Ever since hot Formula One racer and part-Grenadian islandisto Lewis Hamilton broke up with his long-time girlfriend a year ago he has been seen out with a slew of gorgeous women - as well we would expect from a young man who has ... well, everything! Good looks, tons of money (apparently made 10 million GBP last year), an exploding career, good looks...Interestingly enough, Lewis is quite close to his Grenadian family and visits the island often to see his grandfather who returned to his native island after moving to Britain in the 1950s like many other West Indians. Perhaps this close connection to the islands influenced his choice of partner as he has been seen out with various islandistas.First he turned heads with Miss Grenada World 2007, Vivian Burkhardt who accompanied him to no less an event than the premiere of Indiana Jones at the Cannes Film Festival last month. Burkhardt is a student at St. Georges University in Grenada.
(photo credit: Reuters and Big Pictures Photo via Daily Mail.co.uk )He was also seen out and about with our favourite "brings a whole new meaning to fierce" supermodel islandista Naomi a few months ago and caught up with her again recently at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday party in London a few days ago.
The most recent woman on his arm though, has been Pussycat Dolls lead singer (and Pacific Ocean islandista) Nicole Scherzinger who was the one who actually accompanied him to Mandela's birthday do. 
(photo credit: WENN, Marsland/Hogan/Wireimage via YBF.com)It would have been nice though if she actually wore a whole shirt to a dignified event honouring the 90th birthday of a living legend ... a little broughtupcy would be nice... I think he should have stuck to Miss Grenada whose Cannes outfit was great. As people say in cricket, class is class, form is only temporary!
Trini-descended islandista Nia Long was absolutely working this plum-coloured dress. I loved everything about it - the rich colour, the daring back with just the two suspender-like straps down to the waist, the draped pockets at the sides, the plunging neckline - it was a winner from every direction. And of course, Nia herself is just fabulous - she really harkens back to the late 90s, early 'noughties' heyday of black romantic cinema featuring all those fabulous buppies - Love Jones, The Best Man, Soul Food ... what happened to those movies anyhow? There was a good run there in the late 90s.
Another islandista by descent, the half-Nevisian Mel B aka Scary Spice was also at the awards and showed off her fabulous body in this close-fitting champagne-coloured dress. As opposed to Nia's dress with its complex structure, this dress is deceptively simple but the gorgeous colour and Mel's great shape is all it needs.Half-Jamaican and sometime dancehall songstress islandista Alicia Keys had three outfit changes on the night. First was her fuschia dress with the slight origami-like folds on the bodice that she rocked on the red carpet. Didn't so much like how the skirt of this fell - it wasn't quite a bubble shape, not quite straight... hmm. But the colour was definitely pretty.
Next was her performance outfit.
And... well!Ms. Keys was never rail thin or anything but laaaaaawd gaad ... she a tek fowl pill or what? Since when she had all that bumper? I know her skinny jeans had to be struggling!
And third was her post-performance, acceptance dress - a beige number that would have been blah-ish were it not for the dramatic silver and gold embellishment running across the bodice and along the shoulder. Not everyone's cup of tea but I liked it. I like artistes to wear something a little daring and different. 
I wasn't sure whether to include this last one but I'm feeling generous. Islandista-by-marriage (though maybe not for much longer what with all the scandal facing her hubby, Turks and Caicos Premier Michael Misick) LisaRaye McCoy-Misick wore a great short metallic dress. Quite daring for a red carpet but allowable I think for a music show. And for a woman that is 40-pushing-41, she looks great!(photo credits: YBF.com)
(photo credit: New York magazine)So every fashionista worth a damn has been buzzing about Italian Vogue's all-black issue which came out this week.We all know how hard it is to find women of colour in the fashion industry - whether on the runways or in the editorials. And there has been a lot of debate and hand-wringing about it in recent times. Everyone agrees it's terrible but no-one quite seems to know where to point the finger... perhaps because they are trying to make sure it's not aimed at them. Is it the editors? Is it the designers? Is it the advertisers? Is it the readers?Anyhow, Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani and photographer Steven Meisel got together and decided now was the perfect time to make a real statement about this. Sozanni was fascinated by the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama (can we claim him as an islandisto since he was born in Hawaii? :) I mean it's not the Caribbean but still...) and Meisel had long been frustrated with running up against brick walls when he would push black models for shoots.So they did the damn thing with several islandistas making the cut. Naomi Campbell (of Jamaican parentage) of course led the charge, as one of four models on the fold-out front cover. Fellow Brit and suspected islandista by extraction (I am so sure this girl is of Caribbean parentage or grand parentage - black, British, with an Anglo last name? Sounds like a West Indian to me but being that she's relatively new on the scene I have not found any confirmation as yet) Jourdan Dunn is also featured on the cover. Jamaican model Jeneil Williams (of Caribbean fashion powerhouse Pulse) is on the inside.Personally, I think the editors of American, British and French Vogue in particular should HANG THEIR HEADS in shame that the editor of Italian Vogue beat them to this. After all, Italy has a black population of less than 1% whereas the USA, the UK and France all have significant black populations. Why should Italian Vogue have been the first one to confront this ugly issue when these editions all have much larger black populations?
