Cultural Style Week movement encourages everyone to boldly embrace their cultural heritage through fashion, hair and beauty.
The London-birthed, Cultural Style Week movement visually celebrates diversity by encouraging people to proudly showcase their unique cultural heritage through fashion, hair and beauty from 21-27 May.
As a precursor to the week, the 'My Cultural Style' video series featured a diverse group of inspirational Londoners from all walks of life talking about the beauty of their cultural heritage and why it's important to them. The videos were viewed by hundreds of thousands of people across the world and inspired many to get in touch to explore ways to participate in Cultural Style Week.
In particular, the “My Cultural Style” video from Nargis Javany became a viral sensation, amassing more than 220,000 views on TikTok. Nargis of Afghan, Russian and Ukraine heritage celebrates her Afghan roots by showcasing some of the beautiful, traditional Kuchi clothing of the Afghan Pashtun ethnic group. Viewers expressed sheer joy to see the beauty of Afghan culture being shared with the world and celebrated. The overwhelming response to the video series prompted the founder of Cultural Style Week to set up a Global Ambassador Program to allow people from outside of the UK to submit their own video content and participate.
“I have been blown away by how people have responded online to the campaign videos. It has been so beautiful to read some of the comments, seeing people comment on similarities within cultures from countries so far away from each other. We were also inundated with comments, emails and messages from people who wanted us to showcase their culture or become global brand ambassadors.”
Said Candy-Ellie Graham, founder of Cultural Style Week
“As soon as I heard about Cultural Style Week, I knew I had to take part in this incredible display of cultural dress from around the world. Czech kroje (folk dresses) have been such a huge part of my life, so it's a tremendous honour to have the opportunity to present them alongside so many other people who are passionate about representing their heritage.”
Anna Sedivy-Thompson, from Oklahoma, explains what motivated her to become an ambassador and share her Czech culture with the world. Anna is currently the Miss Oklahoma Czech-Slovak Queen and will be representing Oklahoma at the Miss Czech-Slovak US pageant this summer.
“It’s refreshing to see cultural style being celebrated in a modern age.” says ChuYan 楚嫣, from Ohio in the United States, also known as @mochihanfu on TikTok. ChuYan regularly shares the beauty and diversity of Hanfu (Han cultural clothing) with her online audience gaining over 9.3million engagements on TikTok to date. “Even with Hanfu’s long history of over 5,000 years, it is only within the last two decades that Hanfu began to make a revival. I wish to share this beautiful world of Hanfu and encourage other Chinese people to learn about this diverse style of clothing to help bring our traditions back.”
Also inspired by the video campaign to become an ambassador for the event was Malika Burieva from Brooklyn, New York of Uzbek and Turkmen heritage, Sinako Nyombolo from South Africa, and Nova Marseline, an Indonesian traditional dancer in the Netherlands.
Get involved
As a celebration of beauty, culture, and heritage, Cultural Style Week is an inclusive event for anyone who wants to take part. The official launch of this new global movement will take place in London, one of the most diverse cities in the world on 21 May coinciding with the United Nations World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, a day which recognises the important contributions that different cultures make to global development and harmony. People can take part wherever they are in the world by proudly wearing their cultural styles across the week and sharing it online with the tag #culturalstyleweek. A wider festival of events will be introduced in 2023.
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