One of my favorite designers - WILLI SMITH
Willi Donnell Smith (February 29, 1948 – April 17, 1987) was one of the most successful young African-American fashion designers in fashion history. At the time of his death, his company Williwear Ltd. sold $25 million worth of clothing a year.
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Willi Smith
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willi Donnell Smith (February 29, 1948 – April 17, 1987) was one of the most successful young African-American fashion designers in fashion history.[1] At the time of his death, his company Williwear Ltd. sold $25 million worth of clothing a year.[2]Contents[hide] |
[edit] Biography
Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied commercial art at Mastbaum Technical High School and attended Philadelphia College of Art for fashion illustration. He then moved to New York to go to Parsons The New School for Design, the highly competitive art and design college of The New School university. For a short time Smith freelanced with Arnold Scaasi and Bobbie Brooks's sportswear company.[edit] Career
In 1967, Smith quit Parsons to pursue a career designing on his own. In 1969 he designed a label for Digits, a sportswear company. In 1973, Smith, along with his sister Toukie Smith, founded their own clothing company that soon failed. Smith continued to design and in 1976 he went into business with Laurie Mallet and called the company "Williwear."He designed the wedding dress worn by Mary Jane Watson when she married Peter Parker in the Spider-Man comic book and comic strip in 1987,[3] and the suits for Edwin Schlossberg and his groomsmen when he married Caroline Kennedy in 1986. Smith also designed the uniforms for the workers on Christo's 1985 wrapping of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and clothes for Spike Lee's film School Daze (1987).
Smith worked with many other designers and artists during his time at Williwear including Antthony Mark Hankins, James Mischka, Julia Santos-Solomon, Jon Coffelt, John Bartlett and Andre Walker among many others. Smith partnered with Jhane Barnes on some of his earlier shows.
Smith was the costume designer for "Secret Pastures" which premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1984, one of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's first major works.
[edit] Death
Smith died unexpectedly at the relatively young age of 39 after contracting shigella and pneumonia while on a trip to India, apparently as a result of AIDS. It is suspected that Smith himself didn't know he had the disease, although those around him knew he was fragile in his last days.[citation needed] Most thought it was just that Smith had pushed himself so hard, being such a perfectionist with his work.[citation needed] John Bartlett, who was working at the time of Smith's untimely death, took over design operations and remained until 1990.Smith, who was openly gay,[4] has a panel in the original NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and is also lamented in a poem Speak: A Poem for the Millennium March by Keith Boykin, read by its author for the Millennium March on Washington for Equality on April 29, 2000.
[edit] Awards
- Smith earned two scholarships to attend Parsons School of Design in 1965.
- In 1983 he won an American Fashion Critics' Coty Award for women's fashion.
- Smith won a Cutty Sark Award for Men's Fashion in 1985.
- He was honored with a bronze plaque for Fashion Walk of Fame along Seventh Avenue in 2000-2002.
[edit] References
- ^ James, George (1987-04-19), Willi Smith, Clothes Designer; Creator of Vivid Sportswear, New York Times, retrieved 2007-09-19
- ^ Rapp, Linda (2002), "Smith, Willi", glbtq.com, retrieved 2007-09-19
- ^ Gustines, George Gene. "STYLE; Pow! Kerplow!! Boing!!!," New York Times Magazine (May 4, 2008).
- ^ Gates, Henry Louis; Appiah, Anthony (1999), Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Basic Civitas Books, ISBN 0-465-00071-1
[edit] External links
"I don't design clothes for the Queen, but for the people who wave at her as she goes by," said one of the most successful designers in fashion history, Willi Smith, at the height of his fashion tenure. Smith, who passed away from complications due to AIDS on April 17,1987, was an equal opportunity designer who took much pride in birthing a youthful sportswear collection that pushed fashion's boundaries without breaking the bank. WilliWear, founded in 1976, consisted of easy and comfortable clothing in drapey silhouettes in a rainbow of colors and prints. The Philadelphia native helped usher in a new slouchier cut which would take the place of the ubiquitous 80's casual uniform of jeans. His knack for pairing the most contradicting prints and hues shaped a modern, fun and singular approach to dressing. Smith's "street couture" aesthetic won him a legion of fans from all walks of life that would catapult his women and men collections to the forefront of the fashion world. By 1986, a year before his untimely death, WilliWear was racking in $25 million. Smith's innovative designs won him a number of prestigious accolades including a Coty American Fashion Critic Award for women's fashion in 1983 and a Cutty Sark Menswear Award in 1985. Smith was in high demand. Director Spike Lee enlisted the prominent designer to outfit the cast of "School Daze." Edwin A. Schlossberg called upon Smith to design a navy blue linen suit for his wedding to Caroline Kennedy in 1987. While Smith was sadly never able to reach his full creative potential, 23 years later Smith's influential approach to design has left an indelible mark on fashion and style inspiring new generations of Black fashion designers for decades to come.
