The brand found instant success, thanks in part to its affordability, and its come one, come all approach. He was atypical. Perspective broadens with hindsight, with histories that have long been forgotten rising to the surface to contextualise the world we know today. Willi believed that everyone was deserving of quality materials and craftsmanship as well as durable and long-lasting garments, and he refreshingly eschewed the aura of exclusivity that shored up the designer labels of the day. William Baldwin (left) and another model in looks from WilliWears spring 1986 presentation. And Im thinkingno, youre not because the needle has been moving all along.. The following year he would meet Laurie Mallet, his future business partner, and hire her as his design assistant in 1971. Wed be walking along and hed say, Oh my God! As a person, he was really very, very nice and not bitter and twisted like most designers! says fashion journalist Michael Roberts. 
WilliWear Fall 1985 Presentation, 1985, Courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology|SUNY, FIT Library Special Collections and College Archives, New York, NY, USA; Peter Gould, Poster, WilliWear, ca. Smith also blurred the lines in terms of how a fashion label could operate. His showrooms in both New York and London were thoughtfully designed by architectural studio SITE, chosen after seeing a window display at the Rizzoli bookstore designed by them, and they utilised objects from the streets of Manhattan. He collaborated with top names in art, film, design, and architecture resulting in a completely new take on American fashion. In Willis film, models were street-cast and draped in neatly coiffed headwraps, bodypaint, pastel tailored suits with pith helmets and saturated wax prints; a concoction of European and African styles he wanted to both reflect on and encourage his audiences to explore. He was the guy, he crossed so many things. No door was locked!, By 1976, with Lauries help, WilliWear was born. Anthony Barboza. And while Bill Blass was devoted to cavorting with and dressing New Yorks uptown it-clique in clothes that communicated the excess of their ever-accumulating wealth, Willi Smith mingled downtown with the artists he admired. He specialized in sportswear, injecting an element of playfulness into functional garments such as the jump suit that he cut out of silver-coated cloth. At 64, Sharon Stone Is Still Doing Bikini Shots Better Than The Rest, 49 Black Creatives To Add To Your Social Feeds, I Come Under The Microscope A Lot: Virgil Abloh On His $1 Million Scholarship & Latest Louis Vuitton Collection, Samuel Ross Of A-Cold-Wall* Takes Swift & Inspiring Action To Support Black-Owned Businesses, 29 Black Jewellery Designers Who Deserve Your Support And Investment, Rihanna (& Instagrams) Favourite Shoe Designer Amina Muaddi Discusses Her Debut Fenty Collection, Meet Damson Idris, The South Londoner Taking Hollywood By Storm, New Yorks Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. He died at age thirty-nine on 17 April 1987. A look from WilliWears fall 1983 Street Couture collection.Photography by Max Vadukul, Bill Bonnell papers, Vignelli Center for Design Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. For Smith, the woman in the street was both his inspiration and his intended audience. Despite attempts to continue the business after his death, his passing halted the label at its infancy and the brand ceased production in 1990. POP . Meanwhile, -Mallet had found some success manufacturing hippie-chic tunics in India. He loved Sonia Rykiel, Betsey Johnson, Stephen Burrows, he admired and respected so many designers of his time. It also set a precedent for the kinds of collaborations we see so many of today, those that set out to bridge the gap between established high culture and what once considered underground. It was based on a cargo pant, but it had an adjustable wraparound waistband, Mallet says. Contributing factors in his ability to do so were his innate curiosity and artistic sensibility. Smith's obituary in the Village Voice (28 April 1987) by Hilton Als read, "As both designer and person, Willi embodied all that was the brightest, best and most youthful in spirit in his field. Black, gay, and magnetically charming, he was widely known and well connected (Smith designed Edwin -Schlossbergs suit, for example, when he married Caroline Kennedy) yet completely committed to making affordable, accessible clothing on a mass scale. And also about how, after he died of AIDS, he never received the recognition that he deserved. Cunningham Cameron became determined to tell Smiths story. Email powered by WordFly (Privacy Policy, Terms of Use), Historic Carnegie Mansion Hemp Button Pin, Designing Peace: Building a Better Future Now, Are We Human? postcard for WilliWear, 1987.Matt Flynn Smithsonian Institution, At the same time, however, Smith was very much focused on the idea of clothing as a business, in the old-school, Garment District, schmatte-trade sense of the word. Willi Smith was the first to do things that no one had ever done before, recalls Bethann Hardison, confidante, muse and one-time assistant of Willis. Do What You Love Quotes forPursuingYour Passion, Adult Trick-or-Treating Ideas (Because You're Never Too Old), How to Clean an Electric Kettle Inside and Out, 27 Inspiring Pictures of Black Braid Hair Styles, 23 Flattering Ideas for Dark Hair With Highlights. Digits was also where Smith first encountered Mallet. The clothes. . Quite the oppositeI think that the more commercial I become, the more creative I can be, because I am reaching more people. He staged his fashion shows at such culturally vaunted locales as Holly Solomon Gallery and the Alvin Ailey theater, with Aileys dancers as models, and at the same time was cutting his designs into patterns for Butterick and McCalls so that women like his grandmother could whip them up at home. He was, however, primarily a designer of women's wear. A bookworm, he studied drawing at Mastbaum technical school and, later, fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. You know that wonderful feeling when you go into an army surplus store, they have an unpretentious atmosphere.
