The Fashion Industry Needs A Hard Reset — Especially for Black Designers
“The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of the ugly side.” — James Baldwin.
I was in college and still trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, when I had an epiphany. It was 1986 when I fell into the fashion game, and the following year I started my first fashion custom tailor shop called Fashion In Effect in Brooklyn. Inspired by Dapper Dan, we knew there was a void and our tribe confirmed it. Listening to their wants and needs gave us the gumption to start one of the first urban lifestyle fashion brands. We opened distribution doors and worked with some of our greatest icons, including NOTORIOUS BIG, Tupac, RUN-DMC, Mike Tyson, Wu-Tang, and many others. As we garnered millions in sales, Walker Wear became known as a trailblazer for a multi-billion dollar category freshly dubbed “streetwear.”
Collectively, our community created its own thriving cultural and economic ecosystem. Yet decades later, our enduring cultural currency is not reflected in equity, ownership, or legacy stories. Today, despite the foundations we laid, many brown and Black designers still face the same “invisible” challenges I did as a young, Blexican woman starting out three decades ago. The gatekeepers in fashion still deny access, resources are still limited, and obtaining capital and financial backing is still “a dance” for Black designers. Big fashion houses constantly loot our creativity without repercussions, knowing we’d be outgunned if we challenged them in legal proceedings. These discriminatory practices make the climb much steeper, exhausting, and oftentimes infuriating — yet we rise and shine in spite of the challenges.
Despite the generous use of the buzzword “inclusivity,” the playing field is not level. The game is rigged with obstacles that often feel insurmountable. The fashion industry is broken and needs a hard reset, just like the rest of our world.
Like African griots, we use fashion as a form of storytelling. Think about Kerby Jean-Raymond’s Spring 2019 show, when he ripped the runway with a powerful and disruptive “Black Lives Matter” collection. “Blackness” in fashion has been trending for a while, and the reality is that beyond the trends, we shape culture from Compton to Sierra Leone.
Black style appears on streets worldwide — transcending generations, as well as social and ethnic groups. Our culture attracts vultures, including a rainbow of people at major corporations who tap our Black style, remix it, and serve that magic back to us with a higher price tag.
Many in the fashion industry express their passion for social and political causes, from sustainability to LGBTQ+ rights. So I am left wondering why fashion leaders haven’t done more to deal with racial inequality within their own backyard. Systemic racism is an intrusive, societal disease — and the fashion industry is one plagued with elitism that reinforces oppressive structures and social confines. “You can’t sit with us” isn’t a meme for the fashion world; it is a ubiquitous attitude.
Some might say we’ve experienced some movement forward. For example, Virgil Abloh became the first Black man to get the title of artistic director at Louis Vuitton; Tyler Mitchell became the first Black photographer to shoot a Vogue cover (at Beyonce’s insistence); and Edward Enninful became the first editor-in-chief at British Vogue. While these achievements make for good optics, we need to look beneath the surface. In 2020, why are we still naming “the first of” anything? Let us not confuse individual achievements with deeper social progress.
Less than 10% of the 146 designers at the 2018 New York Fashion Week are Black. Within the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America), the industry’s most notable trade organization, only 3% of the members are Black. As of last year, only 10 Black designers had ever received a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award. As white fashion leaders finally begin to confront the entrenched racism Black and other people of color have experienced all our lives, my question is: What actions will you take to change that?
Black consumers exceed $1 trillion in spending power annually. Yet very little of that money is circulated within our own communities. A dollar circulates in Asian American communities for 30 days, in Jewish communities for 20 days, and in white communities for 17 days. In the Black community, a dollar only circulates for six hours. These sobering statistics reveal that we must emphatically foster community growth and change.
No one can do the work for us. History shows us that knocking on other people’s doors won’t open them for us. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on another blueprint: collective work and cooperative economics. Other communities have proven this approach works. We can have a seat at the table — by building our own tables.
Lateral cooperation creates vertical movement. A symbiotic web of entrepreneurs and key decision-makers with shared values creates space for our tribe to multiply. Within the 2.0 version of our mutually enriching ecosystem, we could have more flexibility to control our narrative — and adjust the lens, so that we become the beholders of our beauty. The compound effect builds a new narrative of solidarity, with multiple legacy stories and everyday heroes to show the young people how many paths they could take.
How do we get there? Organizing. Intentionally making the dollar circulate within our communities, on a larger and longer scale, is one of the biggest factors. According to purchaseblack.com founder Brian Williams, “If we spent nine cents of our collective dollar with Black-owned business, we could employ every single man, woman, and child within the Black community.” That’s less than 10% of our spending, which means it is within reach. By investing in our communities, we’re investing in ourselves. It’s a great exercise in self-love, which leads to healing and transformation. The results become self-reinforcing.
Doing the work not only strengthens us, it creatively nurtures the overall landscape in the fashion industry. In a perfect world, I can only imagine what our own communities would look like if we had supported Dapper Dan as much as we supported Gucci, so that two Ds became as well known as those two Gs.
April Walker is a Fashion Designer, Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Author, Educator, Disrupter, Brand Evangelist, and Health Advocate.
@iamaprilwalker @walkerwear
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