Tessa Thompson admits she has reservations about inviting the public into her love life. And while she came out as bisexual in an interview with Net-A-Porter’s The Edit on Friday, touching on her relationship with Janelle Monae (“We’re so close, we vibrate on the same frequency. If people want to speculate about what we are, that’s okay. It doesn’t bother me.”), the Sorry To Bother You actress is much more comfortable expressing herself through fashion.
“It’s become sort of a thing for actresses to be like, ‘A red carpet? Pshaw, I’d rather be in sweats,’ but I love to be in a dress,” she tells Net-A-Porter. We can tell, too. Most recently, Thompson attended the MTV Movie and TV Awards wearing Rosie Assoulin, the Sorry to Bother You premiere in New York in Thom Browne (she also attended the Met Gala with the designer!), and the premiere for Fahrenheit 45 in a beautiful Christian Dior dress. When the fashion website asked Thompson about working with Rodarte on their fall 2018 lookbook in lieu of a runway show, she said she hopes to do more, partly because the actress recognizes what it means when a Black woman gets that sort of opportunity.
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“Campaigns allow you freedom. For a lot of actresses, it’s the way that they make most of their money,” she tells Net-A-Porter. “And if you are a Black woman, occupying that space and having that sort of visibility, internationally, is huge. There’s this idea that our faces don’t sell and so when we do get those campaigns, they show people that they do.”
Further, Thompson says, fashion is more than what you put on your body. “It’s really easy to write off these spaces as being frivolous,” she adds. “But I don’t think they are, actually. I think they’re significant.”
We stan a woman who is comfortable with herself inside and out.