black designers
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Fashion News From the Continent: Rwanda Rising
Africa wants to be a player in the luxury fashion world, and it’s coming into the game strong. Last week alone, Lagos, Nigeria, was host to two separate fashion weeks featuring African designers. Rwanda is now the latest nation to get behind the creative talent in the design and textile industries, with government subsidies like…
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Lagos Fashion Week: Emmy Kasbit Wins the Prize
The Glow Up congratulates Nigerian fashion designer Emmanuel Okoro of Emmy Kasbit on his award-winning collection presented at 2018 Lagos Fashion Week, which concluded Sunday night. Lagos Fashion Week is an annual showcase in Nigeria for African designers, underwritten by Heineken. Twelve designers showed at the three-day event, providing a global showcase and the chance…
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Designer Agnes Baddoo Has It in the Bag
What’s the handbag that would give you life—if only you could find it? Agnes Baddoo answered that question for herself, and it became a business. Formerly a fashion stylist for Elle magazine, Baddoo cut her teeth on the international fashion circuit of New York, London and Paris in the ’90s. When The Glow Up caught…
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Girl. Pharrell Might Launch a Women’s Fashion Line, and All We Can Envision Is Bathrobes & Beaucoup Hats
Another day, another rumored celebrity fashion endeavor. This week, rumblings have been afoot (thanks to TMZ) that our favorite crooning nerd, Pharrell Williams, has trademarked “Girl” for use in a future fashion venture. Hmmm… Of course, this wouldn’t be entirely new territory for the producer, composer and erstwhile crooner-rapper; his collaboration with Adidas Originals has…
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Paris Fashion Week: Balmain Wants You to #JoinMyReality
Balmain, designed by 32-year-old Olivier Rousteing, the first person of color to head a French heritage brand, literally dazzled the crowd gathered at Paris City Hall for its Fall/Winter 2018/2019 presentation. Olivier R.—as the designer prefers to be called—sent out his #BalmainArmy in futuristic fabrics inspired by fantasies of a soon-to-be-real cyber mashup world. Holographic…
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Paris Fashion Week: Off-White x Nike Caused a Fashion Riot
Paris experienced a riot last week. Off-White designer Virgil Abloh knows how to draw a crowd, but his Fall/Winter 2018 runway presentation almost closed down before it opened. An uninvited and impromptu throng of sneakerheads gathered outside the venue in hopes of scoring a pair of Off-White x Nike, which Footwear News reported will be…
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Dressing the Onion: Whitney Mero and the Comfortable Couture of Onion Cut & Sewn
Walking into Onion Cut & Sewn’s East Harlem studio is walking into a world of very pretty possibilities. A spectrum of vibrant fabrics are stacked to the ceiling, while dress forms stand half-draped in fabric, soon to join the rack of garments hanging along one full wall. In a corner beneath dozens of spools of…
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London Fashion Designer Duro Olowu Is a Man of Many Muses
Duro Olowu is man who celebrates the creative force of women in the arts like no other fashion designer. After all, he’s married to Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she is arguably the supreme critical eye and ultimate beacon and power broker when it comes to the contemporary work…
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BNYFW: Xuly Bët Remains Mali’s Best-Kept Fashion Secret
Fashion designer Lamine Kouyaté has always drawn from his birthplace of Mali and all of Africa’s past to create designs for his label, Xuly Bët, that put him well ahead of the fashion pack. I first met Lamine Badian Kouyaté around 1990, when I walked his Paris runway shows. Staged at La Sarmarataine, one of…
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BNYFW: According to Harlem’s Fashion Row, the Future of Black Fashion Is in Your Hands
Fashion may be fleeting in the eyes of some, but not for Brandice Henderson, the founder of Harlem’s Fashion Row, a comprehensive fashion incubator for black fashion-design professionals. If she has her way, the power and impact of African-American contribution to fashion design will be eternal. To that end, Henderson gathered together a powerhouse crew…