Black History in Fashion: Fashion Designers

      

    Later, I would learn that frequently due to deep-rooted systemic racism black fashion designers were not acknowledged as the creators of their work even if it was popular. Unfortunately, the silence back then has led to a lack of knowledge now. 

     This started me on a journey to research black designers and their contributions to the fashion world. This search led me to some wonderfully talented people. So I will share some of the most interesting and insightful stories that I have found. I plan to share a new story at least once a week in honor of Black History Month.

     Here is a preview of just some of their accomplishments. One, while born in slavery, used profits from seeing to buy freedom, two of them designed for wives of the president, they designed for movies, and a lot of the people who starred in them. The dressed celebrities in every time period. 

1. Background

• Born in slavery in February 1818.
• The father she knew was sent away out west
• Later found out she was the daughter of her slave owner   
• When her enslavers planned to hire out her aging mother she offered to support the family with her sewing instead
• This started her business and
• Eventually she would make a deal and use her earnings to free herself and her son.

2. Schooling

• Her mother was a favored slave and was allowed to learn to read
• Her mother taught her to sew as she helped as a domestic slave 

3. Design Aesthetics

• She is known for her great craftsmanship and for simplifying the shapes and busyness that was trending in Europe. 
• This style of fashion departed from the traditional Victorian Era and began to establish American fashion.

4. Celebrity Clients

• Varna Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis
• Washington DC elite ladies of the time
• First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who also became a close friend. 

5. Legacy

• She is well known for her work for the political elite of Washington D.C.
• She was one of the first African American women to publish a book.
• She was a passionate activist who started an organization that provided assistance for newly freed people from slavery.

Takeaways

Where you start is not where you necessarily end up. This is an amazing story of success in spite of insurmountable obstacles. 

 

Anne Lowe 

1. Background

• Born in Alabama in 1898

• Grandmother had made clothes as a slave and her mother did embroidery 

• All three started a sewing business and Anne continued it after her mother's sudden death when she was sixteen. 

2. Schooling

• New York's S.T. Taylor Design School

• Forced to work segregated from the other students but still excelled.

3. Design Aesthetics

• Creating flowers from fabric 

• Whimsical and full of fantasy

• Designs appeared almost magical

• She was an artist 

4. Famous Clients

• She only desired to create for the social elite.

• "I love my clothes and I'm particular about who wears them," Lowe once told Ebony. "I am not interested in sewing for... social climbers. I do not cater to Mary and Sue. I sew for the families of the Social Register.”

• She faced constant racial discrimination while working for America's most elite families, including the du Ponts, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, and, of course, the Kennedys, Whitneys, Posts, Bouviers, and Auchinclosses.

• Olivia de Havilland wore to accept her Oscar for the 1946 film To Each His Own

• Jackie Kennedy's Wedding Dress.

5. Legacy 

• Known as society's best-kept secret

• Frequently undercharged and short-paid.

• Publications only printed "a colored dressmaker did it.”

• Business foundered after the times changed and fairytale style.

• One of the most iconic wedding gowns.

• Lowe made the dress that Olivia de Havilland wore to accept her Oscar for the 1946 film To Each His Own

  • Lowe’s clients liked to keep her to themselves—or because they didn’t want to admit it was a relatively inexpensive dress from an African-American designer in New York when people might think it was straight from Dior’s atelier in Paris. Whatever the reason, and as unfair as it was for them to deny Lowe the credit she was surely due, her name was barely known outside of those elite circles with a 1966 Saturday Evening Post article even calling her “Society’s Best Kept Secret”. And the quality of her designs was unbelievable. 

Takeaways 

• Art doesn’t always pay

• "Too late, I realized that dresses I sold for $300 were costing me $450," Lowe once noted. 

 

Zelda Wynn Valdes

1. Background

• born and raised in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in June 1905, 

2. Schooling 

• Watched her grandmother who was a seamstress.

• The eldest of seven children, Valdes (born as Zelda Christian Barbour) was raised in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where she learned to sew from watching her grandmother’s seamstress. 

• Worked with her Uncle who was a tailor.

• Did not have formal training. 

3. Design Aesthetics

• She was known for body-hugging and low-cut gowns

• Her goal was to flatter and make the female curves look good 

• Sexy and sophisticated 

• Powerful femininity 

4. Celebrity Clients 

• She designed for the celebrities of the day.

• Dorothy Dandridge, Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Gladys Knight.

• Josephine Baker, Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West, to name a few. She even designed Maria Ellington’s "Blue Ice" wedding dress when she walked down the aisle and tied the knot with jazz singer Nat King Cole in 1948.

5. Legacy 

• an upscale boutique and then as a sales clerk and tailor, the first black woman to do so.

• Was both a fashion designer and a costume designer who embraced curves and diversity.

• Valdes was also the owner of the first Black business on Broadway in NYC back in the 1940s.

• Valdes established the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers.

• Valdes serve as the designer for the Dance Theater of Harlem. 

• As the trailblazing matriarch, she designed costumes for over 80 productions, modernizing our ideas of ballet both on and off stage.

• She pioneered the art dyeing traditionally pink ballet tights to match the skin tone of each dancer.

6. Takeaways 

• Known Freakum dress 

• "I just had a God-given talent for making people beautiful.”

