 Cooper Hewitt, Willie Smith, on the record. A light-skinned person with a bald head, thick brown beard, and glasses, followed by a light-skinned person with chin-length light brown hair and matching red glasses, lipstick, and shirt. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, and I'm the curator of contemporary design and hint secretarial scholar at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Thank you so much for joining us today for Willie Smith on the Record, a conversation amongst a group of writers and editors whose work has contributed to a broader understanding of American designer Willie Smith. We're grateful to all of them for sharing their time today. Each one has been a collaborator in some way over the past three years of researching and discussing Willie Smith's life and work. This talk is the last in Cooper Hewitt series of public programs in conjunction with the exhibition Willie Smith Street Couture, which is on view through October 24th. If you're able to come to New York or you live in New York, I encourage you to see the exhibition if you haven't yet, which was made possible with principal support from Target. You may also visit our website to view recordings of our full program of talks that have included speakers like Beth Ann Hardison, Virgil Ablo, Jacoby Satterwhite, Dario Calmice, and James Wines, as well as the first session of the fashion culture features African American ingenuity, activism, and storytelling symposium, which we co-organize with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Session two of the symposium is coming up, posted by Namaq on October 21st. So if you want more information about that, we'd be happy to share. The conversation today will last until around 3, 10 p.m. Eastern time, at which point our moderator will pose questions to all the panelists from you, our audience. So if you have a question you'd like to submit, please enter it in the Q&A box in the bottom of the panel of your Zoom screen at any point during the conversation, and we'll spend some time answering questions towards the end. And before I introduce our moderator, I wanted to begin with a few words about Willie Smith. His career launched after being asked to leave Parsons in 1967 and ended when he died in 1987 of complications from AIDS. And at that time, he was considered to be the most commercially successful black American designer in fashion history. He stopped by many to be the father of streetwear for launching the brand Willie Wear in 1976 with his partner, Lori Malay, and designing what he called street couture, which was essentially unstructured and vibrant clothing inspired by and made for the people he watched moving on the street every day. But his contribution as a designer and as a catalyst for creative exchange and social impact is significantly more complex than his role in creating a bridge between the American sportswear industry and street style. It's clear that Willie Smith operated within the fashion system of his time as an agent of change. He championed an inclusive view of fashion which was reflective of and inspired by diverse people and cultures that was affordable, adaptable, utilitarian, and very importantly fun. He infused everything he did with a rye sense of play. Play was extremely important. He saw that working woman, the expanding black middle class, queer communities, artists, and performers were restricted by fashion codes and undermined free and personal expression. And so he designed clothing that was basic, what he referred to as a canvas and a tool for individuality that asked to be mixed and matched, that transitioned from day and tonight, that worked from season to season and didn't have to be replaced to keep up with trends. The idea was that if you were wearing willy wear, no one knew what was in your bank account. So Willie Smith was trying to put fashion in service of different types of lifestyles rather than conformity to the dictates of editors or the binary between luxury fashion and anonymous sportswear, moral codes. He created a link between the industry and style emerging from the street. He was connecting with communities of artists, workwear, hip hop, drag ball culture in a way that permanently changed the fashion system. The willy wears presentations were happenings that combined art, music, and fashion within an atmosphere of improvisation. The brand managed to position affordable fashion as a means of personal change and transformation growth. Smith was a pioneer of the type of multidisciplinary, multi-hyphenate design careers that have become common, perhaps even expected today, and he collaborated constantly, producing films, designing costumes for performances, creating the first artist design t-shirts, making conceptual installations, and he worked with Keith Herring, Diane McIntyre, Namjoon Pegg, Barbara Kruger, Dan Friedman, and an extensive roster of influential artists. He most often worked with artists who shared his ethos. His collaboration spoke to the transformation of popular culture and to fine art technology as a democratic medium and multifaceted expressions of black and queer experience. He wanted to make art more accessible to his audience, to his customers, whom he felt were often intimidated by elite spaces, museums, and galleries. He was definitely a proponent of the art of life and to Willie Smith clothing could really be a force of equity. So our conversation today is moderated by fashion journalists, critic and consultant Pierre M. Pellet. Pierre is formerly the senior editor of Love Magazine and founder of the A Periodic Publication Screenshot. Pierre has joined Katie Grand's A Perfect Magazine where he currently serves as associate editor. The magazine has just celebrated the launch of its issue one titled Perfect Joy. Congratulations to everyone. I know that just happened. And so now I will hand the mic over to Pierre who'll share a brief overview of our conversation and introduce the rest of our panelists. Thank you so much to everyone and over to you Pierre. Pierre M. Pellet, a dark-skinned person with a bald head, black framed glasses, and a black and white striped shirt. Hi everyone. So my name is Pierre as Alexander just said and I'll start with introducing our panelists. Camille, a dark-skinned person with long black hair and cornrows. Jarrett and Willie, a dark-skinned person with a bald head and white wire rimmed glasses. We've got Jarrett Bernes today who is a fabulous author, curator, an artist. He's written, he's authored many books including what it means to write about arts. I've met with Jarrett just today actually and we're very happy to have you. So we've got Camille Oquillo and Camille is a art and design historian and writer living and working in New York City and I've met her as I mean we're meeting through Zoom and we've got William Dattira who is a consultant, contributing editor for Fantastic Man and a fellow Central St. Martin's alumni. I think those were good introductions if not feel free to introduce yourself in a few minutes. We'll be talking about Willie Smith obviously. I came across Willie Smith when I was researching at Central St. Martin's studying fashion journalism and what struck me was that his clothes were not only culturally relevant through the collaborations that he was famous for but also really well designed and those elements to me are what make him a great fashion designer. He's often time forgotten and one of the names that we need to keep alive because his work and his legacy are great. So we'll start the conversation with fashion and art. His fashion art, Willie Smith was a designer who loved to collaborate with artists as Alexandra just mentioned and it's something that today have been prevailing in the fashion industry but he truly initiated those sort of collaborations between artists and designers. So Willie would you want to try and answer that first question is fashion art? Hi everyone thank you for having me. Well that goes back to the piece I've just written for The Perfect Magazine which was asking the same question and there's no easy answer but with regards to Willie Smith I think for me when there's a question is fashion art is always about what is the context. It's the same art is also defined by the gallery system where it's being shown the museums etc so fashion can be art if it's in the right context but fashion usually isn't worried about the bigger question it's generally about identity is generally about you know for the 20th century with modernity it was for a lot of brands and Willie is the opposite of that. They tend to be more obsessed with defining who is the Co-Cochinel woman who is the Saint Laurent woman