 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Alexandra Cunningham Cameron and I'm the Curator of Contemporary Design and Hints 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 Calmes, 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 hosted by Namak 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's thought by many to be the father of streetwear for launching the brand Willy Ware 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 women, 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 Ware 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 Ware's 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 into 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 and Pele. 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. Hi everyone. So my name is Pierre, as Alexander just said, and I'll start with introducing our panelists. We've got Jared Berners today who is a fabulous author, curator and artist. He's written, he's authored many books, including what it means to write about art. I've met with Jared 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 Datira, 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 is what 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 collaboration between artists and designers. So Willie, would you want to try and answer that first question? His fashion art and in... Yeah, hi. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me. Well, that goes back to the piece that 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, et cetera. 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 Caucasian, our woman, who is the Saturday 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 explained 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 a really interesting moment for Kim's life and how much he helped her. 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, you know, major magazine hiring and featuring people of color. So she got, I think, her first modeling break through Willie as well. He met her through his sister. Is it Tuki? Yes, Tuki, who was the muse. So it was really interesting. That's how I discovered him. Sadly, I should have known about him, you know. And I think I'm really surprised by how much, you know, his history and his work has been erased 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 stories spoke to you? You are on mute. I was just testing you. So I was working on 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. But for how I got involved with Willie Smith, as a good devotee of conceptual art, I really liked Jean-Claude and Christo. And I was writing a story I went on a boat ride with with Christo around Miami a few years ago when they were doing a show about the retrospectors looking back at the surrounded islands projects that they had done that they had done in Miami. And I called 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 Willie Smith, Willie 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 vice versa. And 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 Willie designed the jackets that the people who worked on the wrapping of the Pont Neuf wore slightly later. So when she started working on on this show, she reached out to me and asked if I wanted to work on Willie Smith from that angle from the kind of conceptual art angle. And then I just really fell in love, you know, and part of what I fell in love with was the idea that this was a guy who 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, you know, Beth Ann, I love that you mentioned your conversation with Beth Ann 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 Beth Ann Hardison, who is such a towering figure of fashion, who's dedicated her entire life to fashion 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 learn from the wisdom of it? And partly my partial answer, and I would like to turn it over to the other panelists, it does have to do with this bigger, more holistic vision, a very philosophical vision about moving through the world and what it looks like and how money relates to that and also how social space and private space relate to that. I think I could talk a lot about that, but I want to push the ball to my fellow panelists and then maybe we could pick some of those things up. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you started a really interesting conversation. Camille, who's also, by the way, the senior design writer at LDecor, 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 as a teenager, finding little pieces here and there at thrift stores, but not really understanding the relevance and the importance of him as a designer until I wrote about him and his home and his kind of interior world and interior life for Partimento last year, which was something that came through Alexandra as well, who seems to really be the glue here. 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. Fashion, of course, does its clothing. We have to, we don't have to wear it, but we've grown accustomed to wearing it. But Willie, I think I would agree with Jared and I would agree with Beth and Hardison that he was an artist from my perspective, at least, while I was researching him. One of the things that really resonated with me while I was having conversations with the people who knew him was Lori Melle referencing Willie, whereas 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 within which he presented it to the world 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 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, were almost like collages. And collaging is something the writer Sasha Bonet 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 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, Cotton Club ephemera, new technology, record players that had just come out, images of cowboys, images of the artists that he was working with. And I think that we see the way that he was able to present these ideas within Willie Ware was really seamless. He made what 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 protection and armor. 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. At that point, Willie was really alone. So there was no there was no rubric. So that's also something I think should be considered. I can fit in here. Yeah, you did. And so I'd like to come back to the fashion is fashion art question, you know, it feels like 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, when does fashion and art merge so well that they transcend culture? Because to me, that's what Willis Smith 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 Jared 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 Willie Smith is working. And so for instance, you see a like an image from a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that is taken and put on the side of a coach bag, or you see a David Vojnarowicz image that is put on a Jonathan Anderson thing. You know, those artists had no say in that the images that they made, whatever their intention, whatever their belief system, and in some cases, the belief system would have been extremely antithetical to being used as a decorative device on a piece of fashion. 