Diving Into Black Fashion’s Past, Present & Future With Historian Shelby Ivey Christie
"Being the person to say the thing that I know we’re all thinking can be scary,” says Shelby Ivey Christie. She’s referring to the fashion industry’s tendency to overlook or diminish Black contributions to the space, an oversight that’s left Black fashion historians and archivists like herself to connect the dots. Today’s fashion enthusiasts are fascinated with archival fashion, populating social media platforms with deep-dives on vintage runway looks and late designers. But these social media accounts, intended to document fashion history, often neglect a crucial piece of the puzzle: contributions from Black communities. Intent on bringing Black fashion into focus, Christie is looking to change that by spotlighting the importance of Black style, past and present.
Christie is an expert on Black fashion, history, and culture. A proud alumna of North Carolina A&T (one of the US’ Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Christie graduated with a degree in Race, Class, and Culture after switching her major from fashion merchandising. As she earned her degree, she completed fashion internships at InStyle and W Magazine, going on to hold marketing and merchandising roles at the likes of Vogue and L’Oréal. Throughout her professional experience in the space, she couldn’t help but notice the lack of Black representation in the industry.
“There was always this duality: I [knew] about mainstream fashion, but there [was] the Black world of fashion that my white counterparts, and the industry as a whole, did not have knowledge about, did not highlight, didn't look into,” Christie reflects. “I felt passionately about doing that work myself and wanting to bring Black fashion stories to light.”
Impassioned by the need to platform Black fashion contributions, Christie launched a public archive on Twitter, where she breaks down significant Black fashion history moments: everything from deep dives on Black designers to the significance behind the costumes of movies such as Black Panther and Black Is King.
Christie explains that fashion’s future and past are at stake when it comes to properly documenting history. “It affects the future of our creatives and their outputs. If someone can see someone who looks like themselves occupy a space, a role, or innovate something in an area that they’re interested in, it might be inspiring to them.” Thanks to this digital space, Black fashion enthusiasts (including this author) can envision themselves belonging to and shaping the fashion world.
Documenting fashion history properly is no easy feat, and it can be even more difficult when the history in question belongs to communities whose contributions are not valued in the canon. Christie points to how rare it is for Black contributions to be legitimized or embraced, and how, in turn, that makes it all the more difficult to find accurate archival information on these contributions. Prior to the waves of DEI initiatives that came out of 2020 (and were soon forgotten), mainstream fashion publications rarely mentioned the impact of Black culture on fashion. Unlike established, decades-old European luxury houses, Black-owned labels often lack the resources to document every milestone from their inception.
In addition to the lack of documentation on Black fashion history, there are also barriers to access for those seeking this information out; archives and libraries housed at academic institutions are often only open to enrolled students. As a university student studying fashion and costumes, Christie could visit university libraries where she would sift through collections, magazine archives, and news clippings for information. But even with this access, finding historical data on Black designers and fashion was labor-intensive.
“You're not really going to find a Vogue, a WWD, and all of these other publications past a certain date that were consistently covering Black subject matter,” Christie says. She points out that these topics are often found in “hyper-local” and “hyper-regional” sources, as Black designers, fashion moments, and trends did not often gain recognition outside of the direct communities they existed within.
Despite the lack of record-keeping on Black designers, Christie leaves no stone unturned. I ask how she makes sense of the incomplete information she comes across, and she cites the necessity of piecing things together. She rattles off her intricate process as if it’s second nature: She describes looking to local and HBCU publications for fashion event coverage and any records from spaces that Black designers may have been affiliated with.
Christie walks me through the questions any diligent archivist should ask: “Are you going to scale down to see if it is hyper-local? Or scale up to see if it was covered regionally or nationally, depending on what it is that you're looking for? Were there photos taken? Maybe get the photo. If you can't find the text, take the photo and do a reverse image search and see if anything else comes up.”
In addition to curating a digital archive that makes fashion history free and accessible to the public, Christie keeps a physical archive of garments from Black-owned labels such as Phlemuns, Laquan Smith, Hanifa, Amina Muaddi, and Telfar. Christie also takes care to preserve the packaging that accompanies these items. Her voice bubbles with excitement while explaining why she keeps the labels and tags. “How cool would it be if someone had a label from Stephen Burrow's line, or if we saw more Walker Wear-like tagging and packaging?”
Her collection strategy stems from her reverence for Black fashion, as well as the role smaller details such as tags and labels play in diligent archiving. Christie argues that a brand’s packaging isn't just an extension of a brand or designer’s vision — these items also provide information such as sizing, price points, measurements, and materials, all of which are essential to the processes of conservation and authentication.
