The Dazed Club community covers all strands of creative culture, and it’s only growing. We get to see this firsthand in the recently-released Autumn 2026 issue of Dazed, which highlights a selection of Dazed Club creatives hailing from New York, following last year’s London spotlight.

The 12 creatives span a broad array of disciplines, including painters and photographers, DJs and curators, singers, stylists, designers, beauty experts and more. Below, we celebrate their incredible talents, as well as getting a closer look at their lives in NYC and beyond.

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AJAHEE SEKKM-MILES, CULTURAL ARTS CURATOR AND DJ

Ajahee Sekkm-Miles is a Brooklyn-born, London-based cultural arts curator, creative consultant and DJ dedicated to amplifying narratives of the global majority. Working across film, sound, photography, and fine art, her practice weaves memory, archival research, and contemporary artistic expression into projects that unite Afro-diasporic communities. With several years of experience curating and producing exhibitions, public programs, and fundraisers globally, she builds inclusive, transformative spaces that reimagine how art lives in the world.

Performing under the alias KLIPKILLA, Ajahee extends her curatorial vision into sonic storytelling through DJing and sound design. Her Jamaican and Pan-African-American roots guide her genre-fluid sets – spanning house, ghetto tech, dancehall, bouyon, jungle, kuduro, gqom, and other global club sounds – crafting immersive soundscapes rooted in the global lineage of Afro-diasporic music, inviting connection, release, and healing through rhythm.

She is currently building her creative consultancy, offering curatorial, movement, and art direction expertise to galleries, organizations, brands, and creative individuals alike.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“My large pink fan that I got at the Dazed x Nothing party this summer. It saves my life, whether I am on public transportation, on the club dance floor, or in the DJ booth.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“I love going to the queer topless area of Riis Beach, and the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn on Labor Day. They're both just such authentic New York experiences to me, and I love a NYC summer DOWN!”

AMADI WILLIAMS, PAINTER

Amadi Williams is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work explores family history, memory, Blackness, kinship, and color. Living with a memory disorder and a family history of dementia and Alzheimer’s, she uses painting, mixed media, and personal archives to preserve and reimagine intimate narratives.

Often beginning in conversation with her grandmother, she builds layered paintings of figures, interiors and emotional landscapes. Her sensitive use of color and richly textured compositions challenge Eurocentric and binary frameworks in visual culture, foregrounding communities and histories too often overlooked. Each work becomes an act of care – returning to inherited stories while making space for their complexity, gaps, and transformation.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“The leather journal I made myself. It has my sketchbook, to-do lists, and calendar, so it’s essentially my lifeline. It keeps my thoughts, ideas, and day to day life in one place, and helps keep me sane. And, of course, a pair of headphones.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Going to a friend's studio or have a friend choose a type of food and expose them to new food spots.”

ARICEL DUBOIS, SINGER AND PRODUCER

Aricel DuBois is a singer, songwriter, producer, and performer from Queens, New York City.  Her two self released projects, Genesis EP and Brown Eyes at Night mix indie soul with pop, dance, and electronic music. With roots in theater and ballet, and as a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, her music crosses genres and isn’t afraid to stand out.

Raised in a Belizean and Irish household, her dream is to represent a wide spectrum of listeners and music enjoyers. She aims to blend music, dance, fashion, humor, and acting as elements of her creative identity. Through playful and fearless visuals accompanying the music, she hopes to encourage young people like herself to be unafraid to embrace the complexities within them.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“Definitely my lip combo! Either that, or my journal and favorite pen.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Find a cheap spot that makes a treat or meal that you love, eat there while people watching, then gather your things and walk twenty thousand steps directionless.”

BRANDON BROWNSTEIN, STYLIST AND FOUNDER

Brandon Brownstein is a fashion stylist, wardrobe director and founder of Browny Studios, bringing his unique focus and drive to fashion editorials, brand campaigns, music videos and film. His most successful and exciting projects involve close creative collaboration with directors and photographers to express an immersive and cohesive story. 

