“It Was Like Quiet Thunder”: The Hidden Stories of WWD's BLACK IN FASHION

For over 100 years Women’s Wear Daily has been the bible for the fashion industry, and its archives include numerous hidden contributions of Black designers and models. Now that history has been gathered in a stunning new book, BLACK IN FASHION, by Tonya Blazio-Licorish and Tara Donaldson, showcasing the indelible influence of Black culture on a global scale.

On Episode 5 of Rodeo Drive-The Podcast, host Lyn Winter spoke with the authors about the book and the revelations they found in the WWD archives.  

“Fashion has a flawed public history because it hasn't included all the voices,” says Blazio-Licorish, also a visual culture historian and editor with PMC Media Archives. “We were always there, and not just there in marginal roles, but in important roles, in roles that were shaping fashion,” adds Donaldson, most recently WWD's executive editor and Head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Fairchild Media. 

Dating back as early as the Harlem Renaissance, the Black community was making its mark on clothing and style, from Black dolls for young Black children, early fashion shows, business associations, and fashionable scenes like at The Cotton Club. 

The authors single out early “influencers” such as Josephine Baker, who even had a hosiery color named in her honor, the dancer Katherine Dunham, who was all the rage in 1940s France, and then the Black models, including Pat Cleveland and Bethann Hardison, who shook up global fashion at the famed 1973 Battle of Versailles.

The late André Leon Talley recalled this momentous event in conversation with the authors before his passing. “You could almost just reach out and touch the energy they gave in the air. It was like quiet thunder, and because everyone saw that and felt that at the battle, French designers – Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent – they started wanting black models.”

Black fashion has been intertwined with politics – and BLACK IN FASHION explores how clothing reflected the moment:

“During civil rights, that time was really about respectability politics,” explains Donaldson. “It was coming in your Sunday best, to assert dignity. It was a kind of a polite request for human rights. By the time you get to the 70s, the mood changes, the look changes…then the Black Panther movement, it's more powerful, it's more assertive…You have the leather jackets, you have the turtlenecks, you have the berets. And then we see that evolve even into the 2020s. And there's the branded T-shirts, Black Lives Matter.”

Finally, the story is still unfolding. Black designers are still not getting the high level industry jobs they deserve, argue Blazio-Licorish and Donaldson, and are even ambivalent about being labeled as Black.

So Blazio-Licorish says they finished on a question: “We purposefully left the conversation open to, who's next, who's now, and what do they have to say about where fashion is going to go?”

Season 5 of Rodeo Drive – The Podcast is presented by the Rodeo Drive Committee with the support of The Hayman Family, Two Rodeo Drive, Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, and the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau.

Season 5 Credits:

Executive Producer and Host: Lyn Winter

On behalf of the Rodeo Drive Committee: Kay Monica Rose

Scriptwriter and Editorial Advisor: Frances Anderton

Editor and Videographer: Hans Fjellestad

Theme music by Brian Banks

Production Assistant: Isabelle Alfonso.

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