Rising model Kukua Williams makes her second appearance on AOC in as many days. On rare occasions, we circle back through a model or photographer’s portfolio, trying to understand why we missed her. Williams appears in a new and absolutely spectacular editorial ‘The House of Yemanjá’. published by the Pleasure Garden.

Eric Pillault is the Creative Director for the white fashion story that honors Brazil’s goddess of the sea Iemanjá (also spelled Yemanjá.) AOC will update existing articles to share on this topic, because it’s a bedrock concept in Anne of Carversville since our beginning in 2007.

Yemanjá’ is considered be a water spirit, to me a descendant of Mami Wata.

Mami Wata's presence is pervasive partly because she can bring good fortune in the form of money. As a "capitalist" deity par excellence, her persona developed between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the era of growing trade between Africa and the rest of the world. Her very name, which may be translated as "Mother Water," is pidgin English, a language developed to facilitate trade. Countless enslaved Africans forcibly brought to the Americas as part of this "trade" carried with them their beliefs, practices, and arts honoring water spirits such as Mami Wata. Reestablished, revisualized, and revitalized in the African Atlantic, Mami Wata emerged in new communities and under different guises, among them Lasirèn, Yemanja, Santa Marta la Dominadora, and Oxum. African--based faiths honoring these manifestations of Mami Wata continue to flourish in communities throughout the Americas, including Haiti, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. via

Charlotte Roberts styles Kukua Williams in white — the color worn at Brazilian festivals in her honor — for images by Lucie Rox. Penny Mills is in charge of set design in a creative effort that soars./ Hair by Sarah Jo Palmer; makeup by Kristina Ralph Andrews ~ Anne