Release with Satchel Lee

And while “multihyphenate” takes on a whole new meaning applied to Lee’s CV, earlier this year, the 25-year-old creative decided to shift her focus inward with what turned out to be perfect timing. She stepped away from her duties at DRØME right before New York City’s quarantine set in, leaving her with the rare luxury of space and time to “sink in” and “explore without feeling pressured, which has been super dope,” she said.

A few months back that meant reading and spending her days relaxing in her bedroom in her childhood home, a townhouse on the Upper East Side. Nightly home-cooked family dinners, which weren’t really a thing in her house before—(in Satchel’s words, “I'm a born and bred New Yorker, we do takeout all the time: breakfast, lunch and dinner”)—became a staple for the Lees during lockdown.

Right — Jacket by THE  FRANKIE SHOP, lingerie by CHANTELLE

Left — Jacket and pants by ACNE STUDIOS, boots by IRO, lingerie by CHANTELLE

As did bonding with mom, Tonya, whose take on cultivating “army fit” physical strength and preparedness in an emergency clicked with Lee in the face of the crisis: “I can't speak about my father and my brother, but like, my mom and I are ready for the fucking apocalypse.” Watching her mom stay cool and keep the fam calm and collected throughout COVID has been inspiring; it hasn’t “necessarily redefined, but reinforced my idea of what it is to be a woman,” Lee said.

As a queer Black woman herself, identity was on Lee’s mind long before the tumultuous ride 2020’s been—in a sense, the times have amounted to an extension of the inner transformation she was already experiencing. A few months prior to the shutdown, a fateful trip to Montgomery, Alabama on a journalistic assignment for NBC LX brought her deeper into connection with her ancestral roots. (Lee’s a New Yorker through and through—but her parents’ families are from Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.)

Sweater and boots by IRO, lingerie by CHANTELLE, earrings talent's own

For context, Lee never expected to host a news program—the job came to her, making her visits to sites like the Legacy Museum and the Memorial for Peace and Justice while down South for the work feel even more cosmically aligned. “To be brought to this place where I felt so deeply connected to my ancestors, to my family, to my legacy, you know—I was very thankful to the universe for bringing me to that spot.”

Fast-forward to now, just months later—the Black Lives Matter movement has gained momentum in a way we’ve never seen before, and the world is undergoing its own (overdue) transformation as we fight a pandemic. And through it all, Lee’s feeling thankful for the room to take a well-deserved breath as she figures things out on her terms.

“We're in a completely different space now,” she said. “My dad always says BC and AC, Before Corona and After Corona: two different worlds we’re operating in, you know? And now it's about navigating.”

Top right — Shirt by OFFICINE GÉNÉRALE, shoes by MARYAM NASSIR ZADEH, lingerie by CHANTELLE

For Lee that means fighting from the sidelines, figuring out what she can do to support the movement from home, and support herself in the midst of a lot of mental, emotional and spiritual processing as the country takes its first steps toward facing itself. She’s happy that people are finally trying to wake up to the racism that’s been a heavy part of her daily experience, but the strain and time it’s taken for this moment to come obviously presents a conflict.

“People need to get out of their own way, stop feeling so fucking sensitive about everything, and just look at themselves and be real… We’re all American, guess what: Americans are sick. Everyone. Me too,” she said. “I have my own implicit biases that I’ve been brainwashed into thinking. And I’m learning and decolonizing myself as much as anybody else and I don’t think there’s any shame in saying that. It’s a process… But I'm trying to stay positive. I'm trying not to lose the dream.”

Pants by OFFICE GÉNÉRALE, lingerie by CHANTELLE

Self-care right now means taking a step back—taking a break from producing the podcast, for example. “When everything with Black Lives Matter started happening, I kind of stopped doing [my podcast] because I was like, ‘Okay, I don't want to get on here and start cursing people out.’” And planning for a freer future—getting in touch with what she wants on an individual level: her own open space to create in collaboration, when collaboration is safe again. She’s just signed her first lease for a spot in Fort Greene a short walk from her dad’s office, in which she plans to, someday soon, bring all her people together for readings and parties. Till then, she’ll be pouring love into it, making it “home for awhile”: “I feel like having the space where I wake up and feel inspired in is super-duper important.”

And after four months spent acquainting herself intimately with her childhood home, the move to BK feels like it’s coming at “the right time. Again it feels like more transition, so I think it’ll be really good.” It’s the first step toward figuring out the rest. And right now, that’s about as much as anyone can ask for.