“The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up.” I couldn’t agree more with Serena Williams on the importance and power of women working together and uplifting each other. With March being Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day being celebrated on March 8, it’s a reminder to be thankful for all of the women who have blazed trails and uplifted others on their journeys—and to do our best, in turn.
During my 24 years helming the magazine, we have profiled countless remarkable and inspiring local women, past and present, including 20th-century sister suffragists the Pollitzers, philanthropist and social activist Linda Ketner, late community leader Thomasena Stokes-Marshall, and this month’s “Style” issue cover gal, Susan Hull Walker, now for the third time. (We should start a club for that!)
Susan, the founder of Charleston-based clothing brand Ibu, is a woman of both style and substance, and what makes her story so compelling is the evolution of her life’s work and how she continually builds upon it. Editor-at-large Stephanie Hunt, who has followed Susan’s journey for us for decades and eventually served on her board, first profiled her in May 2006, relaying her transition from minister, literally a woman of the cloth, to textile artist, weaving fabrics and exploring spirituality for her art installations. Nearly a decade later, we revisited Susan as she was opening the Ibu showroom on King Street, the result of her global travels to learn from artisans and a desire to create more sustainable, profitable markets for their wares, what she then described as a “movement—a worldwide web of women rising into self-created lives.”
And now, nine years later, Susan and her network of “allies” have expanded Ibu into a foundation, uplifting even more lives around the globe. Read “Woman of the World” (page 82) for this latest chapter. I can’t wait to see what she does next!
Darcy Shankland
Editor-in-chief