If you had any doubts that Tracee Ellis Ross was a Fashion Person™, allow us to point to Exhibit A: Couture Fashion Week in Paris last July, where the 46-year-old actress truly made the most of her time at the shows. Not only was the Black-ish actress picking out her Emmy's dress, but it turns out she had time to show us that she pretty much invented the idea of wearing couture for InStyle magazine. But then again, what else would you expect from Diana Ross' daughter?
In fact, Ellis Ross tells the magazine that her love for fashion was basically embedded in her DNA from the time she was born. "As a kid, I saw my mom as the lady in the sparkly dress on the stage who sang," the actress told InStyle. "But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found the language to articulate that what I was seeing was a woman in her full glory being in connection with this gift she was given, being glamorous and sexy but not in a way that’s ‘Look at me.’"
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
She continued: "I was raised to view sexy as being at the height of your...self. Clothing was one of the ways you could wear your inside on your outside."
One of Ellis Ross' favorite things to do when she's feeling antsy is try on clothing, either from her own closet or from crates of her mother's vintage performance looks. "It’s like going to a museum," Ross says. "I’ll sound like a crazy person, but when I hold some of her extraordinary original beaded stage clothes, there is a particular Diana Ross smell, a mom smell, a certain perfume that I just love. And sometimes, when you open the garment bags and there’s makeup or sweat or other evidence of the clothes being worn — I find it really extraordinary. It’s an artifact. You’re seeing the fullness of a life that existed in that snapshot of a moment."
"The glamour I learned from my mother is easy, no-pressure glamour," she adds. "And there’s a lot of joy in that."