Fashion is the genius of its own story; it creates a time stamp that tells us who we are at a particular moment. My first fashion purchase was by Willi Smith (1948–1987): A brown, cotton, drop-crotch pant and a cowl-neck top with a printed African pattern. It’s gender-fluid, neo-punk streetwear—such an ’80s look! I was in high school. Name brands and who you wore were so important. I just knew it as the brand Williwear. Back then, “Black designer” wasn’t even a conversation, and I had no idea Smith was Black. When I found out he was, I thought, “Oh, maybe I can have a design career, too.” For many years, I did. Recently, I’ve been working as an archivist and lecturer.
In 2017, I arrived at PMC Media as a collections specialist for the Women’s Wear Daily Archive. I had to go through every single asset, adding historical metadata to identify what it was and how it contributed to the fashion conversation. WWD’s lens creates a unique vantage point; it’s a trade publication, but it participates in the fashion conversation in a way that’s comparable to glossy magazines. Plus, its coverage is much wider. It covers the entire industry, not just runway.
Black in Fashion grew out of that survey. It’s a comprehensive look at 100 years of WWD’s documentation of Black contributions to the industry. WWD knows where fashion takes place; it’s making notes on fashion influences from Josephine Baker to Rihanna. It’s interested in streetwear before everyone else. You can see that the journal was as inclusive as it could be at the time.
Looking back helps us understand where we are today. This is the book that I knew fashion needed, one that I see evolving the conversation. Oh—and one of the photos included was of the actor Mario Van Peebles, wearing the same Williwear look I owned.
The archives editor at Fairchild Media Group, Blazio-Licorish published Black in Fashion (Sterling), co-authored with Tara Donaldson, in 2024.