Fashion Designers Photography Shack
Fashion Designers Breaking Through Minority Barriers
By Judd Walker
If you think of American fashion designers in the past
and present, you may notice an interesting phenomenon.
Whether it’s Claire McCardell from earlier in the twentieth
century, Bill Blass somewhat later, or more someone
like Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger, almost all of those
with a very public fashion career were/are white.
Some Jewish designers sort of straddled the white-minority
line, but since they were so closely associated with
the industry and with New York, they weren’t put into
the same obscurity as more obvious minorities. Those
designers who did come from a minority group were very
rarely heard about.
That has finally changed in recent years. On September
18, 2009, the Wall Street Journal wrote a feature article
with a review of Asian American fashion designers who
have taken the world by storm.
Vera Wang Makes A Big Splash In The Fashion World
Vera Wang was the first to begin making a big splash,
in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century,
when she didn’t join her father’s petroleum or pharmaceutical
businesses but opted instead for a career in fashion
design.
For a while, she was the only major Asian American
designer making headlines, but now she is joined by
such designers as Thakoon Panichgul and Phillip Lim,
Thailand-born Americans whose work has become well known.
Byron Lars And Kevan Hall
Black American fashion designers, too, have come to
the fore in the past couple of decades. Byron Lars,
with a fashion design degree from the Fashion Institute
of Technology in New York, began with great promise
in the mid-1980s, faltered somewhat in the 1990s, and
has come back with his Byron Lars Beauty Mark line in
the 2000s.
Kevan Hall was fortunate enough to encounter fashion
programs in his Detroit High School before attending
the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in
Los Angeles. He has been dressing celebrities and selling
to well known fashion retailers for years, and in 2002
he launched his Kevan Hall collection.
Deserving Recognition For Their Fashion Ideas
There are several reasons why it’s important that these
fashion designers be given the public acknowledgement
they deserve. For one thing, it’s simply a fact that
they deserve it, and it’s long overdue.
Designers from visible minorities have not often been
recognized as they should be, possibly due to racist
assumptions about their work. Many have had to push
against family expectations by not choosing more stable
professions like medicine or law.
So in achieving success in their fashion careers they
have often been heroic, and their accomplishments should
be recognized by everyone.
About the Author:
Judd Walker is an author of articles on design, digital video, digital photography and modeling including
Fashion Schools,
Female Models,
Movie Camera,
Best Digital Camcorder,
Film Director,
Funny Video Clips.
Keep a lookout for more articles coming soon.
More Graphic Design Facts....
Fashion school can teach you a lot of important things
about the fashion industry. It can teach you how to
be a designer or it can teach you the business aspects
of the fashion world. There is more to fashion than
simply designing a stunning new dress or pair of shoes.
If you want to succeed you need as much information
about the fashion world and starting a business as possible.
Some will make it and some will fail. Where are you
going to fit in there? If you are determined to succeed
then you can make your dreams a reality.
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