Items18The creator’s order
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Elizabeth KeckleyBorn enslaved, Keckley bought her own freedom and built a dressmaking business in Washington whose best-known client was Mary Todd Lincoln. A purple velvet gown believed to be her work, worn by the first lady in the 1861-62 Washington social season, survives at the Smithsonian, and its fit and…0 - 2
Ann LoweLowe made the silk taffeta gown Jacqueline Bouvier wore to marry John F. Kennedy in 1953, along with the dresses for the entire bridal party, and the press referred to her only as "a colored dressmaker." When a flood in her workroom ruined most of the dresses shortly before the wedding, she and a…0 - 3
Zelda Wynn ValdesValdes dressed Ella Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge and Eartha Kitt from her New York studio, cutting gowns that followed the body closely at a time when few couture houses catered to Black women. She is traditionally credited with designing the first Playboy Bunny costume, though…0 - 4
Arthur McGeeBorn Mar 25, 1933In 1957, at 24, McGee took charge of the design room at the Seventh Avenue apparel company Bobbie Brooks and is widely credited as the first Black designer to run a Seventh Avenue design studio. That job mattered as much as any single dress: it showed that a Black designer could lead mass-market…0 - 5
Jay JaxonBorn Aug 30, 1941Born Eugene Jackson, Jaxon trained under Yves Saint Laurent and then Marc Bohan at Christian Dior before taking charge of the Paris house Jean-Louis Scherrer. Research by fashion scholar Rachel Fenderson identifies him as the first American to lead a Paris haute couture house. The photograph here…0 - 6
Stephen Burrows (designer)Born Sep 15, 1943Burrows's lettuce hem, a rippling edge made by overstretching jersey as it was sewn, began as a mistake and became one of the defining looks of 1970s disco dressing. Henri Bendel gave him his own boutique inside the store in 1970, and in 1973 he became the first Black designer to win a Coty…0 - 7
Willi SmithSmith founded WilliWear in 1976 with his business partner Laurie Mallet and built it on affordable, adaptable basics: easy separates that read now as streetwear before anyone used the word. By 1986 the label was grossing $25 million a year, and Cooper Hewitt calls him the most commercially…0 - 8
Dapper Dan (designer)Born Aug 8, 1944From his 125th Street boutique, open from 1982 to 1992, Dapper Dan remade luxury-house logos into custom jackets and tracksuits for clients such as LL Cool J, Eric B. & Rakim and Salt-N-Pepa, inventing the look of 1980s hip-hop luxury long before the houses courted that customer.
In 2017 Gucci…0 - 9
Patrick Kelly (fashion designer)Born Sep 24, 1954Kelly grew up in Mississippi and only found success after moving to Paris, where his joyful dresses covered in buttons became his signature, a nod to the shirt buttons he kept losing as a child. In 1988 he became the first American designer admitted to the Chambre Syndicale, the body that governs…0 - 10
Karl KaniBorn Carl Williams in Costa Rica, Karl Kani built the denim label most closely tied to 1990s rap. Tupac Shakur was rarely seen without the Karl Kani logo at the height of his fame, and in 1994 he appeared in the brand's campaign without charging a fee. Kani has said he was the first to develop the…0
