Brooklyn creatives rocking their Telfar shopping bag. Image by Justin French @frenchgold via The Cut.

In June, 250 Black fashion professionals signed a letter accusing the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) of allowing "exploitative cultures of prejudice, tokenism, and employment discrimination to thrive." According to The Cut, the petition — created by editor Jason Campbell, creative director Henrietta Gallina, and writer Kibwe Chase-Marshall — pushed for the CFDA to hold major fashion brands accountable in hiring Black talent and creating inclusive workplaces. Although New York is a global fashion capital and a leader in fashion education, Black designers are vastly underrepresented in the city’s premier design spaces. In February 2020, only 9 out of the 123 designers who showed at New York Fashion Week were Black. Within the CFDA itself, only 19 of its 477 members are Black.

Three CFDA board members were noticeably absent from the June petition: Kerby Jean-Raymond, Virgil Abloh, and Aurora James. These well-known Black designers have each addressed racial inequality in fashion in their own unique way — with varying results — helping to create a path for the young designers behind them. As a new generation of designers looks beyond fashion schools as a pathway to success, instead relying on networking and social media, they are being supported by more established designers who've made it their responsibility to open doors for Black talent in a way that is unprecedented in the fashion industry.

“I think those walls are being knocked down, and we now have an opportunity to make sure we open the doors for young people behind us,” says Yousouf Cissè, creative designer of Cissè, a New York–based streetwear brand. “We now have amazing examples to look up to within our community.”

Spurred by the momentum of BLM protests this spring, Brother Vellies designer Aurora James started the 15 Percent Pledge to secure retailers who would devote 15 percent of their shelf space to Black-owned businesses. Although her reach is mostly in the footwear space, James has used her influence with big brands like Sephora and West Elm to advocate for lesser known Black fashion and beauty companies.

Another example of the increasing reach of Black designers to the younger generation can be seen in the rise of Rihanna from pop superstar to the first Black woman to preside over a brand under luxury fashion group LVMH. She is known for using her platform to support aspiring designers by wearing pieces from recent fashion graduates in an effort to give them more exposure.

“Seeing brown girls from the Caribbean become an international mogul is not only influential and admirable but gives a ray of hope to all upcoming artists and creators from the Caribbean,” says handbag designer Khess Anderson, who lives and works in Jamaica. “She has been true to her art and not afraid to be different and try other things. I’ve seen so much growth in her as a creator and as a person.” Anderson’s four-year-old business, KehsKenitra, provides customers with bags made from a wide range of materials, such as vegan and cowhide leather canvas, that fuse vintage and modern fashion styles.

Kerby Jean-Raymond, the founder of New York–based Pyer Moss, is another luxury designer who uses his platform to advocate for Black people. (Not surprisingly, Rihanna was an early fan of Pyer Moss.) The Haitian-American fashion designer opened his spring/summer 2016 New York Fashion Week show with a short film on the impact of police brutality that Black men and women had faced up until that point, including interviews with Sean Bell’s fiancée, Nicole Bell, and Eric Garner’s daughter, Emerald Garner. The models wore clothes bearing the names of people killed by the police and the word “breathe,” inspired by Eric Garner’s last words. His decision to use his platform to speak up led to the loss of his initial venue and a retail account in Europe.

But that hasn’t stopped Jean-Raymond from calling out the American fashion industry for systemic racism. On June 2, Jean-Raymond worked with a group of designers, including Abloh and Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow, to present their own conditions to the CFDA, including training “employees to not make frivolous 911 calls for non-violent infractions” and “creating a program that pairs Black talent with established Black talent in the fashion industry.” Last year, Jean-Raymond accused The Business of Fashion of lack of inclusivity and cultural appropriation, after he was slighted with regard to a BoF panel and magazine cover, and later greeted by a Black gospel choir upon arrival at the BoF 500 gala. He believed they were using diversity and inclusion as a trend. “Homage without empathy and representation is appropriation,” Jean-Raymond said in a statement. “Instead, explore your own culture, religion, and origins. By replicating ours and excluding us — you prove to us that you see us as a trend.”

Kerby Jean-Raymond by Mark Clennon @mark.c via High Snobiety

“I feel like we’re starting to see a shift in the industry,” says Leroy Lomotey, founder of streetwear brand Krafted. “All the people in high fashion who are setting trends now are Black. Back in the days, high fashion didn’t mix with streetwear, but today they’re coming to the hood and coming to us to know what to put out.” Lomotey was born in Ghana and raised in London, where he developed his love for fashion. After moving to America, Lomotey did not attend fashion school, and instead found success via his peers. who asked him to style them after witnessing his unique fashion sense. “It’s weird that we always have to work 10 times harder to get to the same spot as [white designers],” Lomotey says.

