black designers
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Still Waiting for a Seat at the Table: What's It Really Like to Be Black in the Fashion Industry?
It was a telling moment: In late July, Eva Chen, director of fashion partnerships at Instagram, posted a photo of the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund judges’ table—and there was not one black face in sight. As reported by Refinery 29: Seated at a long table were 10 judges with the future…
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Time Traveling: For BlacKkKlansman, Costume Designer Marci Rodgers Took a Full Circle Journey
If you ask Marci Rodgers how she became a costume designer, her answer is simple: “God.” To the believers, it’s a perfectly credible answer, while the more spiritually skeptical might raise an eyebrow. But there is something undeniably divine in Rodger’s career trajectory, which began as a style-obsessed teenager in Evanston, Ill., just north of…
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This Is How We Do It: Essence's September Issue—Starring Naomi!—Is a Study in Black Excellence
Leave it to Essence to remind us what black excellence looks like on both sides of the camera. Making their contribution to a season of intense black girl magic—where we are covering a full 50 percent of the 2018 fall fashion issues—the legendary black women’s magazine shows us exactly how excellent a product by a…
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'I Was Like, I'm Not a Designer': Virgil Abloh Admits to Suffering from Imposter Syndrome in Vanity Fair
He’s been in the fashion industry over a decade, has created some of the most coveted clothing and collaborations of all time and has reached cult-like status as an arbiter of what’s new and next. But Off-White founder Virgil Abloh recently admitted to Vanity Fair that the mantle of “designer” has been hard to accept.…
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Level Up: The Latest Lyst Index Indicates That Black Influence Is Finally Being Recognized
Keep on risin’ to the top! Today, global fashion search platform Lyst released its second 2018 installment of The Lyst Index, its quarterly report ranking the fashion industry’s most in-demand labels and products. Analyzing the online shopping habits of over 5 million shoppers monthly spanning approximately 12,000 global retailers and labels, Lyst compiled their results…
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Pre-Yeezy: Complex Magazine Unpacks Kanye's First Fashion Label, Pastelle
2008 was a very interesting year. A massive recession hit mid-summer, a writer’s strike paralyzed Hollywood, Barack Obama was elected, and the 2018 CFDA [Fashion] Influencer honoree Kim Kardashian looked like this: (Fun fact: It was also the year yours truly released her first album). 2008 was also the year Kardashian’s future husband, Kanye West,…
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Behind the Seams: Brea Stinson Uses Couture to Create Culture
Behind every incredible look a celebrity wears onstage or on-screen is a creative visionary. For instance, if you were lucky enough to catch the final stop of Beyoncé’s 2016 Formation World Tour at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, you’d no doubt remember Queen Bey strutting out in a voluminous gold hooded bubble coat, which…
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For the Culture: Celebs Stepped Out to Support Virgil Abloh’s Debut at Louis Vuitton
In March, Virgil Abloh made headlines when he was announced as the new artistic director of menswear for Louis Vuitton, becoming the first African American to hold the position. (Might I add, we’re still shook and inspired by that.) Today, Thursday, Abloh debuted his first collection for Louis Vuitton Men. As he walked the runway…
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Virgil Abloh’s 1st Louis Vuitton Show in Paris Showed Why He’s the ‘King of Cool’
“I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t just going to be a consumer; that at least one of us [African Americans] would appear at the end of a Parisian runway,” Virgil Abloh told British Vogue in March 2018 when his official appointment to the venerable house of Louis Vuitton was announced. This Thursday in…
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Sneakerheads Rejoice at This Pyer Moss x Reebok Collab
You may not have heard of Pyer Moss designed by Kerby Jean-Raymond yet, but you will—especially if you love sneakers—because Reebok’s collaboration with Jean-Raymond of Pyer Moss on the Air Drop shoe is one to covet. The black designer’s latest fashion-forward, state-of-the-art cross-training shoe is called the Air Drop because it was inspired by “air…