Mario Testino’s ‘Master Class’ Resonates for Women’s Rights in 2024 Election

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Mario Testino’s ‘Master Class’ Resonates for Women’s Rights in 2024 Election

Always commenting on fashion stories beyond any style trend, AOC wrote in 2011:

Fall’s strict attitude borders on religious fervor but also brings to mind the fact that the new Dutch republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe, leading the continent in trade, science and art. This came about at the end of the European religious wars that spawned the Protestant Reformation and revolt against the Catholic Church.

Anne’s Reflections

As I reposted this ‘Master Class’ 2011 fashion story by Mario Testino for British Vogue, I found myself thinking about American history back to the founding of our country and also the changes in the last 50 years of America.

It was a Protestant-dominant, moderate US Supreme Court who gave women the right to abortion and contraception in 1973, based on constitutional arguments.

Five decades later, a disproportionately-conservative, Catholic-dominant Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

This Roberts court is not finished giving state governments absolute control over women’s bodies. AOC will educate readers and fight for the return of our hard-won rights in the 2024 elections. ~ Anne

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Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA

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Rocio Ramos Seizes the Power of Cardinals for Marie Claire Mexico and LA AOC Fashion

Photographer Rocio Ramos [IG] captures unadulterated-red, fashion passion in the October pages of Marie Claire Mexico and Latin America. Model Dalianah Arekion poses in primal, earth-goddesses elegance styled by Abraham Gutiérrez.

Most fashion media will promote the color red as symbolizing new energy and interest in living with the latest seasonal wardrobe. The message is consumption-oriented — which is understandable, especially if we are looking at the latest, earth-loving sustainable fashion buys.

We doubt that is the case here — that we are looking at sustainable fashion. But there are even higher principles at play in these images. AOC knows for a fact that artist and photographer Rocio Ramos is on our wave-length, and she likes the writing her images inspire.

So we will move out on red, into the fast lane.

Red Symbolism

The color red is most often associated with a passion for living and an embrace of love, but also carnal pleasures. Red is known as an emotionally-intense color that enhances human metabolism and increases respiration rate, while raising blood pressure. The impact of the color red on the human body has been seriously studied.

Culturally-speaking we are in a red-alert moment that transcends fashion runways and embraces the duality of competing narratives about our very humanity.

Red is the color of fire and blood, one often associated with energy, war, power and danger. Red is considered to be aggressive and fierce, but also grounding. In the world of 7 chakras, red is the root chakra, and while it’s easy enough to dismiss red as primitive with its positioning on the chakra chart, it is also responsible for our sense of security and stability.

When apes first stood tall and began walking into humanity, their root chakra was in high gear — literally. Rocks and caves were homes to humanity before we created mobile structures made of mammoth tusks. The setting for Rocio Ramos’ fashion story is perfect, because it embraces the necessities of security, survival and being rooted as the very foundation of our lives.