• Gorgeous Undeniable talent

• Just had a god-given talent for making people beautiful, and it's true that she did her gowns are gorgeous. Her talent is undeniable, but I firmly believe that only what I do for Christ will last. She is also known as the designer of the freaking dress and there are other pieces to her legacy which I did not mention here because they don't line up with the Pure Gazelle standard for faith and modesty and those kinds of things.  And so she makes me think about the legacy that I would leave and while God gives us these wonderful talents, it's also just as important how we use them, and I want to make sure that the Lord is pleased with how I use everything that he gives me. My Life and my talent and my work. So that is what I have to say about the very talented Zelda Wynn Valdes…

 

Jay Jaxon (August 30, 1941 - July 19, 2006)

1. Background

• Grew up in Jamaica  Queens New York 

• Eugene Jackson was born on Aug. 30, 1941. His father, Sidney Jackson, worked for the Long Island Railroad as a track driver, and his mother, Ethel Rena-Jackson, was a housekeeper.

2. Schooling

• Was studying to be a lawyer

• Dropped out to pursue fashion and enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).[2]

3. Design Aesthetics

• Clean garments that flowed well. Jackets, pants, dresses, and skirts are all designed to have the best drape and movement. 

• He is known for being extremely adaptable, being able to translate his creations for multiple brands to reach a varied customer base.

• “To me, clothes have to have a certain amount of elegance,”

• fashion as an aesthetic pleasure and fashion as functional,

• His aesthetic was consistent, with a focus on clean, fluid pieces designed with the drape of each garment’s fabric in mind. There were flowing trousers and easy jackets; skirts and dresses cut on the bias for movement. Though they expressed simplicity, his garments, even sporty ones, carried a sense of sophistication and grace.

• “To me, clothes have to have a certain amount of elegance,” Jaxon told the journalist Yvette de la Fontaine of Women’s News Service in 1970 when his first collections for Scherrer were being unveiled. “Then they must be worn with elegance, with style. That is my couture.”

• Before long he became noticed for his adaptability, easily translating his designs for different labels as well as meeting the tastes of independent customers.

4. Who wore his designs…

• He worked in fashion houses like Jean-Louis Scherrer (cher rer) Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior

• vocalist Annie Lennox, Sammy Davis Jr., Liza Minnelli, and Thelma Houston

• such television shows as The Division, Angel, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Ally McBeal, and American Dreams, as well as the films The Men's Club and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

5. Legacy

• He was the first American and the first Black person to work as a couturier for a fashion studio in Paris.

• His focus was on elevated sportswear, like trim, collared jackets and polished, pleated trousers, which he also designed for other companies

Takeaway

• Adaptability!

 

Willi Smith (February 29, 1948 – April 17, 1987)

1. Background

• Nurtured by his grandmother after his parents divorce 

• Born in 1948, Willi Smith grew up in Philadelphia with an ironworker father and a mother skilled in the creative arts.

2. Schooling

• Smith studied commercial art at Mastbaum Technical High School and fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art

• internship for Smith with venerated couturier (koo too ree ay) Arnold Scaasi

• Parsons School of Design in New York City

3. Design Aesthetics

• Blurrs the line between fashion and art.

• “I’m trying to strip my clothes of nostalgia, of age, of everything that isn’t practical.”

• The label he created Williwear combined high-end aspects usually ground in tailoring the more casual sportswear 

• Smith became a poster boy for fresh American style. His signature slacks—an amalgam of zoot suit, navy dress, and Fred Astaire tux that moved like George Balanchine’s “cloud in trousers,”

• “I’m trying to strip my clothes of nostalgia, of age, of everything that isn’t practical.”

• His label, Williwear, was ahead of its time: mixing the relaxed fit of sportswear with high-end elements of tailoring.

4. Who wore his designs…

• He designed for everybody inspired by streetwear and made clothes to be worn on the street 

• Was intentional to make his clothes accessible to all even selling the patterns for home sewers to have access 

• designed for School Daze

• “He loved street culture and made clothes for people to wear on the street

• School Daze… Willi Smith was recruited to outfit the film’s extravagant homecoming court. 

5. Legacy

• Made streetwear before streetwear existed but called it Street Couture,...

• Wanted everyone to have access to his designs no matter their station in life.

• “My designs are so simple. . . . I want them to be interpreted. I’m not a statement designer, you don’t have to wear me from head to toe. I like thrift shoppers who put other things together creatively with my clothes.”0

• when the label incorporated some elements of hip-hop culture into its aesthetic, most notably his 1983 autumn-winter collection called Street Couture, which featured music and dance performances. That year Smith became the youngest-ever winner of the American Fashion Critics’ Award for Women’s Fashion.

• WilliWear had parallels but no peers within the fashion system at the time. The brand was helmed by a celebrated personality, but the clothing was intentionally affordable; quality of materials, durability, and craftsmanship were paramount.

• Each collection, while already affordable, was cut into patterns for Butterick and McCall’s so that home sewers could translate the silhouettes.

• Indeed, Smith delighted in the appropriation of his work, distancing himself from the fashion protocol of donning a complete ensemble from a particular designer. “My designs are so simple. . . . I want them to be interpreted. I’m not a statement designer, you don’t have to wear me from head to toe. I like thrift shoppers who put other things together creatively with my clothes.”8

• filled a stark schoolroom with a grid of white-plaster clothes laid out on the floor and flagged with evidence markers.

Takeaways 

• Take control of your brand and be true to your design esthetics.  In a lot of ways, he did the opposite of what was popular during his time designing for the people of any station in life and not just the elite.

• Awesome!

 

Helpful Sources:

https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1818-1907-elizabeth-keckley/

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/from-slavery-to-the-white-house-the-extraordinary-life-of-elizabeth-keckly

https://youtu.be/nxsHsvB1Pr8?si=6NlvapH6MOPCEudl