​New year resolutions, like traditions, are expected. ​But the value of traditions comes when they build toward something new​ and thrilling. This traditional notched jacket emblazoned in a near-east design is every bit classic as it is daring. Bringing true and traditional elements of life into every new year – such as family, faith and classic style – is the only guarantee to individualistic happiness and perseverance. And although setting resolutions can easily help define how happy you think you’ll be once the new year is old, those true elements will resolve you to rise above any trials in a society that sometimes ages more like spoiled milk than fine wine. In what stands to be a year defined by loads of grace and grit, this look is the first to be shared in that spirit. The poem below captures this style moment and the essence of the spikes in my shoes – just about perfectly.

“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history​
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

​​Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you bese​​t with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Shot by @ce_photogs.

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