Solange Knowles knows best!

What we can all learn from Solange’s approach to incorporating fashion into her life and art.

Aug 12, 2025

Hello and welcome back to Buy Better™️, your weekly dose of style inspiration and vintage finds, brought to you by BARO!

Each week, we:

1️⃣ Yap about something that’s on our mind

2️⃣ Style pieces we’re eyeing on BARO

3️⃣ Share a roundup of vintage and secondhand picks

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What’s On Our Mind 🧠

I’m a longtime listener of the podcast Celebrity Memoir Book Club, which, you guessed it, gives you the TLDR on memoirs written by celebs. Most recently, I listened to them review Tina Knowles’ memoir, Matriarch, and you can probably imagine how impressive she is having given birth to two of the most talented women in the WORLD.

In the memoir, she talks about how Solange, the younger of the Knowles sisters, has always been an artist of many mediums—visual arts, performing arts, and of course, music. I’ve been a huge Solange fan since she debuted “Losing You” (one of the best songs of all time in my opinion) and graced my screen in Bring it On: All or Nothing. But, it wasn’t until I saw her music video for “Cranes in the Sky” back in 2016 that I really started to understand her artistry and how deeply intertwined it was with fashion.

The video is set in a minimalist dreamscape, where Solange floats through different surreal environments. Think: sun-bleached deserts, mirrored halls, marble staircases. Throughout the scenes, she’s draped in these unbelievable sculptural and monochromatic looks, some of which were designed by emerging talents, others crafted from unexpected household materials. The styling is expressive and each piece feels chosen for a specific reason.

While she might not be as big of a household name as Beyonce, Solange is her own type of artist. She is able to merge music, fashion, performance, design, and architecture all in one—it actually feels unfair to put the two sisters in the same bucket, when the art they create is fundamentally so different. Solange often acts as her own creative director, and is even the founder of the creative multidisciplinary group, Saint Heron, where she recently curated the Eldorado Ballroom performance series. With the help of stylists Danielle Goldberg and Akeem Smith, she opened the series in a structured Ferragamo leather gown—an architectural silhouette meant to evoke her personal vision of Houston’s legacy.

Even though Solange is deeply intentional about what she wears, she’s also made it clear she doesn’t view fashion as spectacle. In a Vogue article, she explained that she wants fashion to “not be performative for the sake of a photo,” but instead, to be an integral part of the work. It’s a sentiment that I resonate with now more than ever, given that we live in a world where most things are thought of through the lens of an Instagram post.

This line of thinking is evident in her Metatronia (Metatron’s Cube) piece, where she and her dancers wore minimalist white garments that mirrored the geometry of the installation. The clothing became part of the piece, reinforcing the themes of the work itself.

I appreciate that in Solange’s world, fashion is inseparable from the art. Because, like we’ve said many times before, fashion is art, and it should be thought of as such. Also, Tina Knowles really knows how to raise some kids, so consider this my official request for her next book to be a parenting how-to guide.

BARO This 👀

Imagine if the Knowles sisters knew about BARO… maybe someday! In the meantime, here are some pieces I think Solange would rent that scream “I am way cooler than you!”