“How many black designers can you name, if any? How many are household names? Tracy Reese? B Michael?” Editor Julee Wilson of the Huffington Post asked to a crowd of students and professionals.
The Fashion Design program at Parsons boasts a list of successful and acclaimed fashion industry alumni, but only a few are black.
Why is it that with such a diverse population of students graduating from the country’s best fashion program every year that there are only two well know black designer names, especially when Tracy Reese graduated from Parsons in 1984? This is one of the many difficult questions that arose during Friday evening’s discussion on Fashion & Race.
Senior Fashion editor of the Huffington Post, Julee Wilson, and an all black panel that included fashion designer Charles Harbison, visual director and photographer Dario Calmese, MFA fashion studies alumni Kim Jenkins and editor and creator of Garmento Jeremy Lewis, led a serious and honest discussion of the issues facing black professionals in the fashion industry.
This discussion was one of many in the Fashion and Diversity Series and is apart of “Black History Month at Parsons” according to The New School event’s calendar.
Before the event began, Freshman Kyemah McEntyre, a prospective Fashion Design major said, “One of the reasons I came to The New School was because of it’s diversity, but I have one black classmate. In a sense it pushes me to show others what I can do.”
McEntyre said that sometimes, “the lack of diversity is depressing, but it’s also motivating.”
Her friend Jaleese Ayana who is studying Fine Arts agrees. “I find it so interesting that all of the black students are separated into different classes. It’s pushed me to go to class and not be what they expect. It’s caused my work to be more racial and social”.
Outside the event space a group of senior students were denied access to the supposedly sold out event. According to students working the check in desk the RSVP list had been filled and there was a long wait list of people who would be seated if those who originally RSVP’d did not arrive on time. at 6 p.m. , the event start time, only 25 people were seated in a room that can hold up to 121 people.
Simone Sullivan, a senior in the Fashion Design BFA program, said that she was surprised that they wouldn’t let students in at first. “You would think that they would have more room for something like this during Black History Month,” Sullivan said. Sullivan and her friends were allowed inside when 6:05 the seminar room was still relatively empty.
Editor Julee Wilson proclaimed that she wanted to “have a real conversation with y’all… just get funky fresh”.
Discussion topics ranged from whether or not to call a black designer a black designer, or just to refer to them as a designer, to what it’s like personally for each panelist to be black in the fashion industry.
Charles Harbison said that, “I never saw a lot of representation of my blackness in the industry, so my experience has been one of some level of independence”.
Dario Calmese spoke about not being able to use a black model in the campaigns he worked on for the fashion label Public School New York.
He said that Public School knew that they could not use a black model because of the stereotypes and categorization that occurs when designers use black models in their beginning ad campaigns and runway shows. “That was a very calculated move. We can’t do it just yet because we’re speaking to particular audience [the white audience] and for them to at least understand what we’re doing,” Calmese said. “Once we’re in there now we can say this is who we are and this is what we are about.”
He pointed out that Public School was almost immediately labeled an “urban” brand because of the designers Dao-Yi Chow, an asian man, and Maxwell Osborne, a black man, but that there was nothing “urban about it” because of the price, quality, and styling of the clothing.
After an hour long discussion the audience was allowed to ask questions. One student wanted to know why she should be concerned about hurting white people’s feelings if she uses all black models when she’s been exposed to white models her entire life and has still been able to relate to the clothing they wore.
Editor Jeremy Lewis aggressively responded to the latter question by stating that “You must be prepared for the market, for your customer…life’s not fair and this business is not about fairness.”
Lewis also pointed out several times during the overall discussion that the most creative and talented people in the industry don’t care about race because they know that diversity creates better products.
Among the more hopeful notes of advice of the evening was Charles Harbison’s firm stance that his blackness was an asset to his profession.
“You have to find the beauty in being a black person in that particular space … You are in a powerful position to say this is what blackness means to me and when we do that in a diverse way we round out what it means to be black, Harbison said. “Then one day being black will mean what it means to be white and white is a pluralism”.
The next Fashion and Diversity talk will be held in April.
Ayo Keys is currently earning a dual degree in Fashion Design and Journalism + Design at The New School. Born and raised in West Philadelphia she enjoys thai food, large issues of Vogue, anything rose gold and knitting. She has an obsession with art direction, well designed fonts and hopes to one day become a Creative Director.
