Now let me tell you about Ayesha Curry at the Tony Awards on Sunday night, because when I saw it I actually said out loud, “okay Ayesha girl!” Picture it with me. Radio City Music Hall, the whole carpet washed in black gowns the way these nights always seem to go, and then here comes Ayesha in a red Monse dress you could have spotted from the parking lot. I gasped a little, I really did. You know how some women walk into a room praying nobody looks too hard? She is not one of them. She walked in already knowing exactly who she was, and honey, that is the whole story right there.

And can we talk about the dress for a second. It was fringe, the kind that does not just hang there but moves with you, swishing a little with every step she took. It came out of the Monse Resort 2027 collection, and the red shifted from one shade into another as she walked, so the whole thing looked like it was breathing right along with her. Her stylist Jason Bolden knew exactly what he was doing. In a crowd that dark, a red that bright could have come off as loud or trying too hard, but it did not. It looked like pure joy, and you cannot fake that.

Here is the thing about red though. It is not a color you reach for when you want to disappear. Red asks something of you. It asks you to be seen and to stand right in the middle of the moment you were given without shrinking down to make everybody else comfortable. So many of us grew up learning to take up less room and reach for the safe beige while somebody else got the light. Ayesha did not do that on Sunday, and watching her felt a little like being handed permission.

And I want you to know something, because it matters. Ayesha was not just a pretty face they sat in a good seat. She and her husband NBA baller Stephen helped produce The Lost Boys, which walked into the night with more nominations than just about anything else on that stage. She had every reason to be there. She earned her place and then showed up dressed like she believed in the work she put her name on. That right there is what it looks like to build something and then honor it, and I love her for it.

Now you know me. You know I live in my neutrals and the clean pieces that will still look right ten years from now, and I am not about to start chasing every trend that comes down the line. But there is room in a good, faithful life for a little color too. There is room for the night you put on the red dress and let yourself be the brightest thing in the room. Those two things are not at war with each other. A woman can be steady all week long and still claim her moment when it finally shows up.

So what stayed with me was not the designer name or which season the dress came from, lovely as all that is. It was the reminder that being seen is not the same thing as being full of yourself. There is something almost holy about a woman who shows up all the way, who lets her light reach clear to the back of the room. We were never asked to make ourselves smaller. We were asked to shine in a way that points to something bigger than us, and on Sunday night, in a red dress that moved like it was alive, that is exactly what my girl Ayesha did.