The colour on the red carpet at last night's BET Awards 2008 was definitely yellow - the perfect colour for summer and a big trend for Summer 08.It's actually my favourite colour choice out of the neon brights that are so in for this season. Hence I've been pouncing on cute yellow items whenever I get the chance - already snagged a gorgeous strappy yellow sundress and a thin sweater top. Plus, yellow just pops against dark skin.
(photo credit: BET.com)Islandista Rihanna looked gorgeous in her tiered, frill-edged long yellow dress. Even though Rihanna is pretty light-skinned and yellow can sometimes be dodgy for people that are well ... kinda yella, it still worked well for her, especially because it was offset by the darker makeup. Also, it was a paler, kind of lemony yellow rather than a strong, sharp yellow which might have played up the yellow tones in her skin.Since she's so young, the brightness of the dress and the tiers prevented her from looking too old which can be the downfall of a lot of young starlets trying to look sophisticated at formal occasions. Bright yellow is just a lovely young looking colour that made the long dress more age-appropriate for a hot young thang like Ri-Ri.
Rapper Trina and singer Keyshia Cole also wore beautiful lemony yellow dresses. Keyshia and Trina carried the summery theme to its hilt with short, flirty dresses. This is probably one of the nicest looks I have ever seen on Trina - for once she does not look too fussy or overdone (aside from the big ole over-curly weave but let us be positive). The simplicity of the dress is really heartening and with such a lovely colour who needs to be too fancy?
Keyshia's bubble dress meanwhile was accented with a great contrasting black sash. Paired with her new jet-black hair it was very sharp - nice Keyshia!
More notes on the BET Awards later...
Maybe it's just a coincidence or how the stars are aligned right now but I have noticed that an increasing number of the 'It' girls making waves over and away these days are also islandistas - or at least islandistas by descent.Now what do I mean by an 'it girl' ? After all, it's still debated whether the term is a compliment - indicating a young woman at the peak of her fame and celebrity who is praised and copied for her style and personality or whether it's a bit derogatory - an aimless, narcissistic party girl/socialiate who can't let any dog fight miss her and is always angling to get in front of the cameras. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are described as 'it girls' (shudder) but then again so are genuine talents with actual careers such as Keira Knightley.For my one - it's a young woman who is a bit of both - she definitely has to have an innate sense of style and be imitated - fashion is probably the biggest element of true 'it girl-dom'.She is someone who not only goes to but is invited to all the hottest events. And especially in this day and age she is definitely someone who occupies that voracious and rapidly-growing world of media celebrity - the blogs can't get enough of her, the fashion magazines are in her thrall and her personal life and style are breathlessly tracked. Perhaps it is too hard to define. Let us leave it to the French who put it so beautifully. Simply put an it girl is a young woman that has that certain 'je-ne-sais-quoi'. And it so happens, some of the hottest it girls on the scene right now are straight from the islands or at least of islandista extraction. 
The most obvious islandista it girl on the scene right now is Rihanna. (photo credit: YBF.com)The Bajan songstress is beloved by both black blogs and mainstream fashion mags for her edgy, 80s influenced sense of style, particularly since the release of 'Good Girl Gone Bad' which catapulted her above the many other RnB popstresses such as Ciara and Christina Milian into a different dimension. Her asymetrical cropped do spawned a million imitators in the last year or so and now that they have all caught up, she has gone and changed it up again, with a throwback short, bowl cut a la Halle Berry in the 90s - but with a funky twist.I'm not so sure about those open-toed Balenciaga gladiator boots in the pic to the right but she is pushing that envelope as ever. Another islandista it girl is model, Victoria's Secret 'angel' and former Nick Cannon fiancee (dodge a bullet dey girl!) Selita Ebanks from the Cayman Islands. In an interview with Sports Illustrated she made it clear she is a real-real island girl, talking up her love of fried snapper, calypso and dominoes and reminiscing about her childhood home with the zinc roof. 
She is another islandista it girl that is firmly in the mainstream consciousness, as evidenced by the fact that she was listed in the 2008 edition Maxim magazine's (in?)famous list of Top 100 sexiest women. Not to mention she is at every event and live-blogged the New York Fashion Week for New York magazine.Another, more controversial one is islandista-by-extraction (yes, I'm coming to like that term) the mysterious Genevieve Jones.The allegedly half-Trinidadian Ms. Jones was tipping dangerously into that 'it girl for no reason with no job' area but she's got a line of jewellery now (whew!) which was featured in a recent edition of Vogue. Genevieve ... well she parties. And she dresses really well and knows all the right people. And even though she's not wealthy - apparently hailing from middle-clas roots in Louisiana, she's a socialite.There was a rather scathing piece about her in the Wall Street Journal of all places (yuh reach girl!) in late 2006, that really set the blogosphere buzzing and tongues wagging, with folks questioning where she got the money to live in the style that she does. There was more than a hint of thinly-veiled racism and condescension in the piece with statements like:Unlike many of her friends, Ms. Jones isn't an heiress and she lacks the Ivy League credentials and social pedigree of Manhattan's largely white society set. An African-American, she grew up in Baton Rouge, La., and didn't go to college.
The accusations that flew were not much nicer. Frankly, I love that this is madding them people. No-one puts that level of scrutiny on the white party girls and socialites so why is it so very passing strange when a chocolate-coloured socialite sets the place alight? 
