Book List
Explore the intersection of style, innovation, and culture through our thoughtfully curated book List.
*If you see a book you’re interested in, click on the image to purchase.*
*If you see a book you’re interested in, click on the image to purchase.*
Africa Fashion
By: Christine Checinska
The contemporary African fashion scene is as diverse and dynamic as the continent itself. With contributions from experts on cloth, fashion, and cultural history, as well as the voices of makers and designers, this inspiring book offers a window into one of the most innovative, exciting, and thoughtful areas of fashion today.
The authors present the work of the new generation of creatives such as Nigerian fashion designer Lisa Folawiyo, Somali visual artist Gouled Ahmed, Ghanaian woven bag maker AAKS, and Kenyan jeweler Ami Doshi Shah. Their work shows that there is no one way to be African and no single African aesthetic.
Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures
By: Ytasha L. Womack
A History of Black Futures explores the evolving and exhilarating concept of Afrofuturism, a lens used to imagine a more empowering future for the Black community through music, art, and speculative fiction. Features 100 gorgeous illustrations of objects and images that reflect Black identity, agency, creativity, and hope, including: T’Challa’s suit from Black Panther, Octavia Butler’s typewriter, Uhura’s outfit from Star Trek, Sun Ra’s space harp, costumes from Broadway’s The Wiz, handwritten lyrics by Jimi Hendrix, and Janelle Monae’s ArchAndroid dress.
Ain’t I a Beauty Queen?
By: Maxine Leeds Craig
Maxine Leeds Craig documents how Black women have negotiated the intersection of race, class, politics, and personal appearance in their lives. Craig takes the reader from beauty parlors in the 1940s to late night political meetings in the 1960s to demonstrate the powerful influence of social movements on the experience of daily life. With sources ranging from oral histories of Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activists and men and women who stood on the sidelines to black popular magazines and the black movement press, Ain't I a Beauty Queen? will fascinate those interested in beauty culture, gender, class, and the dynamics of race and social movements.
Ann Lowe: American Couturier
By: Elizabeth Way
The definitive illustrated volume on the work and life of Ann Lowe, a consummate couturier who designed lavish evening and bridal gowns for members of America’s social registry, a Black woman working hard behind the scenes whose important legacy has remained underappreciated—until now.
Vivid new photography of Lowe’s couture gowns—including lush details of her exquisite handwork and signature floral embellishments—accompany essays that explore the trials and achievements of Lowe’s life, contextualize her work within fashion history, profile Black designers whose work reflects her influence, and offer a behind-the-scenes look at the extraordinary efforts to preserve Lowe’s gowns.
Black American Designers in Fashion
By: Elizabeth Way
From Elizabeth Keckly's designs as a freewoman for Abraham Lincoln's wife to flamboyant clothing showcased by Patrick Kelly in Paris, Black designers have made major contributions to American fashion. However, many of their achievements have gone unrecognized. This book, inspired by the award-winning exhibition at the Museum at FIT, uncovers hidden histories of Black designers at a time when conversations about representation and racialized experiences in the fashion industry have reached all-time highs.
Black Designers in American Fashion uses previously unexplored sources to show how Black designers helped build America's global fashion reputation. The book traces the changing experiences of Black designers under conditions such as slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Black Designers in American Fashion shows that within these contexts Black designers maintained multifaceted practices which continue to influence American and global style today.
Black Girls Sew: Projects and Patterns to Stitch and Make Your Own
By: Hekima Hapa
Black Girls Sew is a nonprofit organization built on strong messaging: Teach and empower young girls to take ownership of and have pride in their clothing. Their first book offers the tools, knowledge, and vocabulary to help young people take back their fashion narrative. Black and brown girls and boys need a space where they do not have to encounter misrepresentations of their culture, and this book provides them with a safe space in which to explore their creativity.
Primarily the book teaches basic sewing skills and design principles so that readers can create one-of-a-kind looks. Black Girls Sew is a guide for all who are interested in fashion, design, and building their own powerful sense of self and style.
Black is Beautiful
By: Tanisha C. Ford
In the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Kwame Brathwaite used his photography to popularize the political slogan “Black Is Beautiful.” This monograph—the first ever dedicated to Brathwaite’s remarkable career—tells the story of a key, but under-recognized, figure of the second Harlem Renaissance.
Inspired by the writings of activist and Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, Brathwaite, along with his older brother, Elombe Brath, founded the African Jazz Arts Society and Studios (AJASS) and the Grandassa Models (1962). AJASS was a collective of artists, playwrights, designers, and dancers; Grandassa Models was a modeling troupe for Black women, founded to challenge white beauty standards. From stunning studio portraits of the Grandassa Models to behind-the-scenes images of Harlem’s artistic community, including Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, and Miles Davis, this book offers a long-overdue exploration of Brathwaite’s life and work.
Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style
By: Jason Jules
From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.
Here you will see some famous, infamous and not so famous figures in Black culture such as Amiri Baraka, Charles White, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sidney Poitier, and how they reinvented Ivy and Prep fashion―the dominant looks of the time. What Black Ivy explores is how these clothes are reframed and redefined by a stylish group of men from outside the mainstream, challenging the status quo, struggling for racial equality and civil rights.
Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style
By: Shantrelle P. Lewis
Dandy Lion presents and celebrates individual dandy personalities, designers and tailors, movements and events that define contemporary dandyism. Throughout the book, self-expression is communicated through personal style. Showcasing carefully curated selection of contemporary photographs surveys the movement across the globe in spectacular form, with all of the vibrant patterns, electrifying colors, and fanciful poses of this brilliant style subculture.
Fashion & Jazz
By: Alphonso McClendon
Born in the late 19th century, jazz gained mainstream popularity during a volatile period of racial segregation and gender inequality. It was in these adverse conditions that jazz performers discovered the power of dress as a visual tool used to defy mainstream societal constructs, shaping a new fashion and style aesthetic. Fashion and Jazz is the first study to identify the behaviours, signs and meanings that defined this newly evolving subculture.
Drawing on fashion studies and cultural theory, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the social and political entanglements of jazz and dress, with individual chapters exploring key themes such as race, class and gender. Including a wide variety of case studies, ranging from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Louis Armstrong and Chet Baker, it presents a critical and cultural analysis of jazz performers as modern icons of fashion and popular style.
Fashion In Color
By: Harlem Fashion Row
Fashion in Color (Volume One) highlights the careers of Black fashion designers, past and present, who are alphabetized from A to Z, including Aurora James, Kerby Jean-Raymond, Sergio Hudson, Fe Noel, Charles Harbison, Miko Underwood, and Nicole Benefield.
Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style
By: Elizabeth Way
Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style draws on the experiences and memories of those who were there, from a foreword by Slick Rick, to interviews with Disco Fever club owner Sal Abbatiello and designers Dapper Dan and April Walker, to chapters from Vibe stylist Emil Wilbekin and former editor of The Source Kim Osorio. Topics cover the range of hip hop’s influential style over the past half century, tracing the evolution from early hip hop style, born of aspiration, individuality, and practicality to contemporary fashion steeped in luxury brands
Free Stylin: How Hip Hop Changed the Fashion Industry
By: Elena Romero
This book traces the fascinating unfolding of hip-hop fashion from its roots to the present day. It explores how hip hop transitioned from the hood to the runway; how race, ethnicity, and culture played into commercialism; how celebrities impacted the fashion industry; and what ultimately led major department stores to jump on the bandwagon. Utilizing the author's journalistic lens and based upon interviews with fashion designers, entrepreneurs, fashion veterans, trend forecasters, and hip hop celebrities, each chapter is akin to an oral history that provides not just facts but also invaluable analysis and historical perspective.
Grace Jones: I’ll Never Write My Memoirs
By: Grace Jones
Iconic music and film legend Grace Jones gives an in-depth account of her stellar career, professional and personal life, and the signature look that catapulted her into the stardom stratosphere.
Grace Jones, a veritable “triple-threat” as an acclaimed actress, singer, and model, has dominated the entertainment industry since she emerged as a model in New York City in 1968.
Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History
By: Vikki Tobak
Whether it's diamond-encrusted grills, oversized “truck” style chains, bust-down Rolex and Patek Philippe watches or a Tiffany necklace, jewelry is a cornerstone of hip-hop culture. Glittering, blinged-out jewels are the shining statement of a collective identity: unapologetic, charismatic, and street savvy. Spanning the history of hip-hop jewelry, from the 1980s to today, Ice Cold: A Hip-Hop Jewelry History is a stunning compilation of storytelling and visuals. Hundreds of extraordinary images of every major hip-hop artist on record celebrate how “Ice” has become a proclamation of identity and self-expression.
Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion
By: Chicago History Museum
The Ebony Fashion Fair began in 1958, and over the next 50 years the traveling fashion show blossomed into an American institution that raised millions for charity and helped Johnson Publishing Company reach audiences. Show organizers overcame racial prejudice to bring the pinnacle of Europe's premier fashion to communities that were eager to see, in real time and space, a new vision of Black America that was the hallmark of Ebony and Jet magazines.
