How WWD Documented Black Fashion Over the Past 100 Years

“Black in Fashion,” a stunning 300-page coffee table book from WWD and Union Square Publishing, doesn’t just focus on the past century’s most influential Black models, muses, designers, photographers, stylemakers and creatives, but it also celebrates how WWD documented each of them. As “the fashion bible” and flagship publication of Fairchild Media, WWD often broke ground with Black-centric fashion news, features, illustrations and photo shoots, and continues to do so to this day.

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In this episode, Lauren Parker, director of Fairchild Studio, chats with cultural historian and archivist Tonya Blazio-Licorish, the coauthor of “Black in Fashion” and archives editor of WWD and Fairchild Media Group.

Blazio-Licorish cites Josephine Baker as the “ultimate influencer,” and not just for her famed fashion moments in the banana skirt, for example, but for how she drove the fashion business forward. “Having a hosiery named Creole Brown, which was the color given in honor of Josephine Baker’s influence on the world stage [in 1925 after she got to Paris], takes her and puts her in a different light than the media’s tropes of her,” she said. Baker’s influence continues into the 21st century, like when Rihanna wore a crystal turban and fur boa in a Josephine Baker homage to the 2014 CFDA awards. The book features the images side by side.

“Black in Fashion” takes readers through various fashion eras and cultural movements like the Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights, Black empowerment/Black is beautiful, hip-hop, to modern-day designers (including the unsung heroes who worked in fashion behind the scenes), always showing how WWD was there to document it all every step of the way.

“The way WWD was looking at social [moments], politics, economics, the party, the eye, the way they sort of bring the conversation and have this dance with the zeitgeist, that is unlike anything,” Blazio-Licorish said.

To listen to the podcast click here.