Gabriela Karefa-Johnson, a former Vogue editor and stylist for Mayor Zoran Mandani, opted to change her first-class seat to business class on a flight to Milan to avoid sitting among “white, middle-aged men.”
In a social media post on Tuesday, Karefa-Johnson, 34, explained that her choice came after experiencing “persistent microaggressions” from male flight attendants and other men nearby.
“I downgraded from first class to business class on a flight to Milan,” she wrote. “The cabin had six seats, and five were occupied by white, middle-aged men. Here I was, a black woman in my 30s, sitting among them.”
While she didn’t detail the specific microaggressions, she mentioned feeling like she needed to give up physical comfort for the sake of her “emotional and mental health.”
Karefa-Johnson noted that one male flight attendant mistakenly assumed she was okay with the inadequate service that persisted throughout the flight.
It’s unclear which airline she used, but Emirates and American are the two that provide direct flights from JFK to Milan offering both first and business class.
In 2021, Karefa-Johnson made history as the first black woman to grace the cover of Vogue, but she left the magazine in 2023 after making controversial remarks following the Hamas attack on Israel. She described Israel as an “apartheid state” and accused it of committing “genocide.”
At the time, she expressed disbelief about the world’s indifference to ongoing violence, harshly criticizing the Israel Defense Forces as a “torture institution.”
She later expressed regret about leaving Vogue, stating she couldn’t remain in an environment where “virulent white supremacy” was tolerated.
Based in Brooklyn, Karefa-Johnson helped style Mayor Mamdani and his wife for their inauguration in January, describing their fashion choices as “authentic” and “swagger in the most punk of ways.”
Previously, she had a public disagreement with rapper Kanye West after he included “White Lives Matter” shirts in his Yeezy shows, which she called “highly offensive, violent and dangerous.” He ridiculed her fashion sense online before deleting the post.
