Erykah’s outfit is from a Rick Owens collection that walked the runway the same day Christine Blasey Ford gave her testimony, and I’ll let Vogue give you its interpretation:
It was coincidence surely. Nevertheless, it was impossible not to make connections between the pyre in the center of the Palais de Tokyo, witches being burned at the stake, and the trial of Kavanaugh’s accuser. […] Flanged collars, peeling shoulders, and exuberant cuffs turned jackets into impenetrable carapaces. Like the metal scaffolding of the headpieces and arm cuffs that qualified as jewelry here, those jackets looked designed to ward off predators. Owens’s laser-cut and paneled cloaks conjured goddesses and super-heroines. Sometimes the models even carried torches.
There are very few people I can imagine trying to carry off one of these looks in its entirety, and with the understanding of what its artistic intent was, and Erykah Badu is one of them. (Solange is another. Possibly the only other.) Having said that, of course… it is weird, that is certain.
