As this newsletter goes out, our Editor-in-Chief has officially joined our NYC team to cover press for 2026’s final NYFW.
September 13 marks two years since Kailon Magazine went public, while December 1 marks two years since we published our very first print issue. We have come a long way, and we have learned even more along the way.
I still don’t know what we were thinking when we spent an entire year sewing clothes with local artists for our debut runway show on September 13, 2024. I don’t think either of us imagined that, just two years later, we would be invited to NYFW, let alone launching our fourth print issue during it.
We certainly never imagined interviewing greats like Tracy E. Gilchrist, or the many artists, creatives, and collaborators we would meet, work with, and eventually call friends.
We have been incredibly fortunate in many ways, but Kailon’s growth has never happened by accident. Our team has worked hard. We still have the majority of our original members, with the exception of Mía Shane, who is chasing her fashion dreams in Miami, Devin Andrews, who has embarked on his journey as a tattoo artist, and the many wonderful interns who have taught us more than they probably realize and helped shape how we want to run this magazine.
Since our runway debut, our team has also grown exponentially. We have been enriched by exceptional people like Michelle Mesiano, the primary reason our print issues look as beautiful as they do, and Sam Luna, our project manager and social content lead, whose smile and ideas have brought so much life to our social pages.
Print Issue 04
From our Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
With every issue, I become increasingly aware that I have started to sound like a parakeet with limited vocal stims:
“This is the best issue we’ve ever made.”
“This issue was truly a labor of love.”
“Welp, now we know better for next time.”
How do I put into words, every time we release an issue, that I have the best team on the planet? How do I call something the most incredible issue we’ve ever made when I said the same thing last time and the time before that?
Maybe that’s the point. It seems our best issue is always the next one.
Issue 04 was, without question, our most difficult and possibly our boldest yet.
Don’t let our indie follower count fool you. Kailon Magazine has received invitations, yeses, and offers that we have had to turn down. This was actually our first time encountering some no’s, but they were no’s for reasons we understand and respect. Reasons that also reminded us of the immense privilege we hold in being able to make this magazine at all.
I can’t remember a time when I haven’t wanted to be on the right side of history, the side of the underdogs, the marginalized, and the uncomfortable. Last year, I reached a point where I had to reevaluate how exactly I was doing that.
I have always been a long-time yapper. All hot girls had that talkative teacher comment on their progress reports…right? I can now confidently admit, from a place of healing, that I have often talked more than I have listened.
Between my activism, my mouth, and my fuck ice phone, laptop, and car stickers, I have always felt that more could be done and said. At the same time, I have often wondered whether I was the ideal person to say it.
Last December, I chose to close all of my social media accounts and take a massive step back from much of my life because of my mental health and a much needed break. I later wrote about that period in an article titled “Growing Pains.”
A break is not something I have historically known how to take. Many of my close friends would probably argue that I even really took one at all. But I think that in pieces, I grew more in this past year than I have in years.
At 25, I have accomplished quite a lot on my resume and in my professional experience, while also severely neglecting myself, and the magic that can come from simply sitting in silence.
Kailon is now at a point where its infrastructure can continue running without me for a while. And while it did, I had to remind myself why I started this magazine in the first place.
Whether it is this magazine or the art collective I built as a lost, newly postpartum 22 year-old, my intentions have always been rooted in collaboration and providing a platform, for artists, for issues, and for community.
As loud as I am, I never wanted to feel like I was being loud and wrong, or speaking over someone who deserved to be heard. But I also knew I couldn’t simply sit around and wait for the “right” or “perfect” person to come along either.
I had to go looking for them and or do the work to become them myself.
With every issue, I have learned to put myself further out there. With Issue 04, that became an especially ambitious and courageous undertaking.
We reached out to artists from countries affected by war and genocide. Many were afraid. Afraid of political backlash, afraid of repercussions for themselves or their families, and even afraid of what our own position and intentions might be.
That was when I knew we had to go even harder.
We had monumental artists believe in us and in our mission because they share many of the values that have guided Kailon from the beginning.
As stated in the print issue, Carrie Ann Baade’s cover artwork explores the first recorded interracial marriage in colonial Louisiana. On August 4, 1725, Jean-Baptiste Raphaël, a free Black man from Martinique, married Marie Jacqueline Gaspart, a Bohemian (Romani) woman, in colonial Biloxi. Despite the strict prohibitions of the Code Noir against interracial unions, their marriage received special approval from Commandant General Pierre Dugué de Boisbriant. Marie’s Bohemian heritage placed her outside the rigid racial hierarchy of the French colony, allowing the union to proceed.
The Bohemians, who had been exiled and deported to Louisiana in 1720, occupied a socially liminal space. Their marriage—the first recorded interracial union in colonial Louisiana—highlights the complexity of racial, legal, and social dynamics of the time.
Baade’s Oil on Panel with Mixed Media (2024) was painted on top of a wooden tabletop and incorporates oil paint, silver leaf, leather for Marie’s braids, and actual fabric for the clothing of both figures.
Seeing the piece in person was incredible. After much back and forth about how we could incorporate it into the cover, displaying the much loved, paint stained easel became an intentional part of the design, brought to life initially by our graphic lead, Michelle Mesiano.
From the beginning, I knew I wanted the artwork to wrap around the magazine, with each portrait appearing on either side and the piece continuing across the interior spread. Michelle’s handwritten typography, used to present the artwork’s details, became another small but beautiful part of the design.
It doesn’t stop there.
This issue features photography, collaborative art, and poetry from Puerto Rican artist Jairo Cortés; artist features from feminist icon Serena Viola Carson and NYC’s next legend, Karim Machado-Aman; and, most notably, work from Nabil Anani, widely known as “Palestine’s Picasso.”
I knew immediately that I wanted Anani’s work splashed across the pages. His vibrant use of color carries a warmth and comfort that I believe anyone can find something in.
We also have some ballsy pieces, including FUCK THE KING by artist GAWD, paired beautifully with Who Knows (2025), a collage on paper by Andrea Luccia [NENX].
Another legend and feminist icon, Meredith Bergmann, joins us as well. Her practice moves between monumental public sculpture, portraiture, intimate sculptural studies, and poetry. Her work frequently considers how art carries history forward—what gets remembered, what gets overlooked, and how familiar narratives can be reopened through humor, ambiguity, beauty, and contradiction.