Ladies First: Flowers for Dana Owens

Smart as Hell. Fully Grown. Living on Her Own Terms.

Fifty is not simply another birthday.

It is a shift.

A golden turning.

A real place in a woman’s life where the distance between who she is and how she is living becomes harder to tolerate.

Somewhere between the hot flashes, the changing body, the sharper instincts and the growing understanding that time is not endless, something moves.

You begin to care more about what matters in your own mirror.

Not the mirror held up by your job.

Not the mirror held up by family expectations.

Not the mirror held up by culture, respectability or other people’s comfort.

Your mirror.

At 50, you can feel too old to continue performing values that no longer feel authentic—and far too young to spend another moment living outside your truth.

That tension is real.

You have lived long enough to understand the cost of silence, but you still have enough life ahead to choose differently.

The elbows become sharper.

The boundaries become clearer.

The positioning becomes earned.

You stop asking permission to become more fully yourself.

That is why 50 anchors freedom.

TOO SMART TO BE QUIET

At 50, you know too much, have survived too much, built too much and learned too much to continue dimming your light for the convenience of others.

You know what your voice costs.

You also know what your silence costs.

So the message is not merely decorative.

50. TOO SMART TO BE QUIET.

Too smart to keep swallowing your truth.

Too experienced to mistake silence for grace.

Too grown to shrink for someone else’s comfort.

Too young to spend another precious year living inauthentically.

At 50, the woman in the mirror is no longer waiting to be chosen.

She chooses herself.

THESE ARE MY FLOWERS

I have written several published magazine articles about Dana Owens and her work over the years.

But this piece is different.

There is no assignment, no editor shaping the angle and no publication deciding what belongs on the page.

These words are entirely mine—drawn from my memories, my professional experience and my personal point of view.

I was in the rooms, at the fittings and behind the public image.

I witnessed the work.

I saw the discipline, the intelligence and the care behind every move.

This is not a celebrity profile.

It is my firsthand account of a woman I worked beside, respected deeply and have continued to cheer for.

These are the flowers I choose to give Dana Owens now.

LADIES FIRST

I first met Queen Latifah on a movie set in Los Angeles.

I was part of a two-person New York fashion team hoping she would wear and endorse a brand we represented.

Until then, I had only known her as a fan.

I watched Living Single during my own heyday.

I sat on the edge of my seat through Set It Off. I blasted “Ladies First” in my car—loud.

The Los Angeles deal was a no-go.

But we connected.

Later, I would have the privilege of working with her for three years—on CoverGirl projects, countless television commercials and many award shows, including serving as a member of her team for the Oscars.

I was hands-on from the beginning of her Curvation clothing collection.

Those years gave me a close view of the woman behind the public force.

Her success is not a fluke.

She is smart as hell.

Honest.

Serious about her business.

Her timing is canny.

Her instincts are sharp.

She understands the room, the opportunity and the weight of a choice.

Dana Owens is a super-solid human being.

I am grateful that working with her became part of my own experience.

I have watched her expansion as an artist, a businesswoman and a woman.

I have cried for her, cheered for her and always wanted the very best for her.

PLUS SIZE WAS NEVER MEANT TO HIDE

One of the things I understood then—and still believe now—is that plus-size women were never meant to disappear inside their clothing.

I dressed Dana for the Hip Hop Awards in New York in a look that was youthful, glamorous and unafraid to show some skin.

She looked confident.

She looked current.

She looked fully present.

The message was clear:

Plus size does not need to hide.

Style should not begin with an apology for the body wearing it.

A fuller body can be sexy.

It can be polished.

It can be playful, dramatic, sophisticated and completely visible.

Dana had presence.

My responsibility was not to cover that presence.

It was to support it.

THE WORK BEHIND THE IMAGE

Public moments may appear effortless.

They rarely are.

Behind a carpet, campaign, performance or television appearance are fittings, adjustments, decisions, photographs and people making sure every detail is ready before the door opens.

Those were the closet days—the private spaces where the public image was built.

Working closely with someone in those rooms gives you a different kind of understanding.

You see the preparation.

You see the discipline.

You see how seriously the work is taken.

I was not watching from the outside.

I was part of the team.

For the Oscars, I stood in the background taking the final-look photographs as the last adjustments were made before Dana stepped out.

That image means something to me because it captures the quiet precision behind a major moment.

CURVATION: FROM THE BEGINNING

I was also hands-on from the beginning of Dana’s Curvation clothing collection.

That work mattered.

A plus-size woman leading a fashion and lifestyle conversation with her own name, image and point of view carried weight—especially during an era when the industry still expected larger women to accept less choice, less glamour and less visibility.

Curvation recognized that fuller women wanted more than coverage.

They wanted shape.

They wanted confidence.

They wanted clothing connected to the lives they were actually living.

Being present in that early work became another important part of my experience with Dana.

MY MARKED MOMENT

One of the most personally meaningful moments of my career was dressing Dana for her appearance on Inside the Actors Studio with the late, great James Lipton.

