kicked out of Ryerson [now Toronto Metropolitan University] — both signs that were not pointing to me being one of Glamour’s Women of the Year,” she says, referring to an honour bestowed on her in 2022. (She was also named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2021.) “But you can’t count yourself out. We spend so much time thinking that we’re just too bruised to be the thing that we want to be or do what other people are doing, and it’s entirely untrue. Your own unique set of experiences actually makes you the perfect person to do the thing you want to do.”
As we chat, the 38-year-old appears effortlessly fresh-faced and energized. She has just spent Martin Luther King Jr. Day contacting and announcing the 10 grant semifinalists of her game-changing non-profit organization, the Fifteen Percent Pledge (15PP). James’s life, like the lives of so many others, was drastically altered in May 2020. As North America reeled amid the racial disparity following the death of George Floyd and citizens on both sides of the border were looking for a way forward to greater equality, her now-historic Instagram post created seismic change in a flash. Read More…