Eunice Johnson took over as producer and director in 1963, and under her direction, the traveling show took on new heights as she expanded her cachet and power within fashion circles. Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair recreates the experience of the Ebony Fashion Fair through the story of Mrs. Johnson and more than 60 garments from icons of the fashion industry such as Yves St. Laurent, Oscar de la Renta, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, Christian Lacroix, and Patrick Kelly among others.
Liberated Threads
By: Tanisha C. Ford
From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, Black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of resistance. Whether using stiletto heels as weapons to protect against police attacks or incorporating African-themed designs into everyday wear, these fashion-forward women celebrated their identities and pushed for equality.
In this thought-provoking book, Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why Black women in places as far-flung as New York City, Atlanta, London, and Johannesburg incorporated style and beauty culture into their activism. Focusing on the emergence of the "soul style" movement—represented in clothing, jewelry, hairstyles, and more—Liberated Threads shows that Black women's fashion choices became galvanizing symbols of gender and political liberation.
Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design
By: Charlene Prempeh
Previously marginalized, overlooked, or even erased from history, Black designers are finally given their due in this first book to celebrate a century of ground-breaking work by Black graphic artists, architects and fashion designers whose work has helped define key cultural moments and movements.
You’ve seen their work—but have you seen them? Black designers have been working in every major industry but, for the past decades, have not been given the spotlight anywhere near to the extent of their white counterparts. This vibrant and wide-ranging book, full of photographs and illustrations, aims to correct that oversight, bringing a century of Black designers and their work into focus.
Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love
By: Laura L. Camerlengo
Patrick Kelly (1954–1990) was known for his bold, bright, and joyful fashion creations that resonated in the streets and nightclubs and on the runways of New York, Paris, and beyond.
Generously illustrated with hundreds of images of runway photography, garments on mannequins, and never-before-published archival materials, this book is an unprecedented exploration of Kelly’s influential career, which was tragically cut short by complications from AIDS. More than 80 of Kelly’s most beloved works are featured alongside thoughtful essays focusing on his work in relationship to French fashion, Queer identity, Black identity, and his exuberant runway shows. Also featured is a detailed timeline decorated with archival photographs and drawings, making this volume the definitive resource on Kelly’s life and work.
Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced
By: Daniela Morera
This unprecedented volume documents the revolutionary work of Stephen Burrows—celebrating some of the most innovative and vibrant years in American Fashion.
In the late 1960s, New York was the epicenter of creative vitality and artistic expression, when, as Phyllis Magidson writes in this book’s introduction, “Clothing became a masquerade, Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain a costume party, weekends a perpetual Halloween.” This was the New York City that Stephen Burrows embraced as his own, and it would inspire him to create clothes that would help revolutionize American Fashion and further solidify its credibility abroad.
Soul Thieves
By: Tamara Brown & Baruti Kopano
Soul Thieves includes analyses of the misuse and in some cases outright abuse of Black popular culture through various genres. Hip hop is, and has been, one of the most dominant African American popular culture creations and is denoted in many of the offerings in this volume; a historically inclusive documentation of the misappropriation of Black popular culture, thus spanning other areas and genres besides the contemporary and current craze including music, dance, television, film, fashion and beauty, sports, and popular fiction. This book documents that historically African Americans have been at the forefront in the creation of American popular culture.
Supreme Models
By: Marcellas Reynolds
To date, there has never been an art book devoted exclusively to Black models. Supreme Models fills that void, paying tribute to black models past and present: from the first to be featured in catalogs and on magazine covers, like Iman, Beverly Johnson, and Donyale Luna, to the supermodels who reigned in the nineties--Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell. The book also observes the newest generation of models--Adwoa Aboah, Jourdan Dunn, and Joan Smalls--who are shaking up the fashion industry by speaking out about racial prejudice and becoming social media sensations.
Written by celebrity stylist and journalist Marcellas Reynolds, Supreme Models features more than 70 women from the last 75 years. The book is filled with gorgeous photographs of the women, and details their most memorable covers, campaigns, runway shows, and editorials. Black models have been influencing fashion and pop culture for decades, reshaping the standards and boundaries of beauty. Supreme Models is a celebration of their monumental impact.
Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair
By: Tameka Ellington
Textures synthesizes research in history, fashion, art, and visual culture to reassess the “hair story” of peoples of African descent. Long a fraught topic for African Americans and others in the diaspora, Black hair is here addressed by artists, barbers, and activists in both its historical perceptions and its ramifications for self and society today. Combs, products, and implements from the collection of hair pioneer Willie Morrow are paired here with masterworks from artists like Sonya Clark, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Alison Saar. Exploring topics such as the preferential treatment of straight hair, the social hierarchies of skin, and the power and politics of display, Textures is a landmark exploration of Black hair and its important, complicated place in the history of African American life and culture.
