As mentioned last week, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle attended their first major American award show this weekend when they received the President’s Award at the NAACP Image Awards on Saturday. Easily embeddable video of their full acceptance speech has been tricky to find but here’s video of their entrance and part of their remarks: 

 

The Sussexes were honoured for their social justice advocacy through their Archewell Foundation and also set up the new annual NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award and introduced its first recipient: UCLA Professor in the Department of African American Studies, Dr Safiya Noble, who is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and the author of Algorithms of Oppression. Dr Noble has received a $100,000 grant that will help continue her work. 

And her work has significant crossover with the causes that Harry and Meghan have championed, specifically information hygiene and responsible online information management. As Harry said during the show:

"Safiya's work speaks to a new chapter in the movement for civil rights. This community knows what it means to speak up for what is right, and to march for what is just. As the fight for justice still remains, it's time to extend this march to the world online, a place where hate and discrimination are fueled instantly, propagated globally, and felt deeply.” 

 

With Meghan adding that: 

"This is the era of the digital justice movement. We are proud to partner with NAACP and each of you to translate the vital efforts of those who came before us to the modern challenges that exist ahead of us."

Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, was with the Sussexes at the event: 

 

Both Harry and Meghan chose Black designers for their appearance – Harry’s suit is Ozwald Boateng and Meghan went with a two-tone blue, one-shoulder custom Christopher John Rogers who tells Vogue that they’ve been working on this look for a month:

“Rogers received an email from the Duchess about a month ago, asking if he’d like to work together. Soon after, they hopped on a call to virtually meet. “I was immediately struck by her warmth and just her overall demeanor—her sense of ease and confidence within herself,” says Rogers. “We quickly touched on this idea of a reveal. She hadn’t really stepped out like this in a while.” 

CJR has dressed everyone from Michelle Obama to Beyoncé to Lady Gaga to Zendaya. I am obsessed with his current collection which is in-your-face bright and clashing stripes and patterns. Like every night I go to bed wishing could afford the baby doll dress because basically it’s all my fashion dreams come true: boxy with structure, striped and perfect: 

 

And it remains a dream because it is more than a mortgage payment. But this is CJR’s price-point, the price-point of his own label, under his own name, alongside longstanding luxury labels and fashion houses, and expanding the inclusion boundaries of what’s considered high-end. And to think, as Christopher John Rogers said at the CFDAs three months ago where he was named Womenswear Designer of the Year, just five years ago he arrived in New York and couldn’t get hired!

Now his designs are being worn by the First Lady, the Vice President, the Mother Monster, the Duchess, and the Queen.