Together they launched a collection of clothes consisting of thirteen silhouettes in soft cotton, manufactured in India and sold in New York.
Just before his untimely death that year, he expressed his desire to Deny Filmer of Fashion Weekly to see all WilliWear products housed under one roof. Through WilliWear News, a zine created in collaboration with friend and Paper Magazine co-founder, Kim Hastreiter, Willi linked his clothing with film, contemporary art and nightlife. While Covid-19 has sadly curtailed an extensive retrospective at New Yorks Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the exhibition has been brought to life by way of a digital experience. By day he was pinning and draping, and after hours he was immersed in the radically experimental art scene that was beginning to put SoHo on the map. According to Mallet, from their very first trip to what was then known as Bombayeven though his luggage was lost, forcing him to walk around for days in short shorts paired with cowboy bootsSmith was enamored with India. Too good to last, in fact. He worked with Bill T. Jones. From its origins in a single New York store, the company went on to open offices in London (a boutique in St. Christopher's Place), Paris, and Los Angeles, as well as more than a thousand outlets in stores throughout the United States. He was a member of a burgeoning artistic milieu in Lower Manhattan, and in the same year he was expelled from Parsons, he met and collaborated with artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude on their seminal work The Wedding Dress. Plastered clothing was laid out on the floor, flagged with evidence markers, and completely stripped of any recognisable fashion pretext. Thirty years later, experimental fashion films like Grace Wales Bonners Harley Weir-shot and Dev Hynes-scored Practice (2017) evoke the same notions of exploring the complexity of cultural identity through fashion and style. On leaving college, Smith worked as a fashion illustrator with Arnold Scaasi for several years. "Just William."
(He finally won in 1983, on his fifth nomination.) He disliked the pretentiousness of haute couture. Breaking the mould.. A Parisian on vacation in New York, she was shopping some samples of French fabric around the Garment District in an attempt to bolster her travel funds. Please help us improve. Bang .
