Tyra Wade

@TheGlamourArchivist

Our. Story.

You may also know me as @theglamourarchivist. I am the founder of The Lincoln Affairs, a curatorial practice based in Durham, North Carolina. My work examines Vintage Black Glamour not as nostalgia or performance, but as a system of knowledge. One shaped by discipline, care, and survival within environments that were often hostile to Black life.

For much of my life, glamour was presented as something distant and elite, reserved for special occasions or exceptional people. What I came to understand, through observation and inheritance, is that Black glamour has always been practical. I witnessed it first in my grandmother, Betsy, in the daily rituals of grooming and self-presentation she maintained regardless of circumstance. Those gestures were not vanity; they were acts of order, dignity, and self-preservation.

As a child, I gravitated toward these expressions instinctively the plastic heels, costume jewelry, small performances of elegance without yet having language for what they represented. Over time, research gave me that language. What I sensed early on became clear: glamour was not excess, but strategy. It was a way of holding oneself together, of asserting worth, and of making meaning in the midst of constraint.

The Lincoln Affairs exists to name, preserve, and interpret that knowledge so it is not lost, diluted, or dismissed, but understood as inheritance.

The Glamour Notes I write and leave around my home are messages from a past self to a future one. Reminders that glamour isn’t reserved for the privileged or the perfect. It’s an inheritance already inside you, waiting to be acknowledged through glamour and gratitude.