On BEAUTY

It can often feel like beauty is in short supply. But for FOUR MODELS who've helped RESHAPE FASHION, it's in a childhood MEMORY, a loved one's SCENT, a movie star's GLAMOUR, and a GLIMPSE of HOME.

- KAITLYN GREENIDGE

Imaan HAMMAM

On STAYING GROUNDED

Top, CHRISTOPHER KANE.

There's a game I've started to play with my daughter to keep her entertained as we do our daily errands. We call it "safari," but it really is a game of looking. We try to find one interesting thing on every building, sign, or tree that we pass: "That leaf looks like a star," "That bird is flying in a circle," and "That house has one blue door." It's like walking through the world alongside a tiny beat poet who is shouting the phrases of a never-ending prose poem from a stroller seat.

Lately, I have begun to realize that this game is an exercise in beauty. It has become a way to train ourselves to always look for it. We pass a rusted piece of ironwork in front of a brownstone and my daughter points it out-a thing I would not have thought of as beautiful but that calls to her.

It is impossible to imagine life without beauty. Perhaps that's why it's so hard to describe. It's a quality that is deeply personal. It adheres to our individual definitions that come from experience, culture, taste, and the light as it falls before our own eyes. When people tell you what they think is beautiful, they are telling you how they see the world. Beauty is its own kind of emotional intelligence-a map for all the things we value and think to be true.

When she WALKS into a ROOM, a TRAIL of OUD follows, thanks to a REGIMEN of SELF-CARE RITUALS that embrace HER blended HERITAGE

As told to JENNA ROSENSTEIN

Photographs by RENELL MEDRANO

Styling by MARIKA-ELLA AMES