who is you know so it was really based on identity and trying to define the modern woman and modernizing woman and what they were and I think with Willie Smith it was really kind of a good balance of collaborating and being an artist he worked like an artist I think from the interiors of his shops to the collaborations to the purpose of what he made. And when did you first hear about Willie Smith and his story? I basically hosted a Gucci podcast which is on the I think it's on the website it's on SoundCloud I had a really amazing kind of opportunity to have a conversation with Beth Ann Hardison and Kim Haas-Reiter the founder of Paper Magazine and they both in the podcast explain how he was instrumental in creating what Paper Magazine became he gave her sort of like first you would call it her first big break because as a brand he commissioned her to do supplements and he would you know encourage her and at the same time financially it helped to be you know to be for Kim to be associated with a bigger brand and they were in the same building as well which was quite funny he lived downtown in New York when it wasn't really fashionable when it was really run down and he would you know come home in his limousine and go to the office in his limousine and it just really looked out of place but he didn't really care so apparently it was it was a really interesting moment for Kim's life and how much he helped As for Beth Ann you know she's almost kind of a figurehead for black models for any black talent because she's been an advocate for diversity in the industry and through her agency even though her agency has models of all races she's always been kind of outspoken about major magazine hiring and featuring people of color so she got I think her first modeling break through Willie as well he met he met her through his sister is it Tuki yes Tuki who was the muse so it was really interesting so that's that's how I discovered him sadly I should have known about him you know and and I think I'm really surprised by how much you know his history and his work has been raised and and his influence so that's a bit of a weird one but yeah Jared when did you first hear about Willis Smith and what about his story spoke to you you are on mute I was just testing you um so I was working on uh Christo I'm an art person and I think that I'm kind of feel like I'm on this panel to speak on like the art perspective and I actually do have some thoughts about this question of the relationship of art and fashion that I'd really like to put some pressure on because I think that I don't I think there's a lot there that doesn't shouldn't be just glided over in a kind of facile way um but for how I got involved with Willis Smith um as a good uh devotee of conceptual art um I really liked Jean-Claude and Christo and I was writing a story I went on a boat ride with with uh Christo around Miami a few years ago when they were doing a show about the retrospect looking back at the surrounded islands projects that they had done that they had done in Miami and uh I called uh I'm from South Florida and I know that Alexandra grew up in Miami and so I called her and got a quote for you know what it was like as a child to see the visual impact of surrounded islands and it's ephemera on the city and then when she started working on Willis Smith um Willis Smith worked was very close friends with Jean-Claude and Christo and collaborated with them a number of times and they were kind of important figures in his life and uh and vice versa and um including that he made the uniforms that the people the t-shirts and the hats that people wore when they the volunteer they weren't volunteers but the people who were hired to help with surrounded islands and so that was kind of my first thing where I was really interested in the tracking that stuff down and the t-shirts and then they also um Willie designed the jackets that they um the people who worked on the wrapping of the Panteneuf war uh slightly later so when she started working on uh on this show she reached out to me and asked if I wanted to work on Willis Smith from that angle from that kind of conceptual art angle and then I just really fell in love you know and what part of what I fell in love with was the idea that this was a guy who um had a vision for living you know the clothes were about a bigger picture of how to live in a society and conduct yourself and have relationships and um you know Bethan I love that you mentioned your conversation with Bethan Hardison and something she said in that in that podcast and also something that she said multiple times talking about Willie Smith was that Willie Smith was an artist she said it's important that you understand he was an artist he worked with clothes and fashion and for someone like Bethan Hardison who is such a towering figure of fashion who's dedicated her entire life to fashion and and advocating for it as an important cultural activity but for her to make that distinction over and over Willie Smith was not just a fashion designer he was an artist that is something that I really have been meditating on it's something I really want to follow because what does it mean for her to make that distinction and how can we how can we learn from the wisdom of it and partly my my partial answer and I would like to turn it over to the other panelists it does have to do with this um bigger more holistic vision a very philosophical vision about um moving through the world and what it looks like and and how money relates to that and also how um social space and private space relate to that you know I think what so all right and I think I could talk a lot about that but I want to um put push the ball to my fellow panelists and then maybe we could pick some of those things up yeah definitely I mean you you started a really interesting uh conversation uh Camille who's also by the way the senior design writer at El Decor what and how did you first encounter Willie Smith and what about his story resonated with you well I remember coming across Willie Smith articles of clothing in my mother's wardrobe as a child and also like as a teenager finding little pieces here and there at thrift stores but not really understanding the um the relevance and the importance of him as the designer until I wrote about him and his home and his kind of interior world and interior life for a partimental last year which was something that came through Alexandra as well who seems to really be the glue here um my thoughts pertaining to that distinction between fashion and art the traditional response of course is function and how art doesn't need to have one um fashion of course does it's clothing we have to we you know don't have to wear it but we've grown accustomed to wearing it um but Willie I think I would agree with Jared and I would agree with Beth Ann Hardison that he was an artist from my perspective at least while I was researching him um one of the things that really resonated with me while I was having conversations with the people who knew him was um Laurie Malay referencing Willie where as an idea company not a fashion brand an idea company and it seems to me that Willie really used fashion and he used the presentation of it and he used the context with within which he presented it to the world uh as his medium and it was kind of something of a test kitchen as I started to read about his collecting practices the way he liked to live the way he interacted with his friends it became really um apparent that this is a voracious mind he was constantly reading collecting his sketchbooks one of which I believe is in the Cooper Hewitt show or almost like collages um and collaging is something uh the writer Sasha Bonnet referred to as a historical practice of the black imagination I believe is what she said in a Paris review article last earlier this year and I think that really applies to the way that Willie consumed information he brought it all together in this kind of um organic way and reinterpreted what he saw brought together kind of disparate fields I mean there were things in his in his sketchbooks like ancient grecian drapery um cotton club ephemera uh new technology record players that had just come out um images of cowboys images of the artist that he was working with uh and I think that we see the way that he was able to present these ideas within willy where was really seamless he made what you know might have been some incongruous connections appear natural and I think perhaps also the brand was a form of catharsis for him because many of the different people that I spoke to referred to him and his personal style is preppy ricky clifton called it preppy drag and I can't help thinking of that as a black person as a form of code switching and and protection and armor um because I also think something we need to think about is the fact that though there are many african-american designers today which I'm sure we're going to discuss later on um at that point Willie was really alone so there was no um there was no rubric uh so that's also something I think should be considered I think it's a good question yeah you did and so I'd like to come back to the fashion is fashion art question you know it feels like a a battle that's been going on for forever but what I'm also interested is to know when you know in your opinion guys um when does fashion and art merge so well that it transcend culture because to me that's what willis miss was and and the way that he makes high and low in terms of fashion he did it with art as well so what is your take on that and I'll go with gyrett first well you know I can't help but think that the ways in which art is being brought into fashion now is in some ways completely antithetical to the way that willis smith is working and so for instance you see a like an image from a john michel basquiat painting that is taken and put on the side of a coach bag or you see a david von rovich image that is put on a jonathan anderson uh thing you know those artists had no say in that the images that they made whatever their intention whatever their um belief system in in some cases the belief system would have been extremely antithetical to being used as a decorative device on a piece of fashion um they had no say in that it was irrelevant it was part it was a vision of the designer and that's a whole other kettle of fish and I don't even think that that's necessarily wrong I'm just saying that was different what will he was doing was collaborating with people that were his friends or that he wanted to work with other people who had visions that he wanted to um create something beyond the two of them into this new form and so he invited artists um to work you know he he worked with jonclad and crystal but when he was doing his t-shirt collaborations he worked with artists who were not very famous you know when I talked to barbara kruger who now is like ah barbara kruger um she said she didn't she had not done anything before that and he kind of that it was like a big deal to her because it was the first time she ever made a t-shirt you know what I mean think about that can we roll our minds back to a moment before barbara kruger had made a t-shirt and um and so I think that there was a kind of vision about that too where it's like he could look at someone like jenny holzer or barbara kruger or someone now like lynn hershman leeson who has to show up at the new museum a little known san francisco artist for many years and um and say okay yeah design a shirt I want to see what you're going to do and part of it was not about branding it as willy it was about like whatever the artist's vision was for for making this shirt that was about inspiring the creativity of the people wearing it and people who see it like maybe they should make their own t-shirt you know and I to me that is so different than the things that get pegged as art fashion collaborations now oh great this is a this is a picture this is from the the artist t-shirts press kits um which included a bunch of images of different models wearing um the 23 t-shirts in the first series of artist t-shirts um but this is this is willy wearing the barbara kruger t-shirt you can see the last levine t-shirt in the back this is in the site showroom I think thanks for pulling that up here um if I could just you know oh pure you're muted oh sorry I was actually going to ask you to go for it oh great great great um I was just going to contribute to I agree with what you just said as well Jared I think one of the distinctions between the collaborations and the way that they were executed under willy versus how many fashion and art collaborations are done today um I think something that uh differentiated willy was the familiarity with those other mediums that weren't fashion when he designed the the costumes for bill t-jones performance secret pastures there was a real understanding of movement there there was an understanding of how the different characters within that performance would interact what the narrative was and that was and that was from you know just a practice of going to see anything new at the theater anything new at the opera that was something that was discussed with many of his friends um there's a real uh element of research and rigor in willy in willy smith's practice that I think is really distinctive um yeah that's my main thought I know willy I would agree with everyone I mean for me the difference is in the process where you can see if someone is just kind of slapping a painting on a bag which in in itself can serve as a way to bring art to the general public so if we think about um Louis Vuitton and Jeff Koons, Yai Yai Kusama, it's all artists that the general public wouldn't have heard of until they saw them in a shop window but it is a completely different thing than actually having an artistic approach in your in your um in your in your process and I think that's that's what willy willy smith had it was it was basically the process was artistic the approach you know the knowledge as camille said of um what he was you know utilizing I think for me that that that's what makes a difference well he talks so much about the the performance of the clothes being what's most important you know in the context and how they were used like if you if you look at willy where garments they really are basic typological garments that aren't you know there is some formal formal innovation and there's a lot of pulling of references from different types of cultural dress but ultimately the idea was that the clothing didn't take center stage it was how the clothing was interpreted by by the wearer and so he really he saw it as a vehicle for something and I think that was similar to the collaborations with the artists when it when it came directly to the artist t-shirts for example he saw the t-shirts as a vehicle for the artist to share their work with a broader public who might not have otherwise encountered it um and also a vehicle for you know a viewer to have an experience with art on the street you know which was so in keeping with um you know so much that was happening with contemporary art at the time not just christine john claude but john michelle basquiat and keep herring and you know david hammond so many artists that were were occupying the street in different in different ways which which is very very different from how um collaborations between artists and fashion designers have evolved right over the last 30 years i also think a lot of the collaborations were not for profit which i think is an important distinction um he in many ways from my perspective at least i think willie smith though the brand itself was massively successful was kind of anti-capitalist in how he presented certain things like you know releasing the patterns for his clothing to the general public that people want to make his clothes at home um so i think that's that's important as well you know his collaborations with namjoon pike nothing was the t-shirts were being sold but i think that came kind of after you know the t-shirts were and the and the uniforms for the christine john claude projects were made specifically to be used versus sold initially but correct me if i'm wrong alexandra well the the t-shirts were sold to fundraise um for a public art fund at some point you know the first the first time the t-shirts were shown they were packaged like like posters you know on cardboard with cellophane and hung in a gallery space you know they were sold for 30 30 dollars which at the time was you know willie wear had a policy of like nothing under 100 dollars it really was about trying to keep the prices as low as possible um but um but yeah with with some of the the collaborations that were installation driven where artists like namjoon pike or wan downey were invited to create installation for the runway presentations they were given a sort of carte blanche you know they were they were informed a little bit about you know the ideas behind the collection but they were they were chosen and invited to participate because they were part of you know a creative circle but also because they shared ideas um you know with the brand and so you know they were just told do your thing like here's the stage this is the space do what you will and that's also how it was with the makeup artists you know with linda mason who came in