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 Willie 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 create something beyond the two of them into this new form. And so he invited artists to work. You know, he worked with Jean-Claude and Christo, 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, she said she didn't she had not done anything before that. And he kind of 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 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 Hirschman-Lieson, who has to show up at the New Museum, a little known San Francisco artist for many years, 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 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 to me, that is so different than the things that get pegged as art fashion collaborations now. Oh, great. This is a picture. This is from the artist's t-shirts press kit, which included a bunch of images of different models wearing the 23 t-shirts in the first series of artist's t-shirts. But 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, Pierre. If I could just, you know, oh, Pierre, you're muted. Oh, sorry, I was actually going to ask you to go for it. Oh, great, great, great. 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, I think something that differentiated willy was the familiarity with those other mediums that weren't fashion. When he designed 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 from, you know, just a practice of going to see anything new with the theater, anything new with the opera. That was something that was discussed with many of his friends. There's a real element of research and rigor in willy Smith's practice that I think is really distinctive. 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 itself can serve as a way to bring art to the general public. So if we think about 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 process. And I think that's what willy Smith had. It was basically the process was artistic, the approach, the knowledge, as Camille said, of what he was utilizing. I think, for me, that's what makes a difference. Well, he talks so much about the performance of the clothes being what's most important in the context and how they were used. If you look at willy where garments, they really are basic, typological garments that aren't... There is some 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 the wearer. And so he really, he saw it as a vehicle for something. And I think that's similar to the collaborations with the artists when it came directly to the artist's 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. And also a vehicle for a viewer to have an experience with art on the street, which was so in keeping with so much that was happening with contemporary art at the time, not just Christiane Jean-Claude, but Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Herring and David Hammond. So many artists that were occupying the street in different ways, which is very, very different from how 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. 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 would make his clothes at home. So I think that's important as well. You know, his collaborations with Nam June Pike, nothing was, the t-shirts were being sold, but I think that came kind of after, you know, the t-shirts were in the and the uniforms for the Christiane Jean-Claude projects were made specifically to be used versus sold initially. But correct me if I'm wrong, Alexandra. Mm-hmm. Well, the t-shirts were sold to fundraise 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, which at the time was, you know, Willie Ware had a policy of like nothing under $100. It really was about trying to keep the prices as low as possible. But yeah, with some of the collaborations that were installation driven where artists like Nam June Paik or Juan Downey were invited to create installation for the runway presentations, they were given a sort of carte blanche, you know, 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, 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 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 with Willie 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 collaboration 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 Willie Smith. I'd like to ask you guys, which specific or not collection do you remember from Willie Smith and why Namjoon Paik? I mean, that was brilliant. I managed to find like a grainy footage of it. And the installation was incredible. So that's the one that that's my favorite when I was doing the research, you know, the father of video video art. And the fact that, you know, Willie 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 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's my favorite. And Jared, which passion in art collaboration do you think is the most successfully executed by Willie Smith or by some. I will. Well, you know, I actually think I loved what Camille was saying. And it picked up on a point earlier that Willie had made or was talking or speaking in relationship to, which is, you know, the idea that if you put a Jean-Michel 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. 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, 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 in relationship to the clothing and how differently 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 $600, 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 aspiration towards a certain kind of class position. And Willie Smith is actually giving people tools to undermine that kind of aspirational class 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 a failure. People need to look at you and say you look amazing for you. And not to say like 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. 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 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 think he was erased simply because he died of AIDS and because he's black. 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. 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. 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 $100 almost all the clothes were under $100. And he 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 performance Secret Pastors. And also, in terms of my favorite collection, the Deep South Suite that he did in 1976 was Diane McIntyre that I thought was fabulous. Why? Why because he's referencing he's referencing a culture, the Black South, which he maybe didn't necessarily experience that much growing up. But the Deep South essentially affects all African American people, you know, we were brought here to as slaves and generally came from that region. And I think it's I think it was a beautiful collection because just aesthetically purely aesthetically, the women and looked amazing. The volume was dramatic. The fact that it was choreographed by Diane McIntyre, I think really elevated not elevated, but added another dimension to the clothes and their and their publication and the imagination. And I think that they're also representative of this aspect of willy that I personally find very compelling. He was able to provide really kind of seething and skating social commentary in very subtle ways. 