Introducing a renaissance like La Renardé has required many layers. I chose to begin with the themes of levitation and divine femininity because I needed to start from home from the spirit that raised me, shaped me, and continues to guide me.
The cover serves as an ode to La Mariposa, the Butterfly Woman, Mother Earth. Not for her youthful symbolism, but for the wisdom, resilience, and power within the feminine line. The tale of rebirth and transformation belongs to the divine feminine, and it is through her that life renews itself.
At the heart of this brand lies another spirit: the fox. The fox is the essence of La Renardé clever, instinctual, feminine, and untamed. She is the vixen, the watchful guide, the keeper of secrets, and the symbol of survival. To begin with levitation and divine femininity is to start from home, but the fox reminds us of the spiritualism layered beneath it all, the mysticism, the duality, and the art of adaptation.
In this issue, I wanted to give space to voices and images that honor the matriarchal roles that ground us. The hierarchies of powerful women. The world as seen through the eyes of the divine feminine. The artistry of duality, strength and tenderness, creation and destruction, embodied in the goddess, and explored through the tensions of complexes like the Madonna–whore divide.
This issue is a love letter to the delicacy and power of the Black divine feminine, to the Southern feminine spirit that nurtures and transforms, and to the grandmothers who carried us through eras of change. It is, above all, an ode to legacy and the levitation that comes when we honor the divine feminine in all her forms, guided always by the fox.
—Mikyla Jackson Jordan
Editor-in-Chief, La Renardé