It was a quieter image than a red carpet.

No sequins.

No spectacle.

Just a brilliant woman sitting in conversation about her work, her craft and the life behind it.

That mattered to me.

She looked polished, intelligent and completely at ease in the room she had earned.

THE CLOSET DAYS

The fitting room can be a very honest place.

Clothing is being added, removed, adjusted and reconsidered. The public image has not yet been completed. Trust matters.

Those of us inside the circle often understood more than the wider world was invited to see.

That distinction matters.

The issue was never simply whether people knew.

It was when, how and whether Dana would choose to make more of her private life visible to the wider world.

Privacy can be protection.

For a Black woman carrying the expectations of an industry, a community and a culture, privacy can also be strategy, survival and ownership.

She did not owe the public access to her private life.

But choosing greater visibility matters too.

THE POWER OF CHOICE

In May 2026, at 56, Queen Latifah attended the American Music Awards with her longtime partner, Eboni Nichols, and their six-year-old son, Rebel. The appearance marked a rare new level of public family visibility. She had publicly acknowledged Eboni and Rebel during her 2021 BET Lifetime Achievement speech, but appearing together at a major entertainment event carried a different visual weight.

The world may call it a red-carpet appearance.

I saw something more:

A grown woman opening the door on her own terms.

People close to her may have known.

But being known privately and choosing visibility publicly are not the same experience.

There is cultural pressure around choice, particularly for Black women whose lives are so often examined for what they mean to everyone else.

The choice to remain private matters.

The choice to become more visible matters too.

Both choices belong to the woman.

That is part of the freedom that 50 can anchor.

At some point, what matters in your own mirror becomes louder than the fear of what other people may say.

You become less interested in performing comfort for everyone else and more interested in living honestly inside your own life.

HAPPINESS HAS A COST

To see Dana successful, loved and visibly happy moves me.

Not because I believe anyone is entitled to her private life.

But because I understand something about the thought, protection and timing that can come before a public choice.

Happiness has a cost.

Truth can have a cost.

Freedom can have a cost.

But sometimes the price of continuing to hide becomes greater.

At 50+, a woman begins to understand that authenticity is not selfish.

Joy is not unserious.

Peace is not passive.

They are earned.

You stop measuring your life only through the expectations of the job, the family, the culture or the people watching.

You begin caring more about the truth reflected back when you face your own mirror.

That is the golden shift.

THE BUTTERFLY MOMENT

Fifty can feel like the butterfly finally getting its wings.

Not because the transformation has just begun.

The work has been happening for years.

The wings appear because the becoming is finally visible.

At 50, a woman often becomes more fully herself in public.

She stops overexplaining.

She stops asking permission.

She stops performing values that no longer fit.

She begins moving in alignment with what is true.

The wings are not new.

The woman is simply ready to use them.

FLOWERS FOR DANA OWENS

To Dana Owens—Ladies First—I send you your flowers.

For the intelligence.

For the discipline.

For the timing.

For the doors opened.

For the body of work.

For the woman I witnessed behind the work.

And for the freedom to decide how much of yourself the world gets to see—and when.

I am proud of her success.

I am even more moved by what appears to be happiness.

That is its own kind of arrival.

WELCOME TO THE POWER HOUR

And to my VSG women entering this chapter:

Welcome to the power hour.

The golden moment.

The era of sharper instincts, earned positioning, clearer boundaries and fuller truth.

Hot flashes and all.

This is not the age to disappear.

It is the age to become unmistakable.

Wear the gold.

Say the thing.

Choose the statement piece.

Honor the life you have built and the woman you have become.

Live like it is golden—not because life has always been easy, but because you finally understand the value of your own life.

THE VSG GOLD STANDARD

The woman who protects her time.

The woman who trusts her instincts.

The woman who is no longer waiting to be chosen.

Bold words.

Golden details.

Earned confidence.

Because 50 is not the end of becoming.

It is the moment the wings begin to show.

50 AND FABULOUS.

Too smart to be quiet.

Too grown to shrink.

Fully ready to live like it’s golden.

THE VANGUARDS

Mildred Loving did not set out to become a symbol. She simply wanted to marry the man she loved and live near her family in Virginia. Instead, she and Richard Loving were arrested, convicted and forced from their home because their marriage crossed a racial line the law tried to enforce. Mildred quietly challenged that injustice. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that state bans on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment, ending those laws nationwide.

Fifty-nine years ago, Mildred Loving helped secure the right to choose whom you love. Mildred Loving, we see you. You reminded America that love is personal, choice is powerful, and no woman should have to ask the world for permission to build her own life.

At fifty, choose what is yours—and do not apologize for it.

At 59, Angela Bassett returned to Yale—not as a student, but to receive an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the very institution where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Full circle. Fully earned. Fully seen. 

A celebration of wisdom, legacy and still becoming—because Aging Ain’t Fading.

At VSG, we see you because we are you.

— VSG | Very Stylish Girl

Ageless.

Earned.

Elegance.