Tracee Ellis Ross has an endless love for fashion.
The trailblazing 48-year-old star stunned in a white Alexander McQueen ensemble with thigh-high leather boots as she accepted the Fashion Icon Award at the 2020 People’s Choice Awards on Sunday, November 15.
“Tracee, do you take fashion to be your lawfully wedded wife? I do,” she joked at the start of her acceptance speech. “Thank you for validating my shopping habit.”
In addition to thanking the magazine industry and the stylists and designers she’s worked with over the years, she also paid homage to her mother, superstar Diana Ross.
“Obviously, I have to thank the icon herself, my mom. Not only for her great parenting and not acquiescing to my many whimsical and outrageous requests and tantrums … but also her style, her epic closet and glamour that introduced me to the power of fashion,” Tracee shared.
While her mother once denied her request for a “seasonal shopping budget,” Tracee went on to call the singer’s closet “the best fashion playground of all time.”
She recalled scanning the stage after Diana’s performances and gathering beads that fell off of her dresses, “so that I could have pieces of the magic, seeds of the fashion dream that I was cultivating for myself.”
Although Tracee modeled for some of the biggest names in fashion before making it as an actress on “Girlfriends” in 2000, she revealed that vintage clothing played a pivotal role in her fashion journey.
“Secondhand clothing helped me understand that style has nothing to do with money,” she said. “It’s the way you put things together.”
The “Blackish” star often shows off her incredible outfits on Instagram, and said she wears her “insides on the outside.”
For Tracee, who exclusively wore black designers to host the AMAs in 2018, fashion can also be a “tool for transformation.”
“Use fashion as an entrance. Let your clothes be your superhero cape, allowing you to the best you you can be,” she urged viewers. “It doesn’t matter if you wear black tie or a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, but suit up and show up, because our action creates our destiny, our joy creates space for our freedom.”
The People’s Choice Fashion Icon Award went to Gwen Stefani in 2019, and Victoria Beckham in 2018.
See what the stars wore on the red carpet at the 2020 People’s Choice Awards below:
