The push for diversity in the fashion industry isn’t a new topic of discussion, but The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology has something amazing up their stylish sleeves to showcase the “significant, but often unrecognized impact that designers of African descent have had on fashion.”
Entitled Black Fashion Designers, the exhibition will feature nearly 75 outfits by more than 60 designers. More than just a display of well-crafted fashions, the presentation is historically groundbreaking, as it is the first major exhibition in many years to highlight the global impact of of black fashion designers from the ’50s to the present.
Dressmaker Ann Lowe, who is best known for designing Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding dress and Laura Smalls’s red-and-white floral print dress, which the First Lady Michelle Obama wore during her session of Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, will include several of her beautiful wedding gowns. André Leon Talley and designers Tracy Reese and Mimi Plange will also discuss the ongoing topic of the lack of diversity within fashion in a short film that will be played.
One of the many other cool features that people will get to experience during the exhibit is its cell phone tour that will provide both overview and context with commentary recorded from the curators of the museum in addition to fashion designers Joe and Charlie Casley-Hayford, Eric Gaskins, Carl Jones and TJ Walker of Cross Colours, Andre Walker, model Veronica Webb, and André Leon Talley.
The Black Fashion Designers exhibit will be at the Museum at FIT from Dec. 6 through May. 16, 2017. Find out more about the exhibit here.