and was just you know set well what do you want to do like there was no brief you know it wasn't it wasn't like creating something you know within the legacy of the brand or to connect with you know this like very specific messaging point that has come through you know a tremendous amount of marketing research it was very intuitive and improvisational um in a way that i think it definitely you're right is is distinct from how these collaborations operate today i agree and i feel like um with willis smith what's you know the one of the most important thing is a word that everyone is using but no one is really leaving it is authenticity and that's what those collaborations were and that's what they felt and that's why it's so important to look back at how things were done at the time of willis smith i'd like to ask you guys which specific or not collection do you remember from willis smith and why namjoon pake i mean that was brilliant i managed to find like a grainy footage of it um and the installation was incredible so that's the one that that's my favorite when i was doing the research um you know that the father of of video video art and the fact that you know willis smith had the nose or had the or maybe they were hanging around together maybe you know it was the new york scene in the 80s um that they collaborated on that and it really the set just looks amazing it could be today you know it would work today for for anybody so that that's my favorite and jared which passion in art collaboration do you think is uh the most successfully executed by willis smith or by willis smith well you know i actually think i loved what camille was saying and it picked up on an um a point earlier that willie had made or was talking or speaking in relationship to which is um you know the idea that if you put a john michelle basquiat painting on a coach bag that that's a way for a painting to have a more general audience but i really think it's such an powerful point to say like it is not a way of engaging a more general audience to sell a thousand dollar bag um it is not a way of speaking in fact is probably doing the opposite of what willie smith's impulses were and i love so i love the way that you kind of underscored that um both alexandra and camille and to say that yeah he had a policy that's like yeah they made these t-shirts but they were priced like t-shirts like slightly more expensive t-shirts and this also makes me think about the question of branding and how the willie smith name or the willie smith brand functioned um in relationship to the clothing and how differently um quote unquote brands function now so it's like if you want to buy a black normal ass black t-shirt that says balenciaga on it for six hundred dollars you can do that but there's no there's no purpose of that other than performing the name of the brand of balenciaga as this um aspiration towards a certain kind of class position and willie smith is actually giving people tools to undermine that kind of aspirational class uh uh um mobility to say like in fact like my name is not on the front of this t-shirt like there aren't clothes that say willie wear willie wear willie wear willie wear they have some of the t-shirts have the logo on the side of the art collaborations but for the clothes themselves this statement was the person wearing it was the it was the unique ways that they were wearing it it wasn't that someone looked at you and said oh you're wearing willie wear i think there are places where he said that would make the clothes failure people need to look at you and say you look amazing for you and and not to say like that the willie that willie wears functioning is this brand in the same way so in that sense i think that in fact why is this history you know why is this history not known why is this not taught in fashion history school if that's even a thing i don't know um but it's because it works against every structure that makes the wheels of fashion turn right now that's what i believe i believe this is such a radical intervention in the structures of luxury economics that it's every person in the in the fashion world depends on for their livelihood for their for their mode of being and so why would you want to foreground that why would you want to recenter a discourse of fashion around someone that's cutting you off at the knees i would also add a great point we're also actually at about that point i also think he was erased simply because he died of AIDS and because he's black um i think that he presented an idea of what American fashion could be that is actually extremely threatening to the people who generally dictate what American culture is um but i think it's important to understand what you were saying about him being the brand essentially being classless this is a man who not classless not as in tasteless classless as in no class um this is a man who designed the groom's wear for a kennedy wedding but also as you said alexandra all the clothes were under hundred dollars almost all the clothes were under hundred dollars um and he i that's that's basically all i want to say on that but in reference in response to your question pierre about the our favorite collaborations mine tend to be the bill t jones um performance secret pastors and also in terms of my favorite collection the deep south suite that he did in 1976 was diane mckintyre that i thought was fabulous why why because he's referencing he's referencing a culture the black south um which he maybe didn't necessarily experience that much growing up but the the deep south essentially affects all african-american people you know we were brought here to fast slaves and generally came from that region um and i think it's i think it was a beautiful collection because just aesthetically purely aesthetically the women looked amazing um the volume was dramatic the fact that it was choreographed by diane mckintyre i think really elevated not elevated but added another dimension to the clothes and their and and their publication and the imagination and i think that they're also representative of this um aspect of willy that i personally find very compelling he was able to provide really kind of seething and scathing social commentary in very subtle ways um and that's part of why he was so popular amongst all american people you know black and white because people not everyone necessarily understood the references he was making but he was making them nonetheless i think that's important and something that i don't personally see that much today that's true um alexandra do you want to answer that question which one is your favorite collection or your favorite art uh collaboration of willy smith i mean it's it's so hard for me to pick but i i did see a question in the chat about artist damage goods and so maybe it's the first thing in the exhibition it's the first thing you see um and maybe i can talk a little bit about that because i found it to be incredibly poignant when i learned about this particular exhibition um which happened at ps1 before it was moma ps1 um in 1982 and a stylist named hollywood doruso was asked by alana heiss who was a the director of ps1 at the time to invite some young fashion designers to show their work um in in ps1 and you know most of the presentations were pretty formal you know they emphasized the garments they gave a sense of the designer's work and willy smith chose to create this installation which was titled art is damaged goods um and he took his his basic garments uh labeled them in the most straightforward minimal way shirt pants skirt uh plastered them and laid them out on the floor of one of the school rooms his ps1 you know the school room um with evidence markers and i'm i'm really interested in in in this particular installation because it is quite unlike any of the other things you know also related to the question of willy smith being an artist you know this is a sculpture um and it is a direct critique of the fashion industry um and the planned obsolescence of clothing and you know the returning of of garments that have minor damage to the manufacturer and you know and the idea of waste you know so in a way he's prefacing the conversation that we're having now around fast fashion even before there was a you know an environmental discussion about the impact of fast fashion um which i think is is really complicated to talk about also because you know willy wear was um complicit and really inspired a lot of ideas about fashion marketing that have led to brands like zara or h&m you know marketing very affordable mass produced garments in a way that pushes you know seasonal trends and aspiration in a way that willy wear was