He integrates his love for anime, gaming, football and film into the forefront of his styling language, using a wide range of mediums as the backbone for his art. Raised by a mother from Guatemala and a father from Staten Island, New York, he brings a non-traditional lens that allows him to continually challenge industry norms and push the boundaries of creativity.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“A travel styling kit and an emergency banana! You never know what the day/night might bring.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“I’m going to cheat here and say two things: going to see live music and wandering into emerging clothing stores. The concentration of independent artists and designers showcasing their immense talent is an endless source of inspiration, no matter what industry you work in.”

CLAUDIA KOH, PAINTER

Claudia Koh is a Singaporean painter based in the United States. Rooted in her Chinese heritage and upbringing in Singapore, her practice explores the paradoxes of intimacy, constraint and liberation. She draws inspiration from the city’s dense public housing, lush vegetation and meticulously planned urban landscape, often envisioning Singapore as a terrarium – an ecosystem that is at once beautiful, sustaining and confined.

Koh received a diploma in fine art from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2020 and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Singapore, New York, Milan, Brussels and Germany. Through painting, she examines how cultural identity and notions of belonging shift across geographical and emotional distances. 

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“Perfume, hand lotion... anything that smells good! And my lip liner.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Meeting up with friends and talking about films and paintings and everything under the sun... and eating of course.”

CRYSTAL SIMONE AKA CRY$CROSS, DESIGNER AND DJ

Crystal Simone, AKA cry$cross, is a New York-born, self-proclaimed Black superstar, DJ, producer, fibre artist, and designer with Nigerian and Caribbean roots. Her work is informed by her heritage, bridging cultures through music, art, and design. She is a founding member of ABEG NYC, a community of queer African and diasporic people, and occasionally hosts broken beats, a party series born from her love of sounds rooted in West Africa and the UK and its evolution across the States.

A decade deep in New York nightlife, cry$cross moves through the underground with a sound that’s emotionally charged, rhythmically sharp, and impossible to pin down. Pulling from house, techno, East Coast club music, and Afrodiasporic percussion, her sets balance intensity with fluidity, built for locked-in dancers and late-night moments.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“My berry liquid cloud blush, custom earplugs, and vanilla musk scent roller.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Going out to eat! New York has so many delicious restaurants, and my favorite cuisine is Nigerian, if you were curious.”

GABRIELLE NARCISSE, CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Gabrielle Narcisse, born and raised in New Jersey and now based in Brooklyn, is a 25-year-old artist, writer, and the creative director of the organization she founded, Black Girl Fight Club. She created BGFC with the mission of cultivating a community focused on connection, creativity, and collective healing through arts and wellness experiences in NYC. Gabrielle practices myriad visual, written, and performance techniques. Her work is focused on connecting with both her current and past selves, her relationships in all forms, liberating herself through catharsis, and resiliency.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“Jasmine oil and my lip combo.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Going on an adventure with someone you love.”

HANNAH-MIA HINDS, PHOTOGRAPHER AND DIRECTOR

Born in Brooklyn and working internationally, Hannah-Mia Hinds is no stranger to the symbiotic relationship that is the artist and the environment that shapes them. Shooting and creatively directing all her own art, she captures beyond what's in front of the camera, fostering interpersonal relationships that bring the life, location, and character of her subjects to the surface. Her documentary and vignette-style video work is an extension of her photography, allowing her to direct strangers in real time, influencing reality with her stylized perspective.

Hannah-Mia is evolving her practice for exhibitions and photobook work through visual and cultural research on the Black artistic quotidian and the diasporic artist. Her approach to photography as an authentic means of both expression and connection results in a playfully hedonistic and audacious creation of art.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“My Miss Mia rolling papers – I’ve been making them again for the one-year anniversary of my first short. They’ve got my face and name on them, so in some ways I’m always with my friends in an East London smoking area.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“Get a beef patty with coco bread and a Kola Champagne, walk with it through Prospect Park.”

