Over the past few months, I’ve been curating a series on Instagram called Icons of Influence, a celebration of women whose lives embody beauty, resilience, and unapologetic glamour. What started as a visual experiment quickly became something more: people were resonating, deeply, with these stories. They weren’t just about fashion or aesthetics, they were about women, talk, creativity with their wardrobe, life & power. About choosing environments that nurture our brilliance. About women who turned hardship into legend.
So it feels only right to bring Icons of Influence to Lurelly's Journal, where we can linger a little longer, dive a little deeper, and tell these stories with the fullness they deserve. And who better to begin with than the woman who made Paris shimmer, who redefined elegance not just with sequins but with her courage, Mademoiselle Josephine Baker.
There are women whose very existence feels like a storybook, women who arrive in the world carrying a light so dazzling that no matter how much the world tries to dim it, it refuses to go out. Josephine Baker was one of those women.
She was born in St. Louis in 1906, at a time when America offered little protection and even less possibility for Black women. Her childhood was poverty-stricken, her early years marked by discrimination so harsh it could have easily crushed her spirit. But Josephine was not made to be crushed. She was made to shine. Pressure make Diamonds honey! & She was made to dance, to sing, to provoke, to reinvent glamour on her own terms.
Yet America, rigid, racist, and unrelenting, didn’t want to see her brilliance. Instead, it ridiculed and rejected her. Josephine, in her defiant, magnetic way, decided she would not stay where she wasn’t celebrated. She chose something radical for her time: she left.
When she arrived in Paris in the 1920s, it was like stepping into a fairytale land in her own words. Here was a city pulsing with art, jazz, and possibility. Oh but Paris didn’t just welcome Josephine, it crowned her. Within months, she was performing at the Folies Bergère, her playful dance with that infamous banana skirt making her a sensation.
She wasn’t just a performer; she was a revolution wrapped in rhinestones.
Paris in the 1920s was the world’s stage for freedom and experimentation. Writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald lingered over absinthe in smoky Left Bank cafés. Artists painted in garrets, philosophers argued at Café de Flore, and jazz poured through the streets of Montmartre. In the middle of it all was Josephine, otherworldly, fearless, unapologetically glamorous. She transformed every stage she touched into a celebration of freedom.
In Paris, Josephine was finally free to be fully herself. She could dive into her craft without apology, without the constant shadow of American prejudice. She became the face of glamour, elegance, and daring modernity. Her voice was rich, her presence electric, her style unforgettable. She made people dream of freedom, of sensuality, of possibility.
What strikes me most about Josephine is her mindset. She didn’t run from America simply out of fear; she ran toward her vision. She understood something most of us spend lifetimes learning: you go where your light can be seen.
You choose environments that nurture your brilliance. And you allow yourself to be larger than the boxes the world tries to put you in.
Even after becoming an icon in Paris, Josephine never forgot where she came from. She became an activist, fighting against racism and injustice, using her fame as a weapon for dignity. She adopted children from around the world to form her “Rainbow Tribe,” living proof that unity and love could exist across race and nationality. She was glamour, yes, but she was also grit, justice, and generosity.
And perhaps the most poetic full circle of her story came decades after her passing. In 2021, Josephine Baker was inducted into the Panthéon, the first Black woman, and only the sixth woman ever, to receive such an honor. Her name now rests among France’s greatest visionaries, etched into the same city that once crowned her queen. Paris, the city that embraced her when her homeland would not, made her eternal.
Today, Josephine Baker is still remembered as the “Black Venus,” the woman who turned hardship into timeless art, the woman who danced her way out of the cages of discrimination and into the arms of freedom. Her legacy is proof that elegance is not just about style, it’s about courage.
For me, Josephine’s story is not just history. It’s a reminder. A reminder to rise above environments that shrink us. To walk, no, to dance wherever we are celebrated. To craft our own fairytales, no matter how unlikely the beginning may seem.
Josephine Baker was not just an entertainer. She was a blueprint. And she remains, to this day, an eternal icon of influence.
If she was alive today she would don our Apollo Jeweled Gown.
Xoxo
Lurelly
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