Design & Dialogue

a celebration of global talent in art & design

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Enjoy some of my fav looks imagined by Daniel Roseberry, the Creative Director for Schiaparelli, from the FW 2021-22 presentation.

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Amilna and Yasmin for LaQuan Smith FW 2021

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It was almost like something from an underground nightclub in the ’90s, but with a coolly accomplished polish about it. “I actually felt very strongly about studying a lot about the ’90s this season. Somehow, I felt it was very connected and very coherent to now.”

Those who’ve been following Hwang’s shows in Paris—he was a recipient of an LVMH prize a couple of years back—will recognize this collection as a progression of the style he’s been building on. He called this season’s collection Omniverse. “It’s kind of a continuous story,” he said, “Because my identity is coming from my multicultural background. And I wanted to kind of explore the randomness of the encounters I’ve had.” Hwang is a South Korean who grew up in Austin, Texas, and then went to London to study at Central Saint Martins. Thrown on his own resources during lockdown, he said he’d started thinking about his college days. “I remember meeting this guy on the first day of school who was wearing a rubber top and a lace skirt and a really strange, enormous, kind of like sneaker,” he said, laughing. “I was in a culture shock, but I wanted to be his friend.”

Perhaps that goes a way to understanding why the vaguely fetishy undercurrent of buckled straps and leather bras crops up in Hwang’s aesthetic—but it’s also filtered through a practice that was honed in his early days of working for Phoebe Philo, who hired him when she was embarking on her first years at Celine. “I was very blessed to join the house and see her amazing approach,” he said. “It was a spectacular time, seeing her natural taste, as well as her understanding of the woman. She’d wear the clothes herself, and then it was all about asking: Is this for the woman or not? “. Sarah Mower for Vogue

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Natalia Alaverdian is the creator of the A.W.A.K.E. fashion line. Born in Moscow and raised in Belgium, she is also the fashion director for Harper's Bazaar Russia.

I absolutely love this collection.

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At the intersection of Black History Month and Women's History Month, fashion has found a way to honor the strong, female ancestors that came before them.

For South African designer Thebe Magugu, it was an easy choice. At the core of his Fall/Winter 2021 collection, African spirituality and female divination is celebrated at full volume. The collection titled "#Alchemy," explores the occult, cultural heritage of the South African upbringing and the modern women changing the landscape.

"This season, I wanted to have a conversation with traditional healers, who have divinely been given powers to answer our most burning questions, and who act as a conduit between various realms, often by using objects of divination," The LVMH prize-winning young designer writes. "It’s a very particular kind of strength, one that doesn’t show-off and relies heavily on the natural."

Ana Escalante for CR Fashion Book

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Inspired by her Spanish grandmother and Symbolist artist Julie Romero de Torres, Alejandra Alonso Rojas presented her Fall Winter 2021 collection for New York.

She also collaborated with fellow CFDA members Aurora James of Brother Vellies for Shoes & Gigi Burris Millinery, who provided the headpieces.

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Tom Ford FW 2021 for New York

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KHAITE FW 2021 for New York

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Mammina for Roksanda FW 2021 at London Fashion Week

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An unmissable graphic is planted on the center back of a jacket and the chest of a sweatshirt in Priya Ahluwalia’s new collection. “It’s a new emblem, a compass made up of Afro combs, facing the four corners of the world,” she said. “It’s because I’ve been looking at lots of ideas around migration—whether it’s migration of the mind, of people, ancestors, or ideas.” The title of the collection underscored that: #Traces.

Ahluwalia is a leader in making sustainably sourced clothes for young men in the crossover between the streetwear and designer fashion genres. That’s just one level of who she is. Much more: She’s an eloquent spokesperson among the rising forces of young British designers and creative people of color and an employer of peers; a born Londoner who is exerting every experience she’s lived and connected with through her friends and family heritages in Nigeria and India. “I feel like: How can I put that into the world and amplify it?” she said. “What happens to human beings as we migrate around the world?”