Simple, adaptable, and forgiving, Smiths designs suited a wide variety of body types and aesthetics. When he was expelled from Parsons two years laterallegedly for having a romantic relationship with another male studenthe teamed up with fellow creative rebels Christo and -Jeanne-Claude on what would be his first of many art-fashion mash-ups. You wouldnt have Demnas basic list of Vetements without WilliWear, or Eckhaus Lattas gender-neutral sizing. The resulting exhibition, Willi Smith: Street Couture, opens March 13 and runs through October 25. Smith was born in Philadelphia in 1948, the son of an ironworker and a homemaker. That a WilliWear garment was simple to care for italicised the designer's democratic urge: to clothe people as simply, beautifully, and inexpensively as possible. 4th of July Movies for Families That Will Light Up the Screen, 101 Famous Literary Cat Names (Find a Masterpiece), 120+ Funny (and Punny) Bird Names for Your Pet. An inherent sense for what the everyperson wanted to wear allowed him to confidently strike through antiquated ideas of luxury, creating what he dubbed Street Couture. Art and design were always twin passions. Because the clothes were in such short supplyCunningham Cameron was ultimately able to get her hands on some key pieces, but they make up only about 20 percent of whats on displaythe exhibition includes loads of graphic materials; some 15 videos; two scripted films; oral histories from friends and collaborators; and a re-creation of Smiths PS1 show. Staunchly democratic in his approach, he reshaped ideas around what fashion was and what it could be, inviting everyone from members of the downtown ballroom circuits -- as attested by an honourable mention of the brand in FXs Pose -- to the townhouse dwellers uptown. With a star firmly in the ascendant and a business that at its peak, in 1986, grossed $25 million (19 million) in sales, Smith was well on track to becoming one of fashions household names before his untimely death in 1987. Willi once said that he didnt do clothes for the queen, says Laurie Mallet, with whom he founded his label, WilliWear, in 1976. I dont want to call him an artist, or even a streetwear designer, she says. As a new exhibition opens digitally in New York, the progenitor of haute streetwear is due a reappraisal, says Lynette Nylander. With WilliWear, which was sold in more than 500 stores in the U.S. and internationally, Smith-according to Elizabeth Way, assistant curator at the Museum at FIThad one of the biggest firms in New York. Jameswho is 87 and sharp as a tackwas like, Let me school you on this amazing man, she recalls. He said, We go shopping, look at the stores and see what they have, then we have lunch with the editors, Mallet remembers. Rittersporn, Liz. "Designer Willi Smith Is Dead." As Wines puts it, He was trying to be a real polar opposite of Ralph Lauren.. Wines, as the exhibition designer, aims to capture the feeling of Smiths iconic showroom. We may never know what Smith could have achieved. The only thing missing? He died the next day, in part due to AIDS-related complications, his life and thriving career abruptly ended at the age of 39.
Why wasn't this page useful? He was manufacturing on a really large scale, and the trajectory of his company was such that it was growing exponentially. In its 10 years of existence, the WilliWear brand paved the way for a multifaceted approach to design that relied on elevating the everyday, sowing the seeds that designers like Kerby Jean Raymond, Virgil Abloh, Samuel Ross and Telfar now reap. Not as an artistic concept for high-end clientele, but as a means of bringing people with diverse lifestyles what they needed to face the world, says Alexandra Cunningham-Cameron, curator of Willi Smith: Street Couture, a recent exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York that lives on as a book and digital archive. Going out to Fire Island where all the designers, architects, writers and models were merging. New York, Line by Line: From Broadway to the Battery, Free shipping on orders over $100 | Cooper Hewitt members save 10% , Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer, choosing a selection results in a full page refresh. Now everybody is trying to do it., An M&Co. Its entirely possible that he could have had a brand as big as some of the really big American household names that we have now.
Looks from Sub-Urban, Smiths fall 1984 collection for WilliWear.Photography by Max Vadukul, Bill Bonnell papers, Vignelli Center for Design Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. It begs the question: without Willi Smith, would we have seen Kim Jones pairing up with Supreme while at Louis Vuitton, or with Shawn Stssy at Dior? While he felt comfortable with the label of streetwear, he didnt put himself into any box. African-American fashion designer Willi Smith, pioneer of streetwear and visionary collaborator, finally gets his due in an exuberant celebration of his life and work. He knew and worked with everybody in that sort of post-pop landscape, Wines says.
