American celebrity hairstylist, LaTisha Simone Chong has died at the age of thirty-two, after a battle with breast cancer.
Ms Chong was an innovative, effervescent hair stylist who created looks for fashion stars like Mr Clemens, athletes like Ms Williams, and actors like Tracee Ellis Ross as well as the stars of “The Real Housewives of Potomac.”
She also recently worked on the September 2022 cover of Vogue starring Serena Williams.
According to reports, Ms Chong died on 19th July in Manhattan. Her death was not widely reported at the time. Her sister Afesha Chong confirmed that the cause was metastasized breast cancer.
Ms Chong was born in Trinidad and Tobago and immigrated to the US when she was six years old with her family.
She served in the U.S. Air Force enlisting at the age of 19 before becoming a professional hair stylist. She left the armed forces with an honourable medical discharge in 2014.
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In 2017, she graduated from Charleston Southern University, a Christian school, where she studied biology.
An editor at Vogue, Gabriella Karefa-Johnson told the New York Times that Ms Chong was one of the tradesmen behind the fashion imagery — the editors, photographers, stylists and makeup artists — who are expanding the visual landscape to include the people who have always been at the forefront of style … with a lot of us from the diaspora investigating and interrogating our blackness in a very white industry like fashion.
Ian Isiah, a musician, artist, and family friend of the Chongs to Vogue said,
“She continued, she really had a gift, like she could create a whole map in a short head.
Her whole family does hair. Some people are gifted and some people are talented but LaTisha was both.
‘She literally just reigned over both and we miss her”.
The Serena Williams Vogue cover, which captured a star at a pivot point, was Ms Chong’s last job.
She is survived by her parents Darlene and Garrick, sisters Afesha and Tenisha, and her 12-year-old son Malachi.
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