against and was trying to undermine as jarrett mentioned um so we were lucky to recreate artist damage goods for the exhibition at the museum and we have some photographs um documenting it done by the photographer kim steele who's a friend of of of willy smiths and lorries that are in the book and on the community archive but you can also go to momo's website um to read some more about that we were we were very happy that they gave us permission to to recreate it in the in the show um yeah so that one is very very important i think in understanding um the ove of of willy wear and willy smith yeah um i wanted to touch quickly on jarrett's comment about a classless approach to fashion and creation and it's something that's come back on a table with tarfar clements so you know with his bag tarfar bag uh it's called the bushwick the bushwick burkin yes so they are exploring this idea of a luxury brand without luxury with his business partner babak rag boy and it seems conceptual in 2021 but pretty much that's what willy was doing um you know it's somewhere else with this idea when you fast forward a few years down the line um we can see the prophecy of it so tarfar is trying to create this classless um approach to to fashion and and by building a community as well around uh african-american working class um or middle class african-american as the audience and if you look at the social media it's pretty much you know he's not doing aspirational fashion he's speaking to and featuring that community as um you know he's models and he's he's the people that that uses the bag i mean completely i think you know um tarfar is definitely following in in willy smith's footsteps camille i'm really interested in your opinion um how do you understand this appeal for street culture today and the influence that willy smith has on designers today and the way people dress well i think just add one more thing to what willy said tarfar's tagline is not for you for everyone which is perhaps even more pointed than willy um at you know at that time um i think his influence i think his influence stems from a desire you know in the eighties and in the eighties there was an entirely different economic setup or a different economic state in this country now we're no longer in that state where you know the idea of american supremacy is kind of crumbling whether you're on the left or on the right and people are responding to it in different ways i think that designers today who are kind of implementing the willy smith format or rubric acknowledge that and also understand that perhaps this might also be the economic state in which we live might also dovetail with a kind of flip of authority people no longer just want to appear as if they have more money than they do many people who have money want to appear as if they don't have money um i also think that specifically with the tarfar bag because of the way it's set up the way it's presented the age of the drop which i think extends outside of just fashion it is technically accessible to everyone but the people who generally could call blooming dales have something reserved go pick it up be on a waiting list they can't access the the bushwick berkin in that way now you know i have friends who are artists who whose gallerists are calling them to make sure they can get the bag for them you know so it's kind of it flips things on its head and i also think it speaks to so many people wanting to align themselves with blackness with um with artists who have generally been an outsider group and i i think that that is that's a cultural phenomena that's really unique to this moment and unique to the last 10 or for 20 years um and i think a few of the other people that followed in willy smith's um path i think in referencing what alexandra was saying earlier about some of these larger brands like sarah i definitely think uniquo takes a lot of um pages out of that book specifically with their artist collab t-shirts which um are i think the most explicit uh the most explicit example of what willy smith started but i also think in terms of street wear and appearing effortless and cool in the way that willy started i think there are brands like rock aware baby fat shan john um i also think that there is this kind of gender fluidity about willy wear that i think also could be seen in hood by air or tel far also um and i think i've seen some comparisons to willy wear that i think actually don't line up pyre moss for example um i think that in in our in our rush to um in our rush to kind of explain willy's impact sometimes his rigor is forgotten if that makes sense and jarid i saw you shake your hand at some point tell me your views on that well i mean i i can't say it any better i i just thought it was such a insightful and incisive uh breakdown of the complexity of trying to identify him within a lineage because in some ways it's always projection backwards which is what history is because we need willy smith now you know i mean like willy smith is like necessary to think with and to live with now to the problems that we're dealing with and so in some ways we do want to rush to reclaim him and say like oh of course like he was so he influenced these people but in fact and i love the way that um she diagram this is i think what we're really looking at is is resonances and those kind of resonances have to do with the way people at this moment are solving the specific problems of getting dressed right now with a bigger framework of what those problems entail and those problems entail global capital those problems entail like the environment those problems entail um now dealing with the kind of incredible devastation of the fast fashion industry you know and so we can look back at willy smith and say well there was someone who was thinking these thoughts and attempting to address them in his own way and and somehow that is both more and less clear than the term influence might appear i mean i think it's i think it's more like what's happening right now is happening because he is so contemporary and of course there's going to be a lot of contemporary designers who are in conversation with with that so i also want to just add one thing to that the pace is different when willy was designing he could truly go on trips he could research he could think he could marinate he could just be by himself in his apartment listening to opera flipping through books and put all of that time and that consideration into the work the fashion calendar now is completely a different thing um and i think you know i don't think that there is a direct descendant from willy i don't think anyone has been able to kind of recreate that essence because it's not it's not possible to recreate it i don't i think that there's also this humility that was central to him as an individual and his work that i think is kind of antithetical to our current culture and just you know social media how we interact with each other i think there are a lot of people who take pieces from willy's legacy but i think to to really be um to really he's influenced a lot but i think to really be able to find someone who has that same impact now is difficult for a number of reasons if that makes sense i completely agree with you i'm alexander did you want to add anything uh less on that because i would love to talk about fashion and identity and how willy smith was and completely intersectional um being in the way he created and mixed gender and race obviously and sexuality um into his into his work or do you want to go on to that yeah i mean i was i was glad that camille also made the point um you know about about telfar even at calislata or uh gmbh different brands that are thinking about gender fluidity because that that was something that was really important um to willy smith and and willy wear and something that i think um you know has only started to become a parent in in the last couple of years and you know maybe speaking also more to what camille said and segueing into the identity conversation i think even as you know we've been talking about willy smith since the book came out in the exhibition and you know there are many people who've been talking about willy smith for a long time i think what we tapped into was a community of people who've been waiting to have a real conversation about willy smith you know and needed a broader platform to maybe like create a concentration around this discussion um to reflect on what is happening with the fashion world you know with corporate art commissions with discussions of design um and architecture you know um and and often willy smith is still today immediately categorized within a list of black designers and