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One of my favorite photos of the last ten years comes from the Instagram of Lil Uzi Vert. In it, he and Young Thug appear to be taking a break from a shopping excursion. Thug is dripping in pearls and holding an open bag stuffed with hundred-dollar bills, but Uzi commands the frame. The eye follows his feet, clad in womens Chanel sneakers, along his tattooed calves, past a fetching cardigan short set, accented by a Chanel purse and a flute of ros, all the way up his smiling face, sandwiched between twin diamond-choked chokers and a top-knot of locs.

The decade started in darkness, with George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin for wearing a hoodie and further politicizing that garment. In the months and years that followed, alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, the expert display of black pain took on a bloody sheen of prestige, of importance. Affirmations of black happiness, then, emerged as a refusal of burnout, a pressure valve for the anguish of black life, and with them came an aesthetic of black boy joy: flower crowns, pastels, a visual softening of male aggression and stoicism most celebrated against a palette of cisness and straightness. Lil Uzi Vert is far from the first rapper to love fashion or wear feminine clothing, but he is a delightful bookmark for this new lens.

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Why Lil Uzi Vert Is the Most Stylish Man of the Decade - GQ