editor’s letter
table of contents Acknowledgments: 2 - Editor’s Letter 3 - Founder’s Note 4 - Contributors 5 - Special Thanks
Cover Story: 38 - The Mi’a Empire Featured Game Changer: 28 - Millena Oliveira, C.V.O Editorials: 18 - “Oberon and Titania” 40 - “Vernal Bloom” 44 - “Here, there be fairies” Style Gazers: 8 - Shop our Theme 10- Tyler Martin 12 - Kerrilyn Gibson Beauty: 14 - “Flora” 16 - 7 Ways to Get a Classic Red Lip 17 - What’s Up with Vegan Makeup? Artist Watch: 22 - Linetic Motion 32 - Be, the Movement 52 - Chasity Sereal Music: 56 - Gabriel Tajeu, Finding His Way
2
belladonna belladonnamag.org
As a kid, I wrote “novels” for my mom. As a pre-teen, I wrote cheesy love poems I still remember and refuse to recap. As a teen, I wrote darker, but equally cheesy, song lyrics. As I got older, I found my niches: fiction and blogging, both of which came easier than anything else I’d tried--and are, coincidentally, not as painful to re-read. Everything reads easier when I’m writing about something that matters to me, rather than writing for the sake of writing, and that’s how it should be. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to help spearhead “belladonna,” despite being nervous about the leap from writing for myself to writing for an audience. So far, it’s been so good. There were tons of emails, redos, late night (early morning) Google Hangout chats. There were ctrl-alt-delete moments. There were time zone complications, and so many surprises. Several jars of Nutella were harmed in the making of this magazine, and I can’t even distribute blame, because there was never anybody in the room with me. In fact, no two staff members were ever in the same place at the same time, because we are all scattered not only around the United States, but around the world. On top of it, most of us are juggling school, jobs, and other time consuming obligations. It has been a challenging, but exciting, experience, and I look forward to doing it all over again this month. And next month. And the month after that. Within the pages of each issue, you’ll find food, fashion, straight talk, resources, amazing people who are doing amazing things, and maybe even yourself. I couldn’t be more thrilled. Enjoy! Lori Jones, Editor-in-Chief, belladonna