it's important to talk about like him within the like the lineage of the business of fashion right of being a designer who realized that when he was working for another brand he could not do what he wanted to do and needed to own his own brand and be his own boss you know and have his own investors his own partners in order to do this um but i find it to be i find it to be frustrating still you know that talking about willy smith becomes like a question of only talking about telfar only talking about virginal ablo you know only talking about a legacy of streetwear because you know the conversation can only be limiting from there but that is that's the gut reaction um still today in the fashion press um yeah i mean that's true that's true i agree with you that there there's a lot more than i feel like sometime willy smith is reduced to streetwear and the idea that that's what a black designer can bring to the table and to the conversation when really it was a lot broader than that and it was to me um like i said earlier culturally relevant you know in the sense that it transcended fashion um i'm really interested in you guys's opinion about identity and how black designer a black designer like willy smith or black designers today can use um their identity and and and their race as a as a you know in in a in a way that sorry let me just rephrase that can use them their race and identity and identity to convey certain values through their work that's what i mean um we do you want to tackle that yeah i mean i'm not going to tackle the full thing and i think i think camille will do a great job as well and jarrett as a point of view but um i would say that what's happening now with the rise of technology uh the conversations that started happening especially with you know the group of students and creative that came out of st martins including you um here in europe is is to make people realize that fashion does not belong to one race and everybody was gaslighted into believing that you know fashion belonged to one race and there's only one way of doing it there's only one approach there's only one type of beauty that everybody should aspire to which is blonde with blue eyes so it's dismantling this entire idea of fashion being almost like a tool for and i'm not using the word white supremacy in um the extreme example of white supremacy but the idea that one race is the only that's beautiful one one way of dressing is the only that's valid and um for me designers like willy smith he had a kind of a very inclusive approach which means which is where we should be headed again he's sort of a visionary even if you haven't heard of him when you study him you realize his ideas were very visionary meaning that it's a dissentering whiteness as a tool of cells or whiteness as a tool of you know the profession and including everybody else his lookbooks were very inclusive it was inspired by his sister his sister was included but as well he had white models uh latinos so it was this vision of kind of encompassing all all kinds of identity in in in you know in how he would present his clothes so that's point one which is what i like about him is the fact that he dissented but he didn't get rid of you know it's not about replacing one race by another um it is about you know realizing that fashion is for everyone um and when it comes to identity as a black creative um i mean it obviously is you know your your work you know is attached to to your identity roots where you grew up and it should be it should be included in your in in in your work and your design for for a lot of them uh i don't know in the u.s but we've got in South Africa Kenneth Ise we've got um Tebe my Google who's bringing his point of view from South Africa and I love that uh and he's you know being celebrated in Paris and coming into the international sort of platform or those international cities for for for for fashion and that's that's a healthier version of the industry and that's what we need to get to when it comes to to you you know design and and and and dressing is the fact that you know it's a it's a it's a human endeavor it's it's nothing to do with with race and you know kind of promoting one race over over another um Jared i'm really interested in your opinion about that um the relationship between race and and design and how um artists and fashion designers can use um race as a as a way to convey certain messages well I think you know his term was street couture and we credit him as like the father of street wear and I think it's really important to think about the streets that he was in you know so it's not the New York City of today which is actually highly uh segregated a long race race and class boundaries where you could be in certain you could live certain lives in certain parts of the city and like just not happen to see a lot of people that don't look like you which is actually one of the reasons why we're living in hell right now but uh New York City of the 70s and 80s it was not like that it was a highly mixed and integrated um uh part especially the downtown where he was living and you see that in the fashion and I think one of the things that is so extraordinary about his work and his point of view is there is this radical inclusivity in which he could draw from everything that he saw he could draw from high he could draw from low he could draw from people with all kinds of different national and ethnic traditions that were different from his growing up in Philadelphia and it wasn't about subsuming them it was about celebrating some part of it that could then be worn in these other these other instances and I actually think that there is something within that that is so utopian and cuts against the grain of our discourse right now in ways that I would love to see some you know serious fashion scholar kind of work through because when you look at the um you look at the clothes you look at the images you look at the fabrics I mean these clothes were being made in India and he took a lot of inspiration from Indian textiles and and um and that was very important to him from a kind of an ethical standpoint around what it meant to give people natural fibers to wear but so yeah I would say that that's I can't speak to his inner life and I can't speak to how he expressed his particular racial or sexual um position within his work but I can say that I'm very humbled by the rigor and the breadth of his vision and it's the kind of vision that was like could move in the world in extremely promiscuous ways you know and I think that that is what's so extraordinary. Camille do you want to go for it? Sure um well I have a lot of thoughts about him and identity um and his identity but first I just want to um cap on what Alessandro said most recently I think that there's this reluctance also to acknowledge how much Willie Smith affected and influenced white designers um I think a lot of people fall within his lineage Donna Karen for instance um Ralph Lauren though they both began designing around the same time I think much just formally much of his work I see I see similarities between Willie Smith's early work um also when I was researching him for my piece I had quite a difficult time finding black friends of his to speak to there was one woman in particular Cori Sarman who I spoke with um and I really wanted to get her perspective on how Willie um reconciled being black and what was mostly though the the city as Jared said was not as segregated as it is now it was still segregated to an extent and Willie's friend group from my estimation seemed to be mostly white now there are you know I think that had to do maybe more with just the economic level that he was at towards the end of his life and how few black people especially at that time could get into that economic bracket um but one quote stands out to me in particular um that Kim Hastryter shared with me well there are her words she said Willie was not too gay not too hip and not too famous to hug you and I would also add to that not too black um and we can unpack what that even really means but and then you know that connects also to Ricky Clifton's comment about his style being preppy drag he had um when I spoke to Chris she was speaking about how Willie would share with her not frequently but he would share with her his frustration about the kind of mass that he had to wear to the world he was a media darling and I think also the media is the main locus for why he's been erased today the media and institutions um and perhaps less so educational institutions more so you know museums for instance he's not included in the Mets show on America right now which to me is rather pointed um but