Although never an innovator, Willi Smith represented a paradigm of casual American style, creating affordable classic separates. He was embraced by the art world, participating in a multidisciplinary programme at Project Space One PS 1, (now MoMA PS1), where he filled a schoolroom with white clothes made of plaster laid on the floor and flagged with forensics-style evidence markers. Arthur McGee was one of his mentors. It was his first taste of the cutting room floor, making clothing for ladies of note like Brooke Astor and Elizabeth Taylor. Smith on the set of his 1985 fashion film, Expedition, which featured the Spring 1986 WilliWear collection in Dakar, Senegal.Courtesy of Mark Bozek. In 1982, he participated in a multidisciplinary program at Project Space One (now MoMA PS1) in which he exhibited his installation Art as Damaged Goods. "The reason that Willi was considered 'street', was because everyone in the street owned WilliWear and wore WilliWear," notes Bethann. Thanks to the first major retrospective of his work at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the life and work of Willi Smith is being brought to light and gaining the recognition it deserves. Wines quickly corrected that situation. He was equally deft with unisex designs that were architecturally done, explains Pat. And he had this really collaborative spirit, which at that time was really unheard of. It was cut and draped for that figure, it wasnt like you took a top and put it on a girl, and you took a girls top and put it on a boy. The two came back with a small line inspired in part by Indian police uniforms. Encouraging his love of design, Smiths grandmother, a domestic cleaner, had ties to acquaintances of the Canadian-born fashion designer Arnold Scaasi, a favourite of Elizabeth Taylor and Catherine Deneuve, which she used to procure him an internship.
Such was the demand for the relaxed styling and affordable clothes of the label that the company's revenue grew from $30,000 in its first year to $25 million in 1986. Willi and his sister Toukie were a dynamic force at the time. Smith received the Coty American Fashion Critics Award in 1983, and New York City designated 23 February as "Willi Smith Day." In 1996 WilliWear was relaunched, designed by Michael Shulman, and available in T.J. Maxx stores. After a buying trip to India in 1987, Willi contracted shigella and pneumonia and was hospitalised at Mount Sinai Hospital upon his return. Sound: Shhh . Pyer Moss This is an Intervention film on police brutality opening a runway showI dont think youd have any of that without Willi Smith, says Alexandra. . Even as he was collaborating with some of the most avant-garde artists of the day and staging fashion shows that doubled as performances, he was taking his cues as a designer from the women he saw on the sidewalks of midtown. His clothing combined directional design and utilitarian function with an affordable price point. It was absolutely novel at that time. It was also wildly successful. But of course we will never know.. No, it was cut for those figures, but they were like twins.. But a Seventh Avenue firm got involved, buying Smiths name and denying him creative control, and the venture ended in a lawsuit. Its going to be interesting, he says, to take all this gray iron and stick it in Carnegie Mansion. For Wines, the point is to give museumgoers who might remember Smiths name only from the department store racks a sense of his virtuosic creativity. And of course, as Jenkins points out, Fashion history, for the most part, has been white history. Two years later, he became the youngest designer to be nominated for a Coty Award, then the fashion equivalent of an Oscar. Tests later revealed that-unbeknownst to even his closest friendshe had AIDS. By 1974, the economy was in free fall and Digits was on the brink of bankruptcy. He prioritised natural fabrics and produced gender-neutral collections far ahead of his contemporaries.
He was the one who dressed (Edwin) Schlossberg to marry Caroline Kennedy, Bethann remarks. And there were copies of The WilliWear News, the kooky fashion newspaper that Smith produced with his friend the Paper magazine cofounder Kim Hastreiter. 1987; Designed by M & Co. (New York, New York, 19791992), For WilliWear Limited (New York, New York, 19761990); Lithograph on paper; 104.1 71.1 cm (41 28 in. He was dismissive of the edict "dress for success," identifying with the youth cults he saw on the streets of New York and drawing much of his inspiration from them. When these things happen with people of colour, they get lost.
