PARALLEL TRACKS
There’s an exhibit at FIT called Black Fashion Designers that is, simply, a collection of clothes designed by men and women of African descent. The show includes designers like Anne Lowe, who worked in the 50′s and 60′s in relative anonymity, pioneers like Stephen Burrows, Willi Smith and Patrick Kelly, icons like Azzedine Alaïa, and contemporary tastemakers like Duro Olowu and Public School NYC.
The garments on display are, almost without exception, finely proportioned, stunningly crafted, and smartly conceived. But they do not embody ideas or trends that are earth-shattering, or that would suggest that Black Fashion is anything contrary to, or out-of-step with, Regular (which is to say, White) Fashion. While walking through the gallery, it becomes clear that the fashion world has been, for decades, almost entirely segregated, with talented black designers working on a parallel track, separate to their contemporary white counterparts, addressing the same trends, technologies and movements.
There’s an Eric Gaskins evening gown here that’s a swathe of liquid ivory silk
with bands of shimmering black bugle beads running around it like monumental brushstrokes, in the manner of a Robert Motherwell canvas. It might be the most elegant gown I’ve ever seen. (I can’t look at photos of this dress without fantasizing about what it would feel like to wear it while walking into a ballroom, approaching a podium, climbing into a black car…) It’s a functional evening gown so meticulously conceived and executed that it rises to the level of fantasy, abstract expressionism stitched into a dress. That Gaskins, a contemporary of Michael Kors and Isaac Mizrahi, remains relatively unknown, suggests that there’s a way to go until the industry becomes entirely open, and exhibits like this serve no purpose.
Image courtesy of FIT. Eric Gaskins, Dress, 2014, USA. Gift of Eric Gaskins.