11 black designers who have shaped fashion history

Fashion history is too often told through a narrow lens. The likes of Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior and Pierre Balmain are celebrated for their ingenuity – but there’s more to fashion history than Parisian designers.

Woven through every era of style innovation are the ideas, craft and courage of black designers who pushed the industry forward.

From London’s streetwear pioneers to the couture houses of Paris and New York, their work has shifted not only how clothes look but what they stand for.

As Black History Month invites us to revisit overlooked icons, here are 11 black designers who have helped shape fashion history.

Willi Smith

Considered by the fashion world to be the inventor of streetwear, Willi Smith combined affordable clothing with luxury, shifting the trajectory of American fashion during the 20th century.

Smith founded his iconic brand WilliWear Ltd. in 1976 and amassed over $25 million in sales by 1986, demonstrating the popularity of his designs, which embodied a joyful and laid-back attitude to fashion.

From the outset, he set out to produce clothes that were affordable, gender-blurred and rooted in what people were already wearing on the streets.

His mission was democratic. As he put it, “I don’t design clothes for the Queen, but for the people who wave at her as she goes by.”

Though Smith died in 1987 at just 39, his legacy feels large still. He may not always be the first name people reach for when they think of streetwear or sportswear, but his impulse to bring fashion down to earth and make style part of daily life proved foundational.

Stephen Burrows

In the early Seventies, Stephen Burrows became the bright young star of American fashion. Working out of a small workshop in New York before opening his own space at Henri Bendel, he turned soft jersey into electric colour-blocked dresses with his now-famous “lettuce hem” that rippled as their wearers moved.

His clothes felt like Seventies nightlife itself: easy, sensual and joyful, made for a generation discovering freedom on the dance floor.

Burrows’ moment of coronation came in 1973, when he was the youngest of five Americans invited to show at the Battle of Versailles, the transatlantic showdown that put US sportswear on the map.

While French couture stuck to tradition, Burrows’ fluid silhouettes and bold hues looked like the future. The applause that night made him one of the first black designers to win such international acclaim.

Patrick Kelly

A celebrated African-American fashion designer who came to fame in France in the mid-Eighties, Mississippi-born Patrick Kelly was the first American to be accepted into the prestigious Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.

Kelly’s designs are recognised for being extremely exuberant, humorous, and referential to pop culture and black traditions. During the protests for Black Lives Matter, Kelly’s name appeared in the news as The Kelly Initiative, a coalition of black professionals that advocates for equal employment opportunities within the industry for black talents.

With a childhood spent amid quilts, buttons and the sewing lessons of his grandmother, Kelly translated that rooted intimacy into high-energy designs once he made Paris his home.

His pieces – jersey dresses in vivid hues, adorned with mismatched buttons, bows – are recognised for being extremely exuberant, humorous, and referential to folklore and black traditions.

By 1988, Kelly runway shows offered a sweep from impeccable tailoring to flamboyant theatricality – tailored flannel one minute, exaggerated gardenia-trimmed scoop necks the next. But it was the sense that fashion could be both bold, funny and couture made his influence linger long after his untimely passing in 1990.

Dapper Dan

Daniel “Dapper Dan” Day, turned Eighties shopfront tailoring into something striking.

In 1982, he opened Dapper Dan’s Boutique on 125th Street in Manhattan – a place where luxury labels and hip-hop attitude collided.

Using screen-printed versions of Gucci, Fendi, Louis Vuitton and other high-end logos on leather bombers, tracksuits and custom gowns, he remixed exclusivity into the vernacular of street style, giving power back to a community that’d long been shut out of runway rooms.

His shop became a destination for the stars of hip-hop: Salt-N-Pepa, LL Cool J, Mike Tyson, Bobby Brown – people who weren’t just wearing fashion but embodying it.

Dapper Dan’s bold use of logos and his playful confrontation with copyright sparked legal fights, counterfeiting raids and ultimately the closure of his original shop in 1992.

Decades later, the tables turned. In a striking move, Gucci acknowledged his influence in 2017, opening a partnership and even a new atelier in Harlem in 2018.

Today, Dapper Dan stands not as an outlaw but as a founding father of luxury streetwear: someone whose audacity reshaped how fashion, status and identity intertwine.

Ozwald Boateng

In the mid-Nineties, Ozwald Boateng emerged from north London with something that felt both timeless and electric. Born in Muswell Hill to Ghanaian parents, he grew up watching his father in immaculate suits; his mother’s sewing machine taught him discipline, colour and shape.

By his early 20s he’d sold his first collection in Covent Garden, and in 1994 became the first tailor to show in Paris Fashion Week – presenting bespoke menswear in sharp, slim cuts and his signature unexpected palette.

Boateng suits epitomised a new generation’s perspective on smart dressing.

Then came Savile Row. In 1995, Boateng became the youngest tailor ever to open a store on the fabled street, transforming its solemn traditions with his youthful verve and bold colour.

He fused the exacting craft of British tailoring with references that nodded to his heritage. Over the years, he would dress Hollywood stars, design uniforms, collaborate at Givenchy and stage retrospectives in museums.

In doing so, he restored Savile Row not as a museum, but a meeting place between tradition and identity – and left a legacy of style that continues to resonate.

Tracy Reese

Having trained at the prestigious Parsons Fashion School in New York, Tracy Reese launched her namesake collection in 1998 and quickly became known for joy-filled prints, vivid colours and retro-influenced femininity.

Her clothes weren’t just for show; they carried something personal, inviting women to move, mix and celebrate their shape and story.

