Hello. I’m Cristina Black.
I’ve been creating voices, platforms and campaigns for fashion, beauty and culture brands for about 15 years. I helped build and transform brands like Kérastase, ILIA, Buscemi, Bonnaroo, Armani Beauty, MCM and so many others.
I sing, write songs and play the harp with artists like Alex Chilton and Father John Misty, and contribute music to primetime network television shows and advertising campaigns.
I am a storyteller, a mythmaker. I take ideas, strip them down to their simplest terms, and then blow them up to epic proportions. The results are legendary. What we say and how we say it, whether through words, images, products or events, is what ruptures our culture and forces it forward.
Stories, it turns out, are everything.
Once upon a time…
I was a journalist. I loved music and I wanted to write about it. You see, I spent my 20s in New Orleans, where nothing matters more. It was a lot of brass-band music in rotten-roofed bars, deep conversations with Tom Waits look-alikes, dancing down the street in a wig and a hoop skirt covered in glitter and smeared make-up. I was hanging around geniuses like Wynton Marsalis, Allen Toussaint and Art Neville, doing drive-bys at Fats Domino’s house with my editor at lunchtime.
I couldn’t believe my life.
Later, I took that passion to New York City. I got really good at going to music festivals, standing around at fashion shows and weaseling my way into backstage areas. I ate chicken soup with Nick Cave, discussed literature with Ludacris and went dude-watching with Kesha. Lionel Richie gave me fashion advice, Kevin Federline gave me life advice and Barry Manilow hung up on me, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
I was writing about music for magazines, then I was writing about music for fashion magazines, then I was writing about fashion for fashion brands. I was styling fashion looks for musicians. I was dressing myself up, becoming an archetype in mortal form.
The whole time, I was telling stories.
Then, a curious thing happened. I stopped writing about songs and started actually writing songs. I found that, if I sang, people would listen to what I had to say, and that they might even believe it. I sang of love and its dissolution, hope and its holes, the certainty and beauty of death.
I moved to dreamy Los Angeles, reunited with my childhood instrument, the harp, and began to gild my ideas with ancient sounds that echoed the wisdom of the ages.
The relief was ecstatic. I had found my mythology.
I can help you find yours too.
