In the opening paragraphs of the British design writer and editor Charlene Prempeh’s new book, she recalls a conversation she had in the late summer of 2020. (A conversation via Zoom, of course.) Prempeh had recently launched A Vibe Called Tech—a creative agency dedicated to championing intersectional voices—and was discussing an upcoming pitch with podcaster Chrystal Genesis and her co-founder on the project, curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert. The name of the couturier Ann Lowe was floated, and Prempeh said something to the effect of: “Who’s that?”
Sure, Lowe may have been responsible for one of the most famous items of clothing created in the 20th century—namely, Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress—but Prempeh had every right to ask the question. Despite Lowe’s extraordinary talents and achievements, it wasn’t until recent years that her name began to recirculate more widely in fashion circles. As Prempeh puts it in the introduction: “For decades, Black designers have been sheathed in an invisible cloak.”
With her first book, Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design—released in the US last week by Prestel—Prempeh seeks to pull back that invisible cloak. “I think the Ann Lowe story often hits people hardest, just because it’s a narrative people think they know,” says Prempeh. “Jackie was one of the most photographed women in the world, and people think they know everything about the Kennedys.” Since the book was first published in the UK last October, for Prempeh—whose investigations led her to postwar African-American cartoonist Jackie Ormes, to the mid-century West African riffs on “Tropical Modernist” architecture pioneered by John Owusu Addo and Oluwole Olumuyiwa, and to the rise more recent Black British fashion stars like Bianca Saunders and Samuel Ross—it’s been fascinating to see where her attempts to fill in these gaps in the historical record have resonated. “Talking to journalists in the cultural space, many of them African-American journalists, and realizing they also had no idea of the lives of some of these designers made me realize that the book is as necessary in the US as it is here,” she says.
Still, Prempeh is quick to clarify that the book wasn’t intended as an exhaustive survey of the history of Black designers throughout the 20th century, despite what the title might suggest. (If she’d set out to embark on such a task, she notes, she likely would have ended up with an entire book on each creative featured.) Instead, what makes the book such a page-turner is how Prempeh guides you through her constellation of references according to specific themes or throughlines: a chapter titled “Three Black Kings” charts the subversive takes on mainstream American fashion explored by Willi Smith, Patrick Kelly, and Dapper Dan across multiple decades; while a chapter on the overlooked female architect Norma Sklarek delves deeper into the double-edged sword of celebrating “the first” from a minority group to achieve something, and whether it distracts from the systemic issues that stymied progress in the first place. As Prempeh says, “By seeing all of these designers together, it really highlights the problems.”
Here, Prempeh talks to Vogue about her meandering research process (many spreadsheets were involved), the moments of humor she uncovered, and why she sees the book as an open-ended project.
Vogue: Ann Lowe appears right at the beginning of the book, and serves as a kind of entry point for the reader. Was it your discovery of her that sparked the idea of putting the book together, or had the idea for the book been gestating for a long time?
Prempeh: I wasn’t thinking about writing this specific book for a long time, but I was very aware of there being a gap and a lack of knowledge in terms of what has happened in Black design over the past century. I was very aware of my ignorance, but I hadn’t yet worked out that I wanted to be the person to help correct that. I think my feeling was, I can probably find this elsewhere. But it was crazy finding out about Ann Lowe, and it really shifted something within me. Because even if I knew I was ignorant about these stories, I didn’t necessarily realize they were so closely connected to stories that are so deeply ingrained in the public narrative, or to these key moments in Western history. There was something about Ann’s story, and its connection to possibly the most photographed woman of all time, that made me realize the extremity of the losses we’ve suffered, I suppose, in terms of understanding Black designers and the work that they’ve done.
You mention in the book that, given the link between liberalism and design, it makes for a rich space to have these kinds of conversations. Do you think that idea of progressiveness is part of what drew you to the worlds of art and design in the first place?
I think I’ve always been interested in hidden stories. I’ve always been very conscious of perspective, and especially as a Black woman looking at history—not even specifically in relation to design—I’ve been very aware of the fact that what we’ve been told is fairly skewed. And I feel like, at least intermittently, people of color have broken through because there has been the sense that the creativity is what matters. And that’s not to say that there weren’t and there aren’t and there don’t continue to be huge issues in this space. Even if you think recently about the appointments at major fashion houses and the general rollback of diversity initiatives in the past year or so, it’s still a huge problem. But I—and maybe it’s naive—really believe that the majority of people in the design and art space are interested in great design and great art primarily, and they understand that to achieve that, diversity is required. I think, especially when you look at kind of the new generations coming up, that’s much better understood.