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. Alexandra, do you want to answer that question? Which one is your favorite collection or your favorite art collaboration of Willie Smith? I mean, it's it's so hard for me to pick. But 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. 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, which happened at PS1 before it was MoMA PS1 in 1982. And a stylist named Hollywood Geruso was asked by Alana Heiss, who was the director of PS1 at the time, to invite some young fashion designers to show their work 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 Willie Smith chose to create this installation, which was titled Art is Damaged Goods. And he took his his basic garments, labeled them in the most straightforward, minimal way, shirt, pants, skirt, plastered them and laid them out on the floor of one of the school rooms, this PS1, you know, the school room, with evidence markers. And 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 Willie Smith being an artist, you know, this is a sculpture. And it is a direct critique of the fashion industry and the planned obsolescence of clothing, and, you know, the returning 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, you know, an environmental discussion about the impact of fast fashion, which I think is is really complicated to talk about also because, you know, Willie Ware was 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 Willie Ware was against and was trying to undermine, as Jared mentioned. So we were lucky to recreate artist damage goods for the exhibition at the museum, and we have some photographs documenting it done by the photographer Kim Steele, who is a friend of Willie Smith's and Lori's that are in the book and on the community archive. But you can also go to MoMA's website to read some more about that. We were very happy that they gave us permission to recreate it in the show. Yeah, so that one is very, very important, I think, in understanding the ove of Willie Ware and Willie Smith. Yeah, I wanted to touch quickly on Jared's comment about a classless approach to fashion and creation, and it's something that's come back on a table with tar-far Clemens. So, you know, with his bag, tar-far bag, it's called the Bushwick, the Bushwick Birkin, yes. So they are exploring this idea of a luxury brand without luxury with his business partner, Babak Ragboi. And it seems conceptual in 2021, but pretty much that's what Willie was doing. You know, it's somewhere else with this idea. When you fast forward a few years down the line, we can see the prophecy of it. So tar-far is trying to create this classless approach to fashion, and by building a community as well around African American working class 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, you know, his models and he's the people that use the bag. I mean, completely. I think, you know, tar-far is definitely following in Willie Smith's footsteps. Camille, I'm really interested in your opinion. How do you understand this appeal for street culture today and the influence that Willis Smith has on designers today and the way people dress? Well, I think just add one more thing to what Willie said. Tar-far's tagline is not for you for everyone, which is perhaps even more pointed than Willie at, you know, at that time. I think his influence stems from a desire, you know, in the 80s, and in the 80s, 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 Willie 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 appears if they don't have money. I also think that specifically with the Tar-far 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 Bloomingdale's, have something reserved, go pick it up, be on a waiting list. They can't access the Bushwick Birkin in that way. Now, you know, I have friends who are artists 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 artists who have generally been an outsider group. And I think that that is, that's a cultural phenomena that's really unique to this moment and unique to the last 10 or 20 years. And I think a few of the other people that followed in Willie Smith's path, I think in referencing what Alexandra was saying earlier about some of these larger brands like Zara, I definitely think Uniquo takes a lot of pages out of that book specifically with their Artist Collab t-shirts, which are I think the most explicit, the most explicit example of what Willie Smith started. But I also think in terms of streetwear and appearing effortless and cool in the way that Willie started, I think there are brands like Rock Aware, Baby Fat, Sean John. I also think that there is this kind of gender fluidity about Willie Wear that I think also could be seen in Hood by Air or Tel-Far also. And I think I've seen some comparisons to Willie Wear that I think actually don't line up. Pyramas, for example. I think that in our rush to explain Willie's impact, sometimes his rigor is forgotten, if that makes sense. And Jared, I saw you shake your hand at some point. Tell me your views on that. Well, I mean, I can't say it any better. I just thought it was such an insightful and incisive 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 Willie Smith now. You know what I mean? Like Willie 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 she diagrammed this is I think what we're really looking at 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 now dealing with the kind of incredible devastation of the fast fashion industry. And so we can look back at Willie Smith and say, well, there was someone who was thinking these thoughts and attempting to address them in his own way. And somehow that is both more and less clear than the term influence might appear. I mean, 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 that. I also want to just add one thing to that. The pace is different. When Willie 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. And I think, you know, I don't think that there is a direct descendant from Willie. I don't think anyone has been able to kind of recreate that essence, because it's not possible to recreate it. 