EP5: There Will Be No More Doors
When some of us go through doors, we take them off their hinges. What does the future of fashion look like, and how do we get there?
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Brand Partner: Tommy Hilfiger
EP4: The Best, The Brightest, The Dressed
1900, 1987, 2018 – three moments when HBCU fashion culture expanded perceptions of being Black in America. We explore what it meant then—and today.
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EP3: Statement Piece
All white, top hat, Sunday best, black beret, denim – these have been tools of protest and catalysts for change throughout history. Now we’re unpacking the relationship between what we wear and what we believe.
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EP2: Rhythm & Muse
A look into how the hip-hop community built its look on the margins of an unwelcoming fashion industry, before it became as universal and sought-after as it is today.
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EP1: No Blueprint
Sets the scene and establishes the root and reason for the show, with guests Jeffrey Banks and Romeo Hunte (Designers), and Ceci (Costume Designer).
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Introduction (trailer)
Welcome to this five-part series that celebrates Black contributions to fashion, hosted by fashion educator Kimberly Jenkins.
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Styling the Quad: Fashioning the Legacy of HBCU Culture
There are many access points to discussing HBCU style and its impact, which continues to persist into the future. The evolution of its spirit from respectability politics to individuality, to a mixture of both today, highlights that the Black experience is extraordinarily vast and only aims to build a community that empowers its members into levels of success that were not historically afforded to them.
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A Great Day in Hip Hop – A Decade of Hip Hop Style’s Influences
On the steps of 17 East 126th Street in Harlem in 1998, hip hop artists reveled in the mere act of seeing each other. That day seeing each other is what mattered most, and through the lens of his camera, photographer Gordon Parks made sure that we would always see them too.
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Sporting Kente Cloth
Kente cloth is associated with the Asante ethnic group in present-day Ghana. Though the fabric was historically worn by royalty, it had become widely accessible by the late nineteenth century. Though kente cloth has long been associated with regality, it has also had an important influence on the global sportswear movement, starting with the 1964 Olympics and Muhammad Ali’s visit to Ghana and now utilized by the likes of Virgil Abloh and Nike.
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Stephen Burrows
American designer Stephen Burrows was the first Black person to receive the prestigious Coty Award, and was also one of five American designers invited to participate in the so-called “Battle of Versailles” fashion show.
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Willi Smith
American born designer Willi Smith was an incredible designer but an equally incredible multidisciplinary artist, collaborator, and entrepreneur, whose trailblazing efforts helped permit fashion to be free of conventional forms and allow everyone from the wealthiest to the masses a chance to partake in its future.
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Fashioning the Protest
The relationship between protest and fashion is both a negotiation and a rejection of mainstream norms, which has been a major influence on the development of Black adornment and style over the course of the twentieth century.
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Eartha Kitt
“On August 4, 1952, Life Magazine published a feature on Eartha Kitt, then 24 years old, who had returned from performing abroad to stake her claim on Broadway in a production titled New Faces of 1952.” A profile of legendary American born entertainer and activist, Eartha Kitt.
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