he did have to put a mask on he was frustrated with the idiosyncrasies of being famous and beloved and also being black at that moment um of course everything that we could guess about his interior world is all conjecture because we'll never truly know we'll never be able to ask him but my perspective on how he moves through the world was I think he was fixated or not fixated but really focused on not unappearing non-threatening on kind of eradicating the threat in America at least that is the black man that is the black man's body um I I've I've heard I don't remember exactly who I heard this from but towards the end of his career it seemed like he had to really start pushing back with the media who still viewed him as a boy and I think that kind of dovetails with just the infantilization of black people in America which continues today he really had to kind of be a bit more forceful in presenting his brand and him as an individual as a man as um as a gay man um and also there was this one moment when you know Alexandra mentioned that he was in Parsons but he was also kicked out of Parsons when it was when it became clear that he was in a gay romantic relationship and I think that moment at that time and at that age had to have affected him it had to have been something internalized um and he was never closeted but he was also very um what's the word I'm looking for very private about his sex life and his romantic life um the two romantic partners of his that I was able to unearth were both white also which I think is a neutral thing but I think is still something that you know needs to be considered so I think that there was a lot of turmoil and I think that you know Rosemary Peck's comment about Willie being someone who could cross over again I think also plays into just the individual identity that he was it seemed to me that he was shaping and molding and shifting each day. I sorry um I think we'll have time for questions now but I kind of wanted to ask each of the panelists one last word about Willie Smith's legacy or creativity something that needs to be remembered. Alexandra do you want to start? I think I'd like to riff off of something that Jared said about um thinking about history and influence. I like the idea of imagining why we need a designer like Willie Smith now and to think about you know what he was trying to do um with his life and with his brand right and and to think about how might we sorry to be you know a design question person but I guess ultimately I am I am representing the the design segment of this conversation like how might we you know create a community a business a life like Willie Smith and um and so I think the you know the most powerful aspect of having organized this exhibition and worked on the archive and spoken to so many people who have been like thinking about Willie Smith and grappling with all of the things that we've talked about today you know in this conversation about you know why he didn't receive a certain degree of recognition or you know what it meant for him to be like the first at this and the first at that and introducing these like new ways of thinking about how fashion can operate you know as as a tool of equity or as a means to get to where you want to go in your life to move um is is really that you know when you sit down and read his quotes you know and read his statements they coalesce really into you know a blueprint for thinking about being an open giving and creative person and what we've heard most frequently from people who remember Willie Smith is how he made them feel right they made he made people feel good about themselves and that was a major aspect of what he was trying to do to empower people you know which is a word that has sort of like lost its strength because it's it's used so much um but he he he wanted to do that and he was successful at doing that even with people who he didn't he didn't know you know who've written into the archive to say I wore Willie wear to my prom and I felt like someone understood you know like what I needed to feel comfortable in clothing to allow me to make choices that felt authentic to myself um so yeah that's something that has been really powerful and I think is something that we can continue to consider about Willie Smith and be and be inspired by Willie what would you say um I think for me what what's stood out researching him and throughout the conversation is even if you haven't heard of him that the it's the importance of visionaries in our industry because both you and me are part of the the fashion industry I think that's the only two people here in the in the panel and uh within the fashion industry you sometimes get that kind of talent that comes in and and gives you a blueprint of how to how to answer certain questions that we got to be faced with you know now or in 10 years uh Ray Kawakubo is one of them uh Willie Smith is another one where I think visionaries are really important in the way that they operate in the way that they think in the way that they design their their business so that's number one so visionaries should be taught should be um you know should be studied and uh should provide an inspiration for the rest of us in the industry when we try to move forward and answer certain questions and operate in a certain way so that's one thing with Willie Smith the other thing is for me he's he's kind of a symbol of um despite all the issues and and and like Camille pointed out about you know not being able to live his full identity within the industry is that he's an inspiration for a lot of the young kids trying to kind of make it as you know people of color in in the industry he was as big as Ralph Lauren I mean what Ralph Lauren became he was an all-american designer I mean wrap your head around that that is insane it's quite it's quite incredible for a black designer that came from you know Philadelphia and created his business which had a short span and nobody kept it going uh because of the association of him having HIV AIDS and the issues of selling the clothes in that sense um you know in the stigma that was attached to you know he's he's he's deaf um but he's still a huge inspiration for for for you know people of color and saying you know I can I too can create this all-american brand which I think Talfa is doing not not not for Alexandra I'm not putting him in the sort of the the the street web box but I'm just saying as an inspiration I think Talfa has the same level of um ambition when when when you read he's he's he's interviews he's sort of like well I want to be as big as the gap or I want to be as big as I don't want to be this tiny kind of mom and pops business so for me he's an inspiration and he's a visionary and and if you haven't heard of him then you should go and study the way he he operated and worked well I have two points first off the that phrase of his style over status um I think that he's a great example of kind of socialism within design maybe that's not the perfect word but I think it's the point across and I don't think he wanted to be the first but I think as the first he wanted to lift up the second the third the fourth and I think that's something that is um harder to find today I think that you know white supremacy is kind of encourage this there can only be one concept and you know there can only be one black designer couture week um and it has to be the black designer that white people have chosen to be included I think that's something we need to think about in in connection to willy smith is inclusion not just in terms of race but in terms of black people including each other and I think second one thing too that I think he really deserves remembering for is the rigor and the research that he put into his work um and how and I think you know the proof is in the pudding the work is exceptional work continues to be exceptional today and you know though we don't have necessarily the same um the same kind of settings you know speaking to how many fashion uh weeks there are fashion months really at this point every year and how much people are expected to produce I do think that with the the right amount of ambition and the right amount of determination just and people outside of fashion as well designers artists people work in corporate atmospheres writers curators everything the rigor and the research I think are the number one thing to really highlight um from from willy's memory chart oh well I I'm so moved by the things everyone has already said um I loved willy talking about willy smith as a visionary and to me what that means to me is that as we celebrate willy smith in this exhibition and this catalog has been such an amazing