David Mack (CNN, October 29, 2026) writes enthusiastically about Carlos Nazario’s Silver Lining. He says, “He’s styled everyone from Rihanna to Naomi Campbell. Carlos Nazario’s first book isn’t what you might expect.” Nazario is a New York-born, Puerto Rican stylist, fashion director, and now, editor-in-chief of Wonderland. [Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item and all related links to our attention. Also see our previous post, New Book: Silver Lining.]
If you were to put together a time capsule that might reflect what life feels like amid the chaos of the 2020s, what would you choose to include? Which artists and subjects — which bodies or voices — would you feature? And would you have the confidence to even trust yourself with such an ambitious project to begin with?
These are questions that Carlos Nazario knows all too well, having grappled with them extensively while working on his first-ever book, “Silver Lining,” an ambitious aesthetic adventure through the zeitgeist as Nazario both sees it and wants it to be seen. The celebrated 38-year-old stylist said he felt an urgent pull to produce something substantial to document this moment in the world — an era in which he feels a unique sense that he is living through history and everything that word implies. But in keeping with Nazario’s reputation for daring, even ground-breaking work, this couldn’t be just any fashion book. It needed to send a message — in Nazario’s voice — to future generations.
“What I wanted to do was to leave a document that suggested that not everyone thinks that way and that there are people who look different and think different and see different, and they’re no less sophisticated, and they’re no less important, and it shouldn’t be treated with any less respect,” Nazario said. “I hope that people can look back on this and think, ‘Oh, wow, that was the start of that,’ or ‘Oh, that looks really different than I thought 2026 looked like.’”
As the newly announced editor in chief of the British fashion title Wonderland, (and contributing style director for Vogue and style director at large for Harper’s Bazaar US before that), Nazario speaks the language of a magazine fluently. His work reflects both a lived-in reality — Nazario, who is Afro-Latino, often champions diverse models — but still plays with fantasy and mythology, as evident in his otherworldly shoot with photographer Tyler Mitchell at the Texas Southern Border to mark the country’s semiquincentennial. He’s styled everyone from Rihanna to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, notably dressing the Democrat for a 2020 Vanity Fair cover in a custom-made white suit (a nod to the suffragettes) that was designed by a Black man from her congressional district. That was soon after Nazario had dressed Lizzo and Naomi Campbell for Vogue, becoming the first Black stylist to style one of the magazine’s covers since its founding more than a century prior. “The fashion industry can’t seem to get enough of Carlos Nazario,” New York magazine’s The Cut declared in a 2021 profile celebrating the staggering 14 covers he produced in a single year. [. . .]
The 2021 death of his friend and industry peer Virgil Abloh, the acclaimed menswear designer for Louis Vuitton and founder of streetwear brand Off-White, was another push Nazario needed make the shift to editor of his own work. [. . .]
collaborators, “Silver Lining” is indeed an ambitious work. It enjoys the free-wheeling sprit of a fashion or literary magazine, but with the permanence and heft of a prized coffee table tome. Themes of race and the corporeal form echo throughout the book. Luis Alberto Rodriguez’s gorgeous black-and-white photos examining the beauty and varying body types of Black men, are followed immediately by an essay by Darnell L. Moore in which the writer and activist navigates memories of his own body, Blackness and sexuality. [. . .]
The heart of “Silver Lining” can be found halfway through the book in a deeply felt and intimate conversation between Nazario and his own grandmother, Efna Plaza-Merritt, whom Nazario once had pose for the cover of Vogue Italia, wearing Prada, no less. The pair recall how Plaza-Merritt helped raise her grandson, how her anti-gay bigotry came to slowly be replaced by total acceptance and how she continues to struggle with body image issues as an older woman. Some of her dysmorphia comes from her upbringing and identity as a Black woman, but other parts of it have been taught to her by a fashion industry that her grandson is now firmly part of.
But this is where Nazario feels a unique mission in his role in the fashion vanguard to try to change perceptions of who and what is celebrated. His photos of his grandmother, for example, shine with an ethereal radiance that transforms the lines in her face and hands into markers celebrating her life and impact. [. . .]
For full article, see https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/29/style/carlos-nazario-silver-lining-book
Also see “Wonderland appoints Carlos Nazario as editor-in-chief,” Renan Botelho de Carvalho, Fashion United, October 28, 2026
https://fashionunited.uk/news/people/wonderland-appoints-carlos-nazario-as-editor-in-chief/2026102891080
Carlos Nazario is of Puerto Rican heritage; see: https://www.whatscontemporarynow.com/episode/carlos-nazario and https://forums.thefashionspot.com/threads/carlos-nazario-stylist.390091
Follow him at https://www.instagram.com/mr_carlos_nazario
For the publication (632 pages, 288 x 400 mm, 6 kilos), see: https://www.ideanow.online/products/silver-lining or https://gourmetdeli.com/products/silver-lining
[1) Photo of Paloma Elsesser by Gabriel Moses. 2) Photo of Carlos Nazario by David Sims/Courtesy Wonderland.]