Read more: http://www.essence.com/2010/04/16/flashback-friday-willi-smith/#ixzz1jjTkRxF3
fashion designer
Personal Information
Born Willi Donnell Smith,
February 29, 1948, in Philadelphia, PA; died of pneumonia, April 17,
1987, in New York, NY; son of Willie Lee (an ironworker) and June Eileen
(a homemaker; maiden name, Bush) Smith.Education: Attended Philadelphia College of Art, 1962-65, and Parsons School of Design, 1965-69.
Memberships: League in Aid for Crippled Children, Bedford Stuyvesant Children's Association.
Career
Worked for Arnold Scassi, New York City,
1965; sketcher, Bobbie Brooks, 1969; designer, Digits, Inc., 1969-75;
formed own design studio and worked as freelance designer, 1974-76;
designer and vice-president, WilliWear Ltd., 1976-87; introduced
WilliWear Men line of clothes, 1978; sponsored and designed clothes for
Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave festival, 1984; designed clothes
for film School Daze.
Life's Work
Rising quickly in the fashion world to
become one of the industry's most successful young designers, Willi
Smith was part of a vanguard of hip young black designers who first made
their mark in the late 1960s. The sportswear he created for WilliWear
Ltd. in the 1970s and 1980s was noted for its relaxed, street-smart, and
often oversized look that made it functional but fun. Youthful and
often unfitted, his clothes had a free-flowing look that often featured
unusual color combinations. Smith also introduced a design innovation by
matching plaids, stripes, and colors in single articles of clothing.Smith always wanted his clothes to utilize natural fibers, and he strove to keep his clothes affordable to the general public. "I don't design clothes for the Queen, but for the people who wave at her as she goes by" said Smith, according to the New York Times. In Who's Who in Fashion, Anne Stegemeyer said that Smith "brought fashion verve to the moderate price range."
The seeds for Willie Donnell Smith's later successes were planted during his youth by his parents, both of whom were extremely clothes-conscious. "I came from your typical black middle-class family, where every event called for an outfit," Smith told Essence. Focusing on clothes also helped distract the family from their impoverished life in the Philadelphia projects. Smith's mother would dress up frequently, never having any concern about the stares of onlookers when she was "overdressed" for an occasion. His father tended to wear oversized clothes, an influence that may have impacted Smith's later design choices.
As a boy Smith spent a lot of time drawing with his mother, and he nurtured dreams of becoming an artist. After his parents were divorced, his grandmother, Gladys Bush, became an important figure in motivating Smith to pursue his artistic interests. She defended her grandson when he missed family curfews because of lingering too long at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or when he spent untold hours sitting on the floor sketching. While studying fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, Smith began developing a greater interest in clothing design.
Smith's grandmother urged him to pursue scholarships that enabled him to enroll in the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1965. While at Parsons, Smith freelanced as a sketcher after school and on weekends. He got his first design-related job one summer with designer Arnold Scassi, a position he landed due to one of his grandmother's contacts--Bush had been a maid to one of Scassi's clients and had mentioned that her grandson was a fashion designer.
Smith worked across the full gamut of the sportswear industry in the late 1960s: for companies ranging from the mass-marketed Bobbie Brooks to chic little houses such as Digits, where he was employed for six years. Extremely hard working, he began to build a solid reputation but had trouble breaking through to the top tier of designers. So-called "black design" was very trendy at the time, but Smith resented pressure to be "more black." For a brief period he made himself over, wearing long braids that went against his preferred clean-cut image, but this new identity didn't last long.