This attention to detail is crucial when it comes to crediting Black fashion innovators, as Christie explains through the example of Black fashion designer Anifa Mvuemba, founder of the brand Hanifa. During the early stages of the pandemic, Mvuemba took an inventive approach to social distancing, showcasing her “Pink Label Congo” collection through an entirely virtual runway show. The 3D show debuted on Instagram in May 2020 and immediately took social media by storm. Shortly after, news broke that Prada was to collaborate with AI company Bigthinx to unveil a 3D digital show of its own. While the show never came to fruition, Forbes wrote an article in anticipation of the event and inaccurately credited the Italian fashion house — not Mvuemba — as the first to attempt a 3D digital show.
Fortunately, Twitter’s knack for fact-checking pushed Forbes to add a disclaimer acknowledging Hanifa’s pre-existing show before ultimately removing the article from its website. But Christie wonders what would have happened pre-social media. “Would [Forbes] even care to adjust it from Prada to a Black female designer if that’s not the priority of their main audience? So that's what's at stake, it's our historical accuracy.”
Beyond crediting individuals, historical accuracy can illustrate the role an entire community can play in shaping a specific style or trend. I ask Christie to provide an example of a popular trend that many would not know originated in the Black community and, without hesitation, she cites monochrome dressing, a style she has previously discussed on Twitter. She explains that monochromatic dressing stems from the Black, specifically African American, community.
For generations, Black Americans would make do with what was available, including secondhand, largely mismatched fabric and clothing. (Christie notes that our mismatched dressing also paved the way for the origins of streetwear, which often plays with pattern and color-mixing.) This lack of resources hindered dressing in matching sets, so when one could afford a solid-colored outfit, it was reserved for special occasions. The ability to dress monochromatically became synonymous with joy and celebration, and a staple in Black stylistic expression.
“When it's a family reunion, everybody's going to wear the same shirt. When it's Easter and your grandma wants to look her best, the color of her bag is the exact color of her shoes, which is the exact color of her skirt suit, and the exact color of her hat,” Christie says. “That meant that you were fancy, if you could match. That’s very cultural to us.”
The lengths Christie goes to thread stories together is fueled by her love for the work and her firm belief that Black style and creation are pivotal to our understanding of the world. By highlighting the intention and skill that Black fashion creatives put into their work, she aims to prove what the Black community has always known: that Black fashion not only plays an essential role in the industry, but also shapes history. There would be no fashion history without Black fashion history. To neglect this fact is to risk the erasure and revision of history itself.
Fashion, like other forms of art, “is a reflection of what the people of the time were going through.” It affects socialization, the global economy, world events, cultural definers, and even racial profiling (think: black hoodie and a pack of Skittles.) The “social, cultural commentary on class,” as Christie describes it — a subject which Black fashion creations naturally engage with — is what draws larger audiences into the conversation and bridges their gaps in understanding.
Simply recording Black fashion history isn’t enough. Christie argues that fashion archivists must also acknowledge the diversity that exists within the Black diaspora. In an effort to obtain any kind of representation, Black innovators often settle for homogenization, accepting the blanket label “Black,” devoid of ethnic or national specificities. Bridging the connected cultures of global Blackness is necessary, but it can also dissolve the nuances that deepen our respective cultures. One Black spokesperson for the global Black experience will no longer suffice.
“[The fashion industry] tolerated Black inclusion. Will it go a step further now to start unpacking the nuance of Jamaican or Caribbean versus African American versus Black and all of these different nuances and lived experiences? We all have separate cultures and we all have culture that intersects,” says Christie. Acknowledging the nuances within Blackness ensures that certain communities’ contributions won’t be erased throughout history.
Taking nuance into account is also needed when determining who has the authority to tell Black fashion stories. Christie instantly cites Pharrell’s recent appointment at Louis Vuitton, a decision that divided the public, as an example of a discussion that failed to take the diversity of the Black experience into account. She brings the luxury brand’s motives into focus: If LV wants to capitalize on hip-hop style and streetwear, it needs to select a creative director with lived experience in hip-hop and streetwear. Pharrell might not be a traditional designer, but he is an African American man from Virginia with over 30 years of experience in fashion and music. Many individuals in the fashion space felt there were more fitting figures for the position, such as Black British designer Grace Wales Bonner, but Christie offers another point of view: While talented and deserving, Black British designers have a different connection to hip-hop, a style and genre created by Black Americans.
Properly documenting Black fashion history means going beyond what has previously been done. It means covering Blackness in all of its complexities and subcultures. It means recognizing the far-reaching influence of the Black community, an influence that’s evident across New York, London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Week each season. Black fashion is fashion history, is Black history, and the stories Black fashion innovators tell are shaping the future. Christie is making sure we listen.