...she’s a voracious researcher too. She read Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing “about two sisters separated at birth in Ghana in the 1700s and what happens to each generation after. There’s a chapter set in the Harlem renaissance. It’s a really good example of when multiple cultures come together because of migration—and it’s really important for literature, film, music, and the arts,” she said. Ahluwalia studied the art of Kerry James Marshall and Jacob Lawrence for inspiration for her color palette. “All of that research and looking into these things filters out through my work,” she said. “I feel really proud of this history that I was never given opportunities to learn.” Sarah Mower for Vogue

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Studio 189 was founded in 2013 by Abrima Erwiah and Rosario Dawson after a trip to Congo. While there they visited the City of Joy, a leadership community for female survivors of sexual violence. This, says Erwiah, “was the beginning of this journey, and it’s about turning pain into power and turning ourselves towards our joy.”

Heritage is the theme explored in the latest collection. One of the ways it is expressed is through the use of Kente, the national cloth of Ghana, that is associated with royalty and has tradition and symbols literally woven into it. This season’s direct references to African clothing and textile traditions make clear that this brand doesn’t cater to Western taste. “It’s about standing in your power,” says Erwiah, who adds that she’s noticed a change among consumers (and buyers), who are becoming less afraid of prints and patterns. These days, she says, people want “more human things, but also more joyful things, more colorful things,” and points to a long skirt with rainbow-colored tiers in the current collection as an example.

One of Studio 189’s missions is to be a bridge between the United States and Africa. On Inauguration day that span extended all the way to the White House: #RosarioDawson and Senator #CoryBooker attended the ceremony wearing matching Studio 189 masks. Laird Borrelli-Persson for Vogue

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Indira for Monse FW 2021 at New York Fashion Week.

Photo credit: Karen Collins

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“Here we are now! Entertain us.”

Gen-Z

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“...her latest collection showcased the final chapter in a trilogy, begun last January, which explores the cultural and sartorial threads that interlink Britain and the Caribbean. “This subject is the starting point for why I’m interested in creating,” said the designer, who is British born but of Jamaican heritage. “During this time I feel like I’ve really been grounding myself in this framework, and refining myself within it. These collections are about consolidating and reinforcing what is timeless to me; representing the breadth of what Wales Bonner is, and can be.”

Thus far in the series the designer has looked to the second-generation Jamaicans who established London’s 1970s Lovers Rock scene to inform her designs, and then the dress of Jamaica’s dancehall and reggae stars. Here she started by exploring the wardrobes of Britain’s Black scholars in the 1980s: those who traveled from across the world to study at the likes of Oxford and Cambridge. There was a reimagining of their academic attire—of tweed blazers and knitted scarves, well-worn chinos and striped jumpers—but within that historicism, “I was thinking about how in certain spaces people create a language for themselves,” reflected Wales Bonner. “About how you might disrupt an institution from inside.” Olivia Singer for Vogue

Photography by @seanandsengoffical

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Happy Birthday Sade.

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Before achieving one-name status in her career, there was a time when young Pat McGrath would arrive for a job (she started out working mostly in the music industry) to find that the team was expecting an Irish man. What they were getting was a Black woman from working-class Northampton, the daughter of Jean McGrath, a single mother and devout Jehovah's Witness, who emigrated from #Jamaica to #England. Jean was, in Pat's words, "consumed" by fashion and beauty. "Literally hundreds of Fridays spent dragging me to pattern stores to choose the Vogue patterns, followed by the fabric shop to choose the materials, and then finally the makeup store to choose the products to pull the whole story together, our story that week," recalled Pat when she accepted the CFDA's Founder's Award in 2017. It was Jean who told her daughter:

“Choose a job in the arts, dear. That way no one can ever tell you you're wrong." Jenny Bailly for Allure

photography: Richard Burbridge

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“The indigenous spirituality is to protect the Earth, to work with the Earth,” he says. “Not to try to kill the Earth or use it for all of its resources, but to work with it rather than against it.” Haatepah Clearbear for Kinfolk

Photography: Ben Duggan