Alongside Reese’s main line, she launched diffusion lines like Plenty and Frock! to bring her design touch to wider markets. Her designs found their way into the wardrobes of prominent figures, including former First Lady Michelle Obama, which helped shift expectations for American ready-to-wear.

In the 2010s, Reese began to rethink how fashion could be made more sympathetic to the planet.

Closing her larger operations, she moved back to Detroit and launched Hope for Flowers, a slower, more sustainable venture rooted in local production, ethical materials and community.

Virgil Abloh

Chicago-born designer, entrepreneur, stylist and DJ Virgil Abloh was raised in suburban Illinois by Ghanaian parents and trained as an architect before coming to fashion through music, art and a friendship with rapper Kanye West.

His signature quotation marks, zip ties and industrial straps became instant shorthand for a generation who wanted irony and aspiration from their fashion. This led to Abloh founding Off-White in 2013.

In 2018, Abloh made history as the first black artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton, debuting with a rainbow-coloured runway that put black models and streetwear codes centre stage inside one of the world’s oldest luxury houses.

His shows blurred music, art and activism, casting designers as cultural conductors rather than just dressmakers.

Abloh’s sudden death in 2021 at 41 froze a career still in full flight, but his impact is already indelible, and he is remembered by many as one of the greatest creative minds in recent memory.

Pharrell Williams

You may be familiar with his music, but Pharrell Williams has overturned Louis Vuitton when he was appointed creative director of menswear in 2023 – stepping into the role once held by his friend Virgil Abloh.

Fashion was always on Williams’ radar. In the early 2000s, at the height of his music duo Neptunes fame, he co-founded Billionaire Boys Club and Ice Cream with Kenzo’s artistic director Nigo, bringing Japanese streetwear ideas and skate graphics into the American mainstream.

Oversized trucker hats, jewel-coloured hoodies and diamond-printed sneakers became part of hip-hop’s new visual language – luxury, pop culture and play rolled into one.

His debut show for Louis Vuitton turned Paris’s Pont Neuf into a golden stage, mixing gospel choirs, superstar guests and a collection that riffed on both Vuitton’s heritage and Williams’ long-standing taste for bold colour, texture and optimism.

His career makes it clear that mainstream celebrity and high-craft couture no longer live in separate worlds: they cross-pollinate, remix and, in his hands, radiate joy.

Olivier Rousteing

When Olivier Rousteing took over Balmain in 2011 at just 25, it raised eyebrows across Paris. He was the youngest creative director in Paris since Yves Saint Laurent.

The Bordeaux-born designer, adopted as a baby by a French couple, had cut his teeth at Roberto Cavalli and then inside Balmain’s studio. Suddenly he was the youngest creative director at a major French house, and one of the very few black designers to lead a historic couture brand.

His vision fused Balmain’s military-meets-glamour DNA with a contemporary aesthetic – sharp shoulders, beaded mini-dresses, sequinned tailoring – Rousteing mastered the art of catering to the digital generation: exemplified in Kim Kardashian’s viral 2016 Met Gala gown.

Rousteing built what he called the “Balmain Army”: models, musicians and friends including Rihanna, Beyoncé and the Kardashians, whose presence in his campaigns and front rows gave the label a pop-cultural charge no Paris house had seen before.

Long before “influencer marketing” became a cliché, he was turning Instagram into a runway and making Balmain’s ornate pieces part of mainstream celebrity wardrobes.

A decade on, Rousteing’s story reads like a turning point. He helped shift Paris fashion away from aloof tradition and toward inclusivity, diversity and digital connection – showing how an old house could thrive in a new era.

Grace Wales Bonner

Mostly recognised day-to-day for her seminal collaboration with Adidas that kickstarted the Samba trend of the 2020s, Grace Wales Bonner is known for taking a soulful approach to tracksuit tailoring, with bold prints, textures and colours not usually seen in sportwear.

Growing up in South London with Jamaican and English heritage, she absorbed layers of culture through music, literature and Windrush stories, which she has owed to inspiring the threads of her work.

Wales Bonner gained early recognition, winning the Emerging Menswear Designer at the British Fashion Awards in 2015 and the LVMH Young Designer Prize in 2016.

But her exhibitions, collaborations and research-led collections that leave the biggest mark.

‘A Time for New Dreams’ at the Serpentine Gallery in 2019 wove together sound, ritual and spiritual longing.

Her work with Adidas, Dior and her curatorial projects haven’t just broadened what fashion does but redefined who fashion is for, what heritage can look like and how identity might be stitched into beauty.

Priya Ahluwalia

In 2018 Priya Ahluwalia arrived on London’s fashion scene, rooted in Tooting but drawing threads from far beyond. With a Nigerian-Indian heritage, she built her namesake label Ahluwalia fresh from her MA in menswear, fusing heritage, storytelling and sustainability into every seam.

Deadstock fabrics, vintage textiles, techniques from India and the rhythms of Lagos – her design ethos blends the personal with the global.

“Blackness has never been authentically reflected in fashion in the West,” Ahluwalia told GQ in 2021. “European brands presented costume and it was beautiful, but none of those designers were black or brown.”

Ahluwalia’s label soon became a vessel for identity, migration and memory. Her spring/summer 2021 collection ‘Liberation’ used graphic prints inspired by archives and protest, and boldly nodded to Black Lives Matter, Lagos streets and Bollywood/Nollywood imagery.

She has also made sustainability central to her practice – upcycling, careful sourcing, reworking rather than replacing and turning what was excess into something new.

While she’s still early in her journey, Ahluwalia has already shifted what fashion can mean – not just an aesthetic but a narrative that carries responsibility for what it tells.