Joce Blake went to CultureCon on October 5, 2026, in a floor length custom durag carrying Nolan Wells’s name, and custom nails carrying four more: Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Sandra Bland, Tyre Nichols.
“CultureCon is easily one of my favorite events of the year if not my absolute favorite,” she wrote. “The Black creativity, the Black style, the Black joy… it’s just unmatched.”
A staff member at the event looked at the fit and said it was veneration, but make it fashion.
That line is the whole argument. Black women have always carried the dead in what they wear, on a pin, on a T-shirt at a vigil, in a church hat, in a tattoo. Putting the names on a durag that trails the floor and on a set of nails does not soften any of it. It moves the memorial out of the funeral and into a room full of people building things, where it is harder to ignore and impossible to file under grief.
It is also a refusal of a choice nobody should have to make. Joy and remembrance are not supposed to be two separate outfits. She wore both on the same body, on purpose, to a party.
The names walked in with her.