Determined to make his own mark, he started his own business in 1973 with his sister Toukie--who often modeled her brother's clothes--and a friend. Smith's lack of knowledge of the business side of fashion put his fledgling company out of operation in no time, and he was forced to enter into a partnership with a Seventh Avenue firm that gained the rights to his name in return for financial support. The result was a very unhappy period for Smith. "I was doing all of these designer clothes out of expensive fabrics, very young couture," he told Esquire reporter Lynn Darling. "They were clothes that people didn't need." Smith sued to regain the rights to his name, then worked freelance and pursued career options with other large sportswear companies.
In 1976 Smith met up with Laurie Mallet, an old friend who at the time was selling shirts imported from India. At Mallet's suggestion, Smith accompanied her to India to design a collection at a factory near Bombay. A company called WilliWear Limited was set up, with Mallet as president and Smith as vice-president and designer. The following winter Smith's collection generated only about $30,000 of business, but one of Smith's pants designs became extremely popular. Characteristic of what would become the Willi Smith look, the pants were a baggy fatigue with a high, wrapped waist and became known as the "WilliWear pant."
Before long the streetwise and sassy WilliWear designs caught the public's attention in a big way, and other designers soon copied the style. Smith's next collection sold $200,000; by 1982 WilliWear had an annual gross topping $5 million. In 1978 Smith introduced WilliWear Men, a line of clothes that incorporated both formality and casualness. Smith struck fashion gold again with this new line, winning the 1986 Cutty Sark Award, the most prestigious honor for menswear design.
Smith concentrated primarily on separates, and his consistency from season to season allowed pieces from previous years to be mixed with his new designs. Pieces ranged from oversized blazers and long dirndls to dhoti pants and pouf-skirted dresses. Everything he designed showed a sense of humor and spirit, as if inviting the wearer to get up and move. He paid acute attention to all aspects of design and manufacture, designing his own textiles and taking several trips each year to India to overlook production of his collection.
Many influences were cited by Smith as affecting his work, from art to watching people. His apartment in the Tribeca section of Manhattan was filled with African, Oriental, and contemporary art, and many of his clothes featured unusual color blends that he had seen in artworks. Smith also had many friends who were artists, and he worked with some of them. In 1985 he designed 600 uniforms for workers who helped the artist Christo wrap the Pont Neuf, a bridge in Paris, with pink material.
Smith would often stroll down New York City streets, his designer's eye picking up strange color mixes or "attitudes" that people conveyed through what they wore and how they moved. As he told Essence, "What is happening on the streets of New York is happening to me, so I put it right in the collection." Smith himself was known for talking as much with his hands as his voice, and he often gesticulated dramatically. He almost never wore his own designs, thinking that he needed some distance from his work to remain objective. Although Smith was generally soft-spoken, his design shows on Seventh Avenue were far from it and were known for their outrageousness.
By the mid-1980s Smith's designs were hanging in 1,100 stores in the United States, as well as stores in London. WilliWear grossed $25 million in 1986, and by that time the company's designs were taking on a more traditional, tailored appearance as Smith decided to "mature." However, he created a bit of a furor with the uncharacteristic look he designed for Edwin A. Schlossberg for his wedding with Caroline Kennedy in 1987. The groom's outfit featured a navy blue linen suit with a silver tie.
After one of his usual trips to India to supervise production in 1986, Smith became infected with shigella, a parasitic disease. The parasite led to serious complications that proved fatal. Suffering from pneumonia, he was later admitted to a New York City hospital and died in 1987. At the time of his death at age 39, Smith had just been requested to design the wedding gown for the comic-book bride of Marvel's Spider Man.
Awards
Designer of the Year, International
Mannequins, 1978; Coty American Fashion Critics' Award for Women's
Fashion, 1983; Cutty Sark Award, 1986, for menswear design.
Further Reading
Books- Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, second edition, Fairchild, 1988, pp. 192-93.
- Milbank, Caroline Rennolds, New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style, Abrams, 1989, pp. 291-92.
- Daily News Record, April 30, 1987, p. 12.
- Esquire, December 1984, pp. 407-15.
- Essence, July 1987, p. 49.
- Jet, May 4, 1987, p. 9.
- New York Times, April 19, 1987, p. 34.
- People, November 14, 1983, pp. 76-8.
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