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 Willie's legacy, but I think to really be, 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. Alexander, did you want to add anything less on that? Because I would love to talk about fashion and identity and how Willie Smith was a completely intersectional being in the way he created and mixed gender and race, obviously, and sexuality into his work. Or do you want to go on to that? Yeah. I mean, I was glad that Camille also made the point, you know, about Telfar, even at Kalslada or GMBH, different brands that are thinking about gender fluidity because that was something that was really important to Willie Smith and Willie Ware and something that I think has only started to become apparent 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 Willie Smith since the book came out and the exhibition and, you know, there are many people who've been talking about Willie 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 Willie Smith, you know, and needed a broader platform to maybe like create a concentration around this discussion to reflect on what is happening with the fashion world, you know, with corporate art commissions, with discussions of design and architecture, you know. And often Willie 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. But I find it to be, I find it to be frustrating still, you know, that talking about Willie Smith becomes like a question of only talking about Telfar, only talking about Virgil Abloh, 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 still today in the fashion press. Yeah, I mean, that's true. That's true. I agree with you that there's a lot more than I feel like sometimes Willie 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, like I said earlier, culturally relevant, you know, in the sense that it transcended fashion. I'm really interested in you guys's opinion about identity and how a black designer like Willie Smith or black designers today can use their identity and their race in a way that, sorry, let me just rephrase that, can use their race and identity to convey certain values through their work. That's what I mean. We do 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 Jared, as some point of view, but I would say that what's happening now with the rise of technology, the conversations that started happening, especially with, you know, the group of students and creative that came out of St. Martin's, including you 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 belong to one race. And there's only one way of doing it. There's only one approach. There's only one type of duty 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 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 for me, designers like Woody Smith, he had 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, Latinos. So it was this vision of kind of encompassing all kinds of identity 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. It is about, you know, realizing that fashion is for everyone. And when it comes to identity as a Black creative, I mean, it obviously is, you know, your work, you know, is attached to your identity, your roots where you grew up, and it should be included in your work and your design for a lot of them. I don't know, in the US, but we've got in South Africa, Kenneth Eze, we've got Tebe Magugu, who's bringing his point of view from South Africa, and I love that. And he's, you know, being celebrated in Paris, and coming into the international sort of platform or those international cities for fashion. And that's a healthier version of the industry. And that's what we need to get to when it comes to, you know, design and dressing is the fact that, you know, it's a human endeavor. It's nothing to do with race and, you know, kind of promoting one race over another. Jared, I'm really interested in your opinion about that, the relationship between race and design and how artists and fashion designers can use race 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 segregated along 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 New York City of the 70s and 80s, it was not like that. It was a highly mixed and integrated 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 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 serious fashion scholar kind of work through because when 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 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 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. Well, I have a lot of thoughts about him and identity and his identity. But first, I just want to cap on what Alexandra said most recently. I think that there's this reluctance also to acknowledge how much Willie Smith affected and influenced white designers. I think a lot of people fall within his lineage. Donna Karen, for instance, Ralph Lauren, they both began designing around the same time. I think much just formally much of his work, I see similarities between Willie Smith's early work. 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. And I really wanted to get her perspective on how Willie reconciled being black and what was mostly 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, and I think that had to do maybe more with just the economic level that he was at to the end of his life and how few black people, especially at that time, could get into that economic bracket. But one quote stands out to me in particular that Kim Hastrider 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. 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 on appearing non threatening on kind of eradicating the threat in America, at least, that is the black man that is the black man's body. 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 a gay man. And also there was this one moment when Alexandra mentioned that he was in Parsons, but he was also kicked out of Parsons 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. And he was never closeted, but he was also very, what's the word I'm looking for, very private about his sex life and his romantic life. The two romantic partners of his that I was able to unearth were both white and also, which I think is a neutral thing, but I think is still something that needs to be considered. So I think that there was a lot of turmoil. And I think that 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. Hi. Sorry. 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 thinking about history and influence. I like the idea of imagining why we need a designer like Willie Smith now, and to think about what he was trying to do with his life and with his brand. And to think about how might we, sorry to be a design question person, but I guess ultimately I am representing the design segment of this conversation. How might we create a community, a business, a life like Willie Smith? And so I think the most powerful aspect of having organized this exhibition and worked on the archive and spoken to so many people who have been thinking about Willie Smith and grappling with all of the things that we've talked about today in this conversation about why he didn't receive a certain degree of recognition or what it meant for him to be the first at this and the first at that and introducing these new ways of thinking about how fashion can operate as a tool of equity or as a means to get to where you want to go in your life to move is really that when you sit down and read his quotes and read his statements, they coalesce really into 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. He made people feel good about themselves and that was a major aspect of what he was trying to do to empower people, which is a word that has sort of like lost its strength because it's used so much. But he wanted to do that and he was successful at doing that even with people who he didn't know who've written into the archive to say I wore Willie wear to my prom and I felt like someone understood what I needed to feel comfortable in clothing to allow me to make choices that felt authentic to myself. 