The depth of research involved in this book is pretty astonishing. How did you break down that process so it felt manageable?
Luckily, I am the queen of spreadsheets. [Laughs.] But also, I was quite lucky, because a lot of it was during COVID, and so I couldn’t just dive straight into the research as I usually would, given a lot of what I needed was in archives in America. So instead, I had to spend my time really thinking about which stories I wanted to pursue. I think some people might pick up the book and assume it’s going to be a series of profiles, but it’s actually more thematic. There’s a section on the first ladies of America, and the role of Black design within that space. When I was thinking about Dapper Dan, it made me think about the other Black men designing fashion in New York and their different relationships with the Black community. One story would open the door to a wider debate or theory that I had, and then I’d explore that—so in that sense, it was able to remain fairly contained.
Was there a point where you had to force yourself to stop digging?
I mean, when my editor said, “Okay, it’s time”! But also, in some ways, it came to a natural end, because the goal of the book was never for it to be exhaustive. I’m very conscious that there are so many designers who’ve done brilliant work—whether contemporary designers or designers historically—that are not in this book. There was no way I’d ever be able to cover everyone, hence the idea of approaching it more thematically. This is just one perspective, and someone else could have done some other research and found another perspective, and I really welcome that. The hope is that it can serve as a catalyst for other discussions and other research and other perspectives.
I was super interested in the work of Norma Sklarek in particular, who I’d never heard of before. Were there any recurring themes in the unique challenges Black women designers faced in their careers that you identified while writing? Did you notice any disparity between the information or records of their work that were available versus the men?
If there was one consistent theme that I found interesting, and remains interesting to me now, it is how Black women are always striving for financial independence—and the lack of support that surrounds them to help them achieve that. With Ann Lowe, for example, a big part of that story is that she became bankrupt. She partly became bankrupt because she just had bad financial management, but also she had nobody helping and supporting her on the financial side of things because she was a creative! It wasn’t like she was going to be automatically good with money. But at each point she was very entrepreneurial. She was like, I’m going to move to New York, I’m going to set up this shop, I’m going to hire these other seamstresses, I’m going to navigate this world of high society, and find a financial base. It didn’t work out for her, but the effort was truly there. You can also look at someone like Zelda Wynn Valdes, who was much more successful in that endeavor and really tried to help other women in her community with sewing classes and helping them to find their feet financially. Then today, you have someone like Bianca Saunders who has her own studio and has been very savvy in how she’s navigated the business side of things to make sure she can survive and thrive as an independent label, which we all know is not an easy thing to do. When I was looking at all these designers, that was something that really resonated. I think another thing that struck me is how they were all underestimated—which, again, is something that, unfortunately, a lot of Black women still suffer in the workplace, and I think it can be even worse in creative spaces. But underestimate Black women at your peril, because all of these women were brilliant.
I was reading another interview where you mentioned finding it funny to imagine the meeting between Willi Smith and James Baldwin in the south of France. Was it important to you to leaven the book with those moments of humor too? The chapters on the cartoonists like Jackie Ormes and Liz Montague were very amusing.
That was really important. I think the first drafts early on were probably quite dry. [Laughs.] I was like, I’m going to be very, very serious about this—and obviously, this is important, so it makes sense to be very serious about it. But I’m not particularly serious personally, and I definitely enjoy the absurdity of some of these stories, and some of these scenarios. Because there is a real absurdity to racism—like, it doesn’t make any sense. And some of the stories, the way they play out is funny. I think a big part of getting people to engage with something is by including a sense of humor, so that was very much a conscious decision.
You mentioned that you didn’t intend this to be a comprehensive survey, but instead a kind of springboard for people to start their own investigations into some of these figures. Was that always your intention, and have you seen that kind of response from the UK readers so far?
Yeah, absolutely—I’d love for people to go off in their own directions with some of the designers that are spotlighted, and some of the ideas that are unpacked. What’s been really nice with the feedback at some of the events I’ve done, is that there’s very much a sense of people being like: Jesus Christ. And I think that’s because of the breadth of the book. Any one of these designers could fill a whole book very easily. But by seeing all of these designers together, it really highlights the problems. You realize that actually, this is its own entire space that deserves and requires analysis. So in that sense, I think it’s served its purpose so far, and I hope it will be the same in the US.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