For many, top fashion schools in New York such as Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute are not affordable. These schools have annual tuitions of more than $50,000 each, compared to the median income of Black households at $41,692. Even at a public college like the Fashion Institute of Technology, where in-state tuition is just $5,740, Black students are underrepresented. African American students account for just 9 percent of FIT’s student body, even though Black people make up 24.3 percent of New York City’s population.

As a result of this education gap, many Black designers have made their dreams come true without formal education. Celebrity favorite LaQuan Smith was initially denied admission to both FIT and Parsons School of Design. Instead of giving up, Smith, who is from Queens, New York, landed an internship at the New York–based magazine BlackBook, a downtown culture magazine, in 2007, which pushed him into nightlife and helped fuel his eponymous brand. He made his New York Fashion Week debut in 2010, and celebrities like Beyoncé, Rihanna, Winnie Harlow and the Kardashians have since worn his clothes.

Telfar Clemens, designer of today's "it" bag, struggled to become established in the fashion industry for more than a decade before ultimately becoming one of the most sought-after designers in the industry. The Queens native started his brand Teflar in 2005 while he was an undergraduate student at Pace University. “I’m not a trained designer. I never wanted to go to fashion school because I probably would have hated it,” he told CNN in January. “I love doing what I’m doing and exploring different things. There is ‘the right way’ that people are taught at school, and then there’s my way, which I would call instinctive.” It took him 12 years to receive recognition from the industry: In 2017, Clemens won the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund Award, propelling him to mainstream success. Now, the Telfar shopping bag has become a symbol of Black success in fashion. (“I have always felt super-Black, like Black as fuck, but I feel extra Black as fuck when I wear this bag,” a Brookkyn-based social-media editor told The Cut about the Telfar shopping bag.)

While these designers have found success via less-traditional routes, more representation is needed to implement systemic changes in the fashion industry and diminish cultural appropriation. Many high fashion brands still imitate and appropriate Black culture despite performative activism in support of movements like Black Lives Matter. For example, Comme des Garçons appropriated Black hair during Paris Fashion Week in January, having white models wear cornrow lace front wigs. Six months later, this June, the luxury house presented a new capsule collection dedicated to BLM. Consumers went online to express their belief that the brand was using the moment to capitalize off the Black community, as the collection was initially created as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think it starts with educating gatekeepers in the fashion industry to understand that beauty comes from all cultures,” says Farai Simoyi, a fashion designer who competed on Netflix’s Next in Fashion. “A lot of what we see in European and Western fashion are designs that have been culturally appropriated from those very cultures that are not celebrated in fashion.”

According to Lomotey, if big fashion houses hired more people of color, they could avoid mistakes like those. “We need to see more diversity not only among designers but in marketing and every other aspect of the businesses to create cultural consciousness,” Lomotey says. “That would lead to less controversy.”

Following the recent protests against police brutality and racism in the U.S., several brands like Nike and Adidas have come out with statements expressing their solidarity with the BLM movement, but words just aren’t enough. Protestors are urging these brands to donate to organizations dedicated to bailing out protestors and investing in the Black community.

When OFF-WHITE ℅ designer Virgil Abloh was appointed creative director of menswear at Louis Vuitton in 2018, many saw this as a milestone for Black designers. Abloh recently faced backlash when he posted a screenshot of his $50 donation to BLM. As a Black man in a position of power, just being a face for the community at the top isn’t enough if the action needed to create opportunity for more Black designers is not being taken.

Like Lomotey, Anderson, and Cissè, many young, Black designers are self-funding their own work and starting their brands from scratch, following the lead of their predecessors.

“I think the reason for that is because of the internet and social media,” Cissè says. “Social media gives you that platform to actually put your talent out there, and there has always been amazing talent within every single demographic group all over the world.”

Lomotey uses Instagram to promote his brand, Krafted. He posts pictures from photoshoots of models wearing his branded apparel, along with photographs of young rappers Niko Brim and Bay Swag and wearing his designs.

Cissè takes a similar approach. The Instagram page for his Bronx-based brand has racked up more than 19,000 followers and features photos of rapper A-Boogie Wit Da Hoodie wearing his designs. These types of self-generated advertisements attract new fans of these well-known individuals. Cissè said his products represent life growing up in the South Bronx and the Black community in general. Each product tells a story and sheds light on the struggles being faced daily in the community. This includes shirts with the faces of Black icons such as Michael Jackson, Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and others.

Black designers are no longer waiting to be accepted in an industry that doesn’t favor them. A new era of Black designers and entrepreneurs has emerged, taking the initiative to create opportunities and access for future generations and build their own brand through unconventional means. These designers have become allies for each other, through collaborating and encouraging their community to support Black businesses and putting money back into our own community.

How a New Generation of Black Fashion Designers Are Reclaiming the Industry