The Art of Ruth E. Carter
By: Ruth E Carter
Ruth E. Carter is a living legend of costume design. For three decades, she has shaped the story of the Black experience on screen—from the ’80s streetwear of Do the Right Thing to the royal regalia of Coming 2 America.
In this definitive book, Carter shares anecdotes from dressing the greats: Eddie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Chadwick Boseman, and many more. She describes the passion for history that inspired her period pieces—from Malcolm X to What's Love Got to Do With It—and her journey into Afrofuturism.
The Battle of Versallies
By: Robin Givhan
The Americans at the Battle of Versailles– Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, Halston, and Stephen Burrows – showed their work against the five French designers, Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior.
Against all odds, the American energy and the domination by the fearless models (ten of whom, in a groundbreaking move, were African American) sent the audience reeling. By the end of the evening, the Americans had officially taken their place on the world's stage, prompting a major shift in the way race, gender, sexuality, and economics would be treated in fashion for decades to come.
The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora
By: Carol Tulloch
It is broadly recognized that Black style had a clear and profound influence on the history of dress in the twentieth century, with Black culture and fashion having long been defined as 'cool'. Yet despite this high profile, in-depth explorations of the culture and history of style and dress in the African diaspora are a relatively recent area of enquiry. The Birth of Cool asserts that 'cool' is seen as an arbiter of presence, and relates how both iconic and 'ordinary' Black individuals and groups have marked out their lives through the styling of their bodies.
The New Black Vanguard
By: Antwuan Sargent
In The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion, curator and critic Antwaun Sargent addresses a radical transformation taking place in fashion and art today. The featuring of the Black figure and Black runway and cover models in the media and art has been one marker of increasingly inclusive fashion and art communities. More critically, however, the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body has been reinfused with new vitality and substance thanks to an increase in powerful images authored by an international community of Black photographers.
The Nameplate
By: Marcel Rosa-Salas & Isabel Attyah Flower
Nameplate jewelry comes in many shapes, styles, and sizes—from simple scripted pendants to bejeweled rings, belts, and bracelets with a first, last, and/or nickname. Like so many individuals who proudly wear nameplates, Marcel Rosa-Salas and Isabel Attyah Flower were first introduced to this storied jewelry during childhood.
Their love of the nameplate style gradually blossomed into a wide-reaching research project, Documenting the Nameplate, through which they’ve spent years collecting photographs and testimonials from nameplate-wearers across the country and world.
The Threads of Time: The Fabric of History
By: Rosemary E. Reed Miller
38 Profiles of Afro-American designers and textile artists from 1850 to the present. Featuring Ann Lowe who designed Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress, and Elizabeth Keckley, who designed for Mary Lincoln. others are profiled demonstrating their struggles & contribution to the world of fashion.
The Way We Wore: Black Style Then
By: Micheal McCollum
From brides glowing in white dresses to bachelors in bell-bottoms, these photographs encompass the tremendous variety of fashions begun by the African-American community and guided international fashion culture. Some outfits are dynamic and outrageous―elaborate hairstyles and chunky shoes, enormous earrings and funky glasses―yet their wearers' vitality and pride leap from the page.
The Way We Wore is both a marvelous journey from Harlem Renaissance to Hip-Hop, the celebration of the innovative and captivating history of African-American fashion over the past century.
Vintage Black Glamour
By: Nichelle Gainer
Using rarely accessed photographic archives and private collections, Nichelle has unearthed a revealing treasure trove of memorable and iconic images. The book presents historic photographs of famous actors, dancers, writers, and entertainers who worked in the 20th-century entertainment business, but who rarely appeared in the same publications as their white counterparts. With its stunning photographs and insightful biographies, this book is a hugely important addition to Black history archives.
Willi Smith: Street Couture
By: Alexandra Cunningham Cameron
Before Off-White, before Hood By Air, before Supreme, there was WilliWear. 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. 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.
Smith broke boundaries with his streetwear, or "street couture," and trailblazed the collaborations between artists, performers, and designers commonplace today in projects with SITE Architects, Nam June Paik, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Spike Lee, Dan Friedman, Bill T. Jones, and Arnie Zane. Essays by leading figures from the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, and cultural studies paired with never before-seen images and ephemera make Willi Smith essential reading for the history of streetwear culture and the evolution of fashion from the 1970s to today.
Reccomend Reads
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