His career was so short, like one of those flying stars. There were many little tribes on different levels of society but then it all merged in the music, the dance and the discos, Pat Cleveland, a friend of and model for Willi, recalls of the seventies. The accessibility of WilliWear was about more than just price point. Smith and Mallet travelled to India and returned with a collection of four basic garments: a jacket, a shirt, a skirt, and a pair of high-waisted trousers dubbed the WilliWear pant, all constructed in the tunic factory from cotton poplin readily available on the Bombay textile market. Photo: Ann Sunwoo Smithsonian Institution, Willi Smith, ca. After studying at Parsons New School of Design, Smith was hired as a designer at the label Digits Sportswear, where he met Laurie Mallet, a former assistant who became his business partner when Digits ceased trading in 1974. BOOM! Sign up for i-D's regular newsletter updates. ); Gift of Tibor Kalman/ M & Co., 1993-151-143, Installation view of "Willi Smith: Street Couture." One of her clients had a connection to the famed couturier Arnold Scaasi and secured an internship for Willi. In 1984 a seriously productive year Smith became the first designer to launch T-shirt collections with fine artists, including Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, and Edwin Schlossberg; joined forces with Nam June Pak on a video work that accompanied his Spring 1983 City Island Collection; and made the costumes for Spike Lees School Daze. Not merely the apparel business, but the arts, so many facets of it. A rising star from the time he left Parsons, Smith went on to found WilliWear with Laurie Mallet in 1976 and became one of the most successful designers of his era by his untimely death in 1987. I just want people to know that he existed., An Ode to Zoey Deutchs Not Okay Press Tour Style, Lila Moss Stars in Balmains Futuristic Fashion Fantasy. Born Willi Donnell Smith in Philadelphia on 29 February 1948, Smith studied fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art from 1962 to 1965 and continued his studies in fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City from 1965 to 1967. When you look at things that came later, like Issey Miyakes Plantation line, Smith was already doing that sort of stuff in the 70s, the loose silhouettes and cotton garments, says Kim Jenkins, a fashion historian who debuted the first course on Fashion and Race at Parsons in 2016. For Smith, even as the scrappy 1970s turned into the luxe-obsessed 80s, being aspirational was never particularly interesting. Their functionality and informality was not reliant on overt sexuality or on the status implied by high fashion, and they appealed to a broad spectrum of people. A new book and retrospective aim to correct that. Portrait of Willi Smith, c. 1981Courtesy of and Photographed by Kim Steele. He was a designer way ahead of his time. Endlessly resourceful, fearlessly creative, he published the WilliWear News, a fold-out poster zine produced with his friend the Paper magazine cofounder Kim Hastreiter. A Black, openly gay and widely-revered designer, hed managed to carve out a forceful identity that influenced fashion the world over from his Seventh Avenue perch. There was Expedition, the film that Smith shot in Dakar, Senegal, with the photographer Max Vadukul, featuring locals, dancers, and Smith himself decked out in hot pink dashikis, pastel suits, and serious statement jewelry. Though Willi Smith was one of the most liberatedand successfulAmerican designers of the 1980s, his legacy has been practically forgotten. Smith, who died from AIDS-related complications in 1987 at the age of 39, was, in the truest sense of the word, a streetwear designer, long before anyone used the term.
Sadly, during a buying trip to India, Smith contracted pneumonia and died shortly after, in April of 1987. . Aiming to bring the spirit of high art to those who roamed the high streets, the t-shirts -- all one-size-fits-all -- were set on pieces of cardboard and cellophane wrapped, selling for $37 and exhibited at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in SoHo. As a young, Black, gay man, Smith was a rarity at a time when designers such as Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren were considered the poster boys for American fashion. Despite his success, however, when we discuss the evolution of the fashion landscape, and the American designers who have significantly contributed to it, his name figures on the lips of very few. Skirts were full and long and jackets oversized, in natural fabrics that wore well and were easy to maintain. In 1978 Smith added a men's wear collection, and in 1986 he designed the navy, linen, double-breasted suit worn by Edwin Schlossberg for his marriage to Caroline Kennedy, together with the violet linen blazers and white trousers worn by the groom's party. His big break came through, of all people, his grandmother Gladys Bush, who worked as a housekeeper. Hes like that one candle on the cake that started burning bright and everybody was wishing on it, recalls Pat. And there were others before them. Willi Smith created inclusive and liberating fashion: "I don't design clothes for the queen, but the people who wave at her as she goes by," he said. Fashion Weekly (London). . The two hit it off, and when Mallet moved to the U.S. a few years later, Smith hired her as his assistant.
Hardison, meanwhile, has a simpler wish. Whether he was unaware of his status or simply in deep denial remains a mystery.
Dont miss out on our newsletter, featuring all the latest stories and products we love. Its striking, when looking over his designs, watching his videos, and absorbing ephemera just how overlooked one of fashions finest designers has been in recent decades. Willi Smith: Street Couture was published toaccompanythe Cooper Hewitt exhibition. When we approached Willis friends and fans about borrowing pieces, we kept on hearing versions of the same thing over and over again, says Cunningham Cameron.