Fashion Loves Black Culture and Forgets Black Designers
Virgil Abloh's new role at Louis Vuitton marks a historic first, but his success has been generations in the making.
TLC wearing looks by Karl Kani.
“The first American to be honored with the job of designer for a French couture house is black,” reads the opening sentence of a news clipping from January 24th, 1970. Jay Jaxon, a twenty-four-year-old from Philadelphia, had been newly charged with saving the crumbling house of Jean Louis Scherrer. Jaxon was attending New York University as a law student when he discovered a talent for tailoring: his girlfriend needed her party dress altered at the last-minute before a Saturday night out. As is the case with so many American pioneers, an unexpected event lead to a shift in focus and before long, he was swimming in sketches. His ambition, he shared, "was to get to Paris and be part of, or even near to, the French Couture." A dress line evolved into real estate at Bendel’s and Bonwit Teller, which turned into positions at Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, and the rest... has gone relatively unsung.
Virgil Abloh's debut at Louis Vuitton, comes at a time when black artists are decidedly reclaiming space in creative industries, questioning old narratives (some successfully, some problematically) and refusing the notion that Western European perspectives on art and beauty should reign supreme. Walking through the halls of the LV menswear atelier in a video made by Bafic and JIMJOE, Abloh acknowledges his outsider status: “The elephant in the room is that I come from a different place, into this storied lineage of fashion.” It’s the story that won him the job: the promise of galvanizing a legion of fellow outsiders to give a shit, thus breathing cultural relevance into a tired luxury landscape. But it’s also the continuation of a story that dates back hundreds of years, a fresh chapter in the criminally slept-on encyclopedia of black designers.
“Firsts” always require thoughtful and accurate wording— the first black woman to direct a film grossing $100 million, the first person to win a Nobel Prize who is not a jazz or classical musician—because they slowly and semantically unlock the doors to progress. The idea is that they should also gain critical mass, that once a lock has been opened it will remain so. How then, could Jay Jaxon's first have been left out of the conversation surrounding Abloh’s appointment? To say nothing of those who preceded them both? What better time to reflect on the contributions of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who bought her own freedom before becoming Mary Todd Lincoln's personal dressmaker and writing Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House?
And what of Zelda Wynn Valdes, creator of the original Playboy bunny costume, head of costume at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and personal designer to the likes of Dorothy Dandridge and Ella Fitzgerald? What about Ann Lowe, the woman who crafted Jacqueline Kennedy's first wedding dress? There is also Ola Hudson to remember, the mind behind David Bowie, Ringo Star and Diana Ross' stage looks. Stephen Burrow's collections, inspired by 1970s New York nightlife, were known for their crazy-colorful palettes. He made "lettuce edges" cool and was the first African-American to grow a mainstream, high-end clientele before Willi Smith, who by the mid-80s was selling $25 million worth of product a year. The work of Karl Kani, Carl Jones, Daymon John, Russel Simmons, Diddy, Kanye West and too many others have unlocked countless doors, but moving through them and truly developing the discourse means keeping careful track.
Abloh, the first African-American to lead design at a major luxury house, has called Louis Vuitton a “prism” that grants him “access to the full color spectrum." His logic feels a lot like Jay Jaxon's, whose vision for his first collection at Jean Louis Scherrer was a “coming together of people.” Jaxon shared his plans to “use the colors of all the people of the earth—cream, beige, tan brown, and some yellow and reddish tones—possibly stressing the combinations of brown and white.” These are the workings of a "Colour Theory," of exploring the what might lie "between black and white," indeed.
Somehow both Jaxon's accomplishments and intentions have been lost in culture's annals, and yet, it’s an idea we’ve seen again and again, in particular from at least two of the most influential and controversial designers in contemporary fashion. In explaining why references are such a key tenet to his creative practice, Abloh has said that he's "occupied with contextualizing the past to get somewhere new." It is for that reason that we have to hold on tight to what happened this season in Paris. Every detail matters.