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 inspired by. Willie, what would you say? I think for me what's stood out researching him and throughout the conversation is even if you haven't heard of him, it's the importance of visionaries in our industry because both you and me are part of the fashion industry. I think that's the only two people here in the panel and within the fashion industry you sometimes get that kind of talent that comes in and gives you a blueprint of how to answer certain questions that we've got to be faced with now or in 10 years. Ray Kawakubo is one of them. 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 business. So that's number one. So visionaries should be taught, should be studied and should provide an inspiration for the rest of us in the industry when we're trying 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 kind of a symbol of despite all the issues 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 the industry. He was as big as Ralph Lorraine. I mean what Ralph Lorraine became. He was an all-American designer. I mean wrap your head around that. That is insane. 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 because of the association of him having HIV AIDS and the issues of setting the close in that sense. You know in the stigma that was attached to you know he's he's he's deaf but he's still a huge inspiration 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 street whip box but I'm just saying as an inspiration I think Talfa has the same level of 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 operated and worked. Amiyah? Well I have two points first off that phrase of his style over status. 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 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 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 Willie 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 and how and I think you know the proof is in the putting the work is exceptional work continues to be exceptional today and you know though we don't have necessarily the same the same kind of settings you know speaking to how many fashion 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 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 from from Willie's memory. Jared. Oh well I I'm so moved by the things everyone has already said I loved Willie talking about Willie Smith as a visionary and to me what that means to me is that as we celebrate Willie Smith and 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 it's 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 Willie 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 die debates 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 Willie 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 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 Willie Smith was finding the anecdote in the book about the AIDS quilt of the guy who had made Willie 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 a really important to his identity and like being a gay man and then the first clothes he ever made for himself were from Willie Smith patterns that Willie published with Butterick's in the 70s and when Willie 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 Willie Smith because he he affected my life you know what I mean it wasn't like he was a famous person he never met Willie 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 it led this man to to make this gesture and I was so moved by that you know it was really touching to me and 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 Willie Smith never knew this guy and Willie 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 Willie 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 Willie 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 Willie Smith. We're gonna head to the questions now and we have a few questions let's start with was his name licensed when and the label his signature so Alexander I'll let you answer that but I think Willie Smith incorporated the first company from 74 to 76 it was called Will Smith design and which bankrupt and then Willie where was established in 76 right did I get that right good history good history yeah yeah and and there what the the so sort of the the second mark of that is after Willie Smith passed there were a couple of years with a brand continued under the Willie where moniker and the several different designers were brought in to work on the brand and an anonymous design team and so there are a couple of years but then you know a few different corporate brands came in and acquired the Willie Smith name and for some period of time also Willie where which is why you see many clothes from the 90s on with a Willie Smith label different from 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 Willie were labels that are really recognizable but you see like a Willie Smith label that it does not come from the Willie and Laurie owned owned brand yeah for many years and possibly still we have another question where Willie's clothes design more towards men or women he will he Willie Smith designed both men's and men's wear and women's wear so I don't think there was a particular 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 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 don't know oh sorry I only know of his Lisbon Arnst Street apartment which is the one that Rosemary Peck has images for that we use for apartment a magazine and before that he lived in the West Village on Horatio Street in an apartment that the designer Vincent Wolfe 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 Parsons how did he make his initial connection in the fashion world well Willie Smith is designed for a company called Digits in Alexandria 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 Parsons so people knew who he was when he was still still a student um and so he started he started working on 7th Avenue for Sportswear Brands pretty much right away and then you know became sort of moved his way up really really quickly to be the lead designer at 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 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 Willie Smith was um nominated for the Coty Awards in 67 um which you know is quite incredible when you think about these these were almost like the Oscars of fashion and um and he eventually in 85 won that same award and to think of Black designers today 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 it does anyone else want 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 Angel give 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 the Willie Smith Digital Community Archive site which has all of the essays from the book and conversations 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 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