opportunity to celebrate and to introduce and to learn but the the way what it really means to be a visionary to me is that the work is present as a challenge is a it's a challenge for us it is a challenge for the future to meet the level of that vision and you know I think that part of what really connected me to and like part of where I'm experiencing that challenge is at the level of writing which is like how do we tell the story of a thinker and a mind and a life like willy smith as a narrative problem as a problem of history telling and that is like dovetails with my you know a lot of my work lately and where my heart really is is these extraordinary generation of people who debate and how do we engage with these histories that were just completely truncated and buried and and allow them to the weight of the loss of them to really be felt like I think I honestly believe if willy smith had not died in 1987 we would live in a different world I truthfully believe that and so how do you how can we approach representing that or or just even meditating on that and one of the the anecdote that I want to share that was the most powerful to me when I was researching willy smith was finding the anecdote in the book about the aids quilt of the guy who had made willy smith's panel on the quilt and he was just like a gay guy in san francisco who would sewed his grandmother taught him how to sew and it was really important to his identity and like being a gay man and then he the first clothes he ever made for himself were from willy smith patterns that willy published with butter eggs in the 70s and when willy smith died he I mean he was working at like the aids crisis center in san francisco at the time and he had an enormous number of friends that were dying and he said I have to make this tribute to willy smith because he he affected my life you know what I mean it wasn't like he was a famous person he never met willy smith but through the clothes through the fashion through the the representation of of being a queer person who could be in could move in the world in this way and care about beauty and life you know it it it led this man to make this gesture and I was so moved by that you know it was really touching to me and I think what's so touching is the indirectness of it the way that you know you put something out and you don't actually know you know willy smith never knew this guy no willy smith never knew he changed some weird guy's life many many people's lives but nevertheless that's the way it works and so that to me is also a challenge for what we understand history and art and fashion to be and I hope that I can continue trying to meet that challenge under the rubric of willy smith for for years and years because it's so immense. Wow thank you I don't want to take too much time from the penalties but I just want to say that a few days ago I posted sorry guys today's a few days ago I posted some some photos of some of his best collections in my my opinion for winter 85 ss86 and what struck me is dozens of messages from people all around the world of all ages understanding what was happening in terms of creativity in terms of cultural impact and I was very moved by you know a 22 year old in the middle of Italy who had never probably heard of willy smith before and who told me that you know this could be now and to me the this universal aspect of his work through the art collaborations and through the clothes themselves is what make it so powerful today and that's why in my opinion we shouldn't forget about willy smith um we're gonna head to the questions now and we have a few questions let's start with um was his name licensed when and the label his signature so alexander I'll I'll let you answer that but I think willy smith uh incorporated the first company from 74 to 76 it was called will's with design and uh which bankrupt and then willy where was established in uh 76 right did I give that good history good history yeah yeah and and there what the the so sort of the the second mark of that is um after willy smith passed there were a couple of years with a brand continued under the willy where moniker and the several different designers were brought in um to work on the brand and an anonymous design team and so there are a couple of years uh but then you know um a few different corporate brands came in and acquired the willy smith name and for some period of time also willy where which is why you see many clothes from the nineties on uh with a willy smith label different from um the ones that were pre 1990 which is sort of black and white and then there was one that he made with his profile with the glasses and his signature there are a few different like 1976 to 1987 then 1987 to 1990 willy where labels that are really recognizable but you see like a willy smith um label that it does not come from the willy and lorry owned owned brand yeah for many years and possibly still um we have another question where willy's clothes design more towards men or women um he will he will design both men's and men's wear and women's wear so i don't think there was a particular um target for his clothes i think it was about people and about people who wanted to to look a certain way and and and different um again if anyone wants to enter that and add anything to it feel free to to do so um so we have another question did he also live on the upper west side of manhattan at some point i only know i don't oh sorry i only know his lispinarn street apartment which is the one that rosemary peck has images for that we use for apartment magazine and before that he lived in the west village on haratio street in an apartment that the designer vincent wolf designed but i don't i don't know that he lived on the upper west side i do know that he socialized on the upper west side and we have one last question given his unfortunate unfortunate dismissal of from parson's how did he make his initial connection in the fashion world well will this means designed for a company called digits um in alexandra i'm not sure i'll get this date right but i think he started in 69 is that correct yeah i mean the answer to that is that you know he had a reputation of being one of the most talented students to ever apply to parson so people knew who he was when he was still still a student um and so he started he started working on seventh avenue for sportswear brands pretty much right away um and then you know became sort of moved his way up really really quickly to be the lead designer of digits and then you know decided that he wanted to strike out on his own um yeah so his his reputation uh lifted him into immediate job opportunities i think that was all the questions i think it's also i would just like to to remind everyone we didn't really think about that because uh we didn't have time probably but will smith was um nominated for the cotie awards in 67 um which you know is quite incredible when you think about these these were almost like the osfers of passion and um and he eventually in 85 won that same award and to think of black designers today um not being nominated for whether it's the cfda it's changed because of black lives matter in 2020 happened but for the longest time it was very rare to see black designers being nominated for prize and being recognized by the industry so i think it's important to to point out that even in that he was you know ahead of its time so should we do does anyone else wants to say something before we wrap this up thank you thank you for thank you for to all the panelists and thank you for everyone who joined um alex angela gave it back to you yeah thank you everyone i mean it was incredible to have this conversation with you um i know that um our impeccable education team is going to follow up to everyone who who joined us today with a link to the conversation so there will be a video online um and and on our website so that the discussion can be revisited in the future i would encourage anyone who had more questions who wants to explore a little bit to visit the um the willy smith digital community archive site which has all of the essays from the book and conversations um published for free so we would love for you to buy the book but of course everything is accessible there including a bunch of recollections videos archival film um a lot a lot to go through um yes and please i mean every single every single person on this panel has such uh an inspiring impact on the worlds of art and fashion and design so please continue to follow their own work beyond today um if it's the first time that you're meeting them so thanks so much everyone for joining thank you everyone and see you soon thank you pierre