JAKE ELIAS, ACTOR AND MODEL

Mexican-American interdisciplinary creative Jake Elias is a “jake” of many trades. Born and raised in a small town outside of Houston, Texas, the 25-year-old actor, model, musician, writer, activist and nightlife host summarizes their talents with one title: “Full-time baddie.”

Elias’ creative mission focuses on representing authentic Queer, Latinx storytelling. Coming off their NYC stage debut as Elyan in the original off-Broadway cast of Lullaby – a play that explores breaking the toxic cycles in Latin culture – Jake merges work and play at Whorechata World, where they’re actively shaping the future of Latin club culture and curating a safe space for their community to feel liberated beyond the dance floor. They’ve also made themselves known as an activist in the fashion world, advocating for workers’ rights within the industry alongside the Model Alliance.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“I never leave the house without a lip combo.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“My favorite thing to do in NYC is indulging in variety of art this city has to offer. This city is full of artists, from all over the world, with their own unique approaches, disciplines, and history. It’s inspiring and delicious.”

JENNI IVA WIMMERSTEDT, HAIR ARTIST

Jenni Iva Wimmerstedt is a Swedish-born, New York-based session hair artist whose work traverses the boundary between hair design and fine art sculpture. With more than two decades of craft shaping her practice, she styles hair and builds subversive headpieces rooted in surrealism and high-impact visual design.

As a creative contributor to high-fashion editorials and global publications, she has built a signature style that is instantly recognisable. In addition to her runway and set work, Wimmerstedt serves as an art director and image-maker, conceptualizing and capturing entire visual worlds with her collaborator, makeup artist Sophie Hartnett.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“My black lip liner is easily the most essential and favourite thing in my bag.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“My ideal day in NYC is wandering without a destination. I’ll swing by an art exhibit for inspiration from my contemporaries, grab a coffee to watch the world go by, and cap off the night with drinks and pool at Toad Hall in SoHo. In such a fast-paced city, the best thing you can do is drop the time restrictions and let the city lead the way.”

NICK PORTELLO, FASHION DESIGNER

Nick Portello is a publicist, fashion designer, and licensed New York City tour guide living in Brooklyn. When he’s not giving bike tours of Central Park, he is most known for creating campy, colorful outfits he wears around the Big Apple.

Often working with unconventional and upcycled materials, Portello has turned trampolines into trenchcoats and air mattresses into Formula 1-inspired racing suits. He has previously assisted on garments for RuPaul’s Drag Race and supported The Blonds for New York Fashion Week. Inspired by club kids and unapologetic queer artists, if it fits under a sewing machine, Portello has probably tried to make a garment out of it. 

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“I collect transit cards from every city I visit and love going on the subway whenever I’m somewhere new that has one. I have five or six CharlieCards from my undergrad in Boston and none of them have any money on them. “

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“A night at Ciao Ciao Disco in Williamsburg. Growing up, my parents always played disco and songs from the 1970s and 80s, so my first time there I fell in love and knew every song. Bonus points because they gave a dance floor with light-up tiles that reminds me of Club Penguin.”

SALIM EMMANUEL GARCIA, PHOTOGRAPHER, CURATOR AND DJ

Salim Emmanuel Garcia is a Caribbean artist representing Puerto Rico, and Trinidad and Tobago. He uses his platform and art forms to create space for people of the Caribbean, bringing representation to the culture. He runs an organization that travels across the country showcases the sounds of the Caribbean, called Paraíso Pa’ Ti.

What’s your favourite thing in your bag?

“My MacBook. It’s crazy the amount of power that little thing has.”

What’s the best thing to do in NYC?

“The best thing to do in NYC is to explore, no set objective, just wander and be a little whimsical. I love hitting the piers, finding a rooftop, or trying some new restaurant out in Queens.”