Bevy Smith Invites Us To Have A Seat At Her Table

‘Black In White’ is a new editorial series from iOne Digital that celebrates the wholeness of our beauty — our skin, our culture and our roots — by celebrating it in the simplest of styles. The color white has a long and storied history in Black cultural expression. From spiritual ceremonies to all-white parties, no one does it like us when it comes to bringing so much color to a look without it. Join us as we shut out the noise of overloaded digital spaces, high concepts and heavy retouching, and take it back to the basics for real and unfiltered storytelling.

Bevy Smith is learning to swim. Just two years shy of her sexy sixtieth, the best-selling author, revered radio host, and fashion godmother of Harlem is dipping her fresh pedicure into new waters, literally. Bevy told HelloBeautiful that during a recent VIP summer vacation to Bermuda (which is not in the Caribbean, she corrects me, but in the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina), she took a boat out to a bay where the crew docked and jumped carefree into 10-20 feet of the island’s famed turquoise seas. In the past, Bevy said she would have avoided getting into open water like that. But this season, something inside of her has shifted — an irresistible siren’s call into the depths of her own possibilities. 

“I just kept on my life vest, and I was just doing my little doggy paddle around the bay. I was really very proud of myself,” the Bevelations Sirius-XM star said.  “And so I know that by the time my 60th birthday comes, oh, I’ll be swimming.”

Bevy’s swim-goal is one, of many examples, of why her viral mantra, “It gets greater, later,” is not just a motto she says, it’s a lifestyle she breathes. As a professional-pivot Queen, Bevy left her post as a highly sought-after fashion ad-executive over 20 years ago, and with all the setbacks, which included being “broke from 40 to 45, which are crucial years” she’s never looked back. She said “it gets greater, later” was a personal anchor that kept her from tipping into the murky comparison waters that lurk around change. 

“You look at yourself, and then you may look at someone else in your peer group, and you may say, ‘Wow, look at what they’re doing. Look how far ahead they are.’ And you can feel kind of stuck, and you can feel very less than,” she said. 

Bevy told HelloBeautiful that she endured a long, 7-year (which is the number of “completion,” she notes) transition between seasons, a persistence that paid off in lifetime dividends. “I don’t have any regrets about it. But I want women, and especially Black women, to understand that it gets greater later, as long as we’re still around to actually apply the message,” she said.

Bevy went on to land a hosting role on Bravo’s Fashion Queens at age 45 and provided hot pop-culture takes as an on-screen staple on Page Six TV. In 2021, her memoir, Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie, became a best-seller, lauded by artists like Whoopi Goldberg and Pharell Williams, who praised the work as “wise, well-experienced, empathetic, and colorful.” And now, you can catch Bevy generously serving up a table-spread of wisdom in real-time through the relaunch of her Dinners With Bevy: Life Revision series. Bevy’s iconic dinners are industry lore, an 18-year tradition of bringing together like-minded hearts and spirits to break bread and fellowship. 

“It originally started out as a way to connect urban music artists with luxury fashion brands and with mainstream fashion editors. It’s now evolved into dinners for philanthropic arms, like Planned Parenthood, or I do it for arts foundations, or I do them for the National Council of Negro Women,” she said. 

Now, we are all invited to have a seat at the table through an application process that centers three questions: Who are you at your core? How are you being perceived? How would you like to be perceived? The questions help Bevy and team curate an unforgettable atmosphere for their transformation-seeking guests.

“I get to marry my motivational speaking and the lessons I’ve learned, and I get to share them with the guests over a beautiful meal,” she said. Nurturing community at-large is the work of the culture’s greatest host, indeed, our Auntie Bevy. 

As a part of our Intimate Portrait Series, we asked our featured talent to answer a series of rapid-fire questions to sink more deeply into the lives behind the public personas. 

HB: When do you feel most vulnerable?

BS: When I’m with my family, I become “little brown Bevy.” She’s really sympathetic, empathetic. She is very soft. She’s not a “take charge” kind of person. She kind of plays her role. She’s the baby in the family, and she kind of really falls into that. Whenever people see me with my siblings, they’re like, “Oh, now I see that you’re really the baby. I just kind of wear my heart on my sleeve when I’m with my family. I think that I am a woman who is very strong-willed, and passionate, and all those things, and I am still those things for my family. But certainly I have a much softer side, and it’s a very loving side to me that really comes out when I’m with my family. And that takes vulnerability.

HB: When do you feel most free?

BS: Well, for me, it’s definitely being in nature. When I have a day that has nothing on the books, I mean nothing. When all I have to do is what I want to do. Oh, that’s when I’m most free. And I’m blessed that I have many days like that. But again, that comes at a cost. I could be doing more stuff, and therefore I could be making more money. But then what’s it all for? I want to enjoy my life.

HB: What in your life do you hold most sacred? 

BS: I share a lot of myself on social media. Not all of me. I’m a Scorpio, so that would never happen. But what I don’t play about is my family. I don’t share a lot of pictures of them. I don’t share a lot of information about them because I just hold them sacred. And I always want to keep them away from harm. I know that there could be vitriol spewed at me at any time. I am a public person, and I would never want them to be caught in the crossfire. 

HB: At this point in your life, how would you say you define yourself? 

BS: Brave. Sweet. Fierce, loving, open and compassionate. Some of these things were locked away. I always say I felt like that kind of shy and empathetic and soft person. I had to put her away, because I didn’t feel like she could protect me. Now I see that she is the greatest gift that I’ve ever had, that I’ve ever been. That is the goal in which I am. That is the real prize, the jewel, that “little brown Bevy” is the one.

HB: If eyes truly are windows to the soul, when you look at yourself in this photo, what do you see? 

BS: I see resilient joy. So many women really lean into how much that they can do, and how much they can withstand. And that is a great thing, because it’s always good to be able to take care of yourself, but it’s also a beautiful thing to let people take care of you. And a lot of my joy comes from the fact that I have that liberty, and I’ve given myself that freedom, to let people love me, and love up on me, and worry for me, and take care of me.