Black Women as Muse’: Steel Plant’s Longest-Running Exhibit
Steel Plant's Black Women as Muse Exhibit. Credit: Lucy Baldino '25
The newest Steel Plant exhibition, “Black Women as Muse: The Stories of Designers’ Inspirations,” explores the relationship between Black fashion designers and their muses as part of the creative process. This display is the gallery’s longest-running exhibit; it will run through the summer.
This exhibit was created by Simone Jackson ‘23, Abigail Thomas ‘23, Daijia Canton ‘23 and Anna-Lise Torras ‘23 as part of their senior capping project. With the help of Professor Sonia Roy, this idea was pushed into motion.
Students spent five months working on this concept. “We first started brainstorming ideas all the way back in November 2022 where we started by listing a lot of Black designers. We all met in person at the start of the spring semester and started reaching out to these designers with the help of professors’ connections and the CFDA [Council of Fashion Designers of America],” said Anna-Lise Torres. “Then after we met with designers remotely and started receiving garments about two months ago, then set-up all happened really fast from March 20 up until the day of our opening on April 4.”
The exhibition highlights designers such as Patrick Kelly, Zelda Wynn Valdes, Kevan Hall and Willi Smith. These talented designers made history with their clothing, but their looks would not have been completed without the perfect model.
Many designers had their claim to fame between the 1950s and 1990s, thus making iconic women during this period muses. For Patrick Kelly, Patricia Cleveland was the perfect inspiration. Cleveland was one of the first African-American models to achieve recognition on the runway during the 1960s. This recognition gave Kelly the opportunity to use Cleveland for his own designs, making a strong statement about his fashion abilities.
This correlation of pre-existing fame between other designers was touched upon in the exhibit, such as Kevan Hall and Diana Ross. Ross, a pop, soul and disco musician was making her own fame as an empowered Black woman, which inspired Hall as he focused heavily on the Black community life with his designs.
Upon entering the gallery on the first floor of Steel Plant, visitors are greeted with strong pops of color, patterns and funky music. Mannequins are dressed in full outfits from head to toe with hair, clothing, shoes and accessories that represent the designers’ work as well as their muses. Many clothes incorporate patterns such as pinstripes, lace and even vinyl records. There are a lot of different materials used including silk, buttons and sequins to add texture to the clothes, something that the designers focused heavily on in their creations.
The exhibition also includes African-American Barbies and Bratz, which we have Bryon Lars to thank for. These dolls have a very strong and accurate representation of African-American complexions, hairstyles and clothes.