Rama Duwaji is having a busy fall.
There she was in the front row at the runway show for Diotima during New York Fashion Week, sitting near the Instagram executive Eva Chen, the fashion designer Willy Chavarria and the model and activist Bethann Hardison.
She had illustrations published in a feature article in New York magazine about the objects that Palestinians took from their homes when they fled Gaza.
Over Labor Day weekend, as a singer crooned in Farsi and an oud player strummed gently, she sat on a bench in the backyard of a bar in Williamsburg, at a fund-raiser for mutual aid groups in Sudan. Some of her prints were for sale on a table inside the bar. One, in black and white, showed two women, standing defiantly, with their arms interlocked and their backs pressed against each other.
What Ms. Duwaji, 28, has not been doing this summer and fall, is stumping for her husband.
The little-known state assemblyman whom Ms. Duwaji matched with on Hinge in 2021 — when she was living the kind of young artist’s life, as a freelance animator and illustrator, that she envisioned when she moved to New York after college — is now very well known, as Zohran Mamdani.
And Ms. Duwaji is getting used to what her brand-new husband running for mayor in a highly publicized race means for her, and their life together.
In June, after Mr. Mamdani stunned Mr. Cuomo in the Democratic primary, Ms. Duwaji was onstage beside her husband during his victory speech, smiling in a boatneck dress and a “Zohran NYC” pin. In the days after his victory, Ms. Duwaji gained more than a 100,000 new followers on Instagram, many of whom commented that they were intrigued by her “cool” style and artistic endeavors.
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The post When Your Hinge Date Is New York’s Mayoral Front-Runner appeared first on New York Times.