Lupita Nyong’o brought her bold and unconventional sense of style to Sunday night’s Tony Awards, appearing at the New York ceremony in a look she described as “shameless.”
The “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” actor walked the red carpet outside Manhattan’s United Palace theater in a black tuxedo and trousers. Underneath her jacket, however, she eschewed a traditional blouse in favor of a metallic breastplate.
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The breastplate’s details were strikingly realistic, and for good reason: Pakistani artist and designer Misha Japanwala created it by molding it from Nyong’o’s own body.
On Instagram, Nyong’o said she felt “honored, humbled, strengthened and energized” to wear the piece, noting that Japanwala’s work was “rooted in the rejection and deconstruction of external shame attached to one’s body.”
“In her artistic process, she creates a realistic and true record of a person’s body as an act of resistance and celebration, and an insistence on being allowed to exist freely in our bodies,” she wrote.
She went on to thank Japanwala for “this special opportunity to BE EXACTLY HERE, IN THIS BODY NOW,” calling it a “SHAMELESS OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE.”
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An Oscar winner for 2013’s “12 Years a Slave,” Nyong’o is no stranger to the New York theater scene. In 2016, she received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of a Liberian orphan in “Eclipsed,” which made history as Broadway’s first play to have an all-Black female cast and creative team.
She’s slated to return to the big screen next year in the horror film “A Quiet Place: Day One,” co-starring Denis O’Hare and Joseph Quinn.
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