The Triumphant Climb Of Minority Fashion Designers
If you think of American fashion designers in the past and present, you may notice an interesting phenomenon. Whether it’s Claire McCardell from earlier in the twentieth century, Bill Blass somewhat later, or more someone like Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger, almost all of those with a very public fashion career were/are white. Some Jewish designers sort of straddled the white-minority line, but since they were so closely associated with the industry and with New York, they weren’t put into the same obscurity as more obvious minorities. Those designers who did come from a minority group were very rarely heard about.
That has now changed. Just last year, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature article on the subject of Asian American designers that have taken the world by storm. The first to make her mark was Vera Wang, and for some time she was the only significant Asian American fashion designer in the news. But she has now been joined by designers such as Phillip Lim and Thakoon Panichgul, Thailand-born Americans whose work has become well known.
Black American fashion designers, too, have come to the fore in the past couple of decades. Byron Lars, with a fashion design degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, began with great promise in the mid-1980s, faltered somewhat in the 1990s, and has come back with his Byron Lars Beauty Mark line in the 2000s. Kevan Hall was fortunate enough to encounter fashion programs in his Detroit High School before attending the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. He has been dressing celebrities and selling to well known fashion retailers for years, and in 2002 he launched his Kevan Hall collection.
There are several reasons why it’s important that these fashion designers be given the public acknowledgement they deserve. For one thing, it’s simply a fact that they deserve it, and it’s long overdue. Designers from visible minorities have not often been recognized as they should be, possibly due to racist assumptions about their work. Many have had to push against family expectations by not choosing more stable professions like medicine or law.
So in achieving success in their fashion careers they have often been heroic, and their accomplishments should be recognized by everyone. That’s a goal we can all strive toward.
A career in professional fashion design can be exciting and rewarding. But it’s important that you carefully assess the various fashion colleges and schools to make sure you get the best education you can.
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