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On the surface, one could surmise that things have shifted for the better in the fashion industry for Black creatives in the last few seasons. We’ve seen a massive influx of private investment into small businesses, 28 major retailers signed onto the Fifteen Percent Pledge to stock-list Black-owned brands, and history was made when Maximilian Davis and Pharrell Williams were appointed as the first Black creative directors for their respective fashion houses, Ferragamo and Louis Vuitton. But still, given the current political climate, it’s clear for many that the work has only just begun—at least that was our consensus after chatting with designers at the Black in Fashion Council’s Fall 2025 Discovery Showroom.
Despite ongoing discussions around the importance of diversity in fashion, the industry itself is still largely exclusionary. Only 7% to 10% of small fashion businesses are Black owned; of that slim margin, only 1% is currently sold in major retailers. If that weren’t emblematic enough of a systemic imbalance, one only needs to look at who is appointed to the lofty positions in major luxury fashion houses to notice the lack of actual change. As reported by Vogue Business, only eight women and four people of color currently hold creative director roles at the major luxury fashion houses, none of which is held by a Black woman. That staggering reality was something that came up at this season’s showroom as designer Nia Thomas admitted, “There’s not a lot of examples for me to look up to as an African American woman working in the luxury fashion industry in the United States, so I’ve come to accept that maybe I have to break down some of those barriers myself.”
It wasn’t just one designer who voiced this concern, as even a late-night call with Rene Moshi Macdonald of Lisou led her to question why a major fashion house has yet to name a Black woman to a creative director post. “What the hell is that all about?” she asked. For all of the perceived “progression” that occurred the past few years, it’s become clear to many Black creatives that the only way forward isn’t to continue asking for a seat at the table but to build their own spaces from the jump. One could argue that perspective has been the guiding principle behind why Sandrine Charles and Lindsay Peoples started the Black in Fashion Council. While other organizations have floundered to create such a space in the existing ecosystem, the Council has flourished by creating its own. Over the past five years, the organization has given a platform to more than 75 designers from across the globe, including Diotima, Theophilio, and House of Aama. While its longevity is worth celebrating—which was done so with a dinner party—it’s not lost on the founders that there’s still more work to do in the industry.
“We are thrilled to reach the milestone of 10 seasons hosting the Black in Fashion Council Discovery Showroom, but our goal moving forward is to continue to evolve the showroom efforts, the designer footprint, and the overall experience,” Charles told Vogue at the fall 2025 presentation. While systemic change in the broader fashion industry will no doubt take time to achieve, the showcase has been a conduit for building community. Whether hailing from the shores of Haiti or a few stops into the borough of Brooklyn, creatives have come together consecutively to create meaningful relationships at the Council. It’s that connection that compelled Vogue to shuffle through the snow down to Manhattan’s Financial District on a particularly frigid afternoon during New York Fashion Week to interview each of them. Ahead, the 10 designers discuss their labels, what the showcase means to them, and their vision for the future of fashion.
“I’ve always been a texture freak,” Nia Thomas unabashedly admitted as she talked us through the inspiration behind her fall 2025 collection. Like most New York–born designers, Thomas has a terrific sense of humor that allows her to poke fun at herself. But make no mistake: Her work is no laughing matter. Thomas has built her namesake brand over the past seven years by wielding artisan techniques to transform some of the most unyielding textiles into creations that beg to be touched. Although she’s become known for her crochet knitwear, she stretched her skill set into new terrain this season by debuting her first-ever leather pieces. Arguably some of her most substantial work yet, small strips of lilac leather were strung together to create a see-through halter top; saffron leather fringe was used to create a slip dress resemblant of a fishing net; and even the traditional woven handbag was given a scrumptious update in the tiny chocolate brown tote. But her ingenuity didn’t end with her leatherwork, as even the most perfunctory everyday items couldn’t seem to escape her grip—e.g., silk ribbons sourced from an office supply closing sale in Mexico City were inevitably woven into a sleek floor-length gown. No matter the source material, every tiny detail seemed to exemplify Thomas’s aspiration: to create her own tangible world that you could touch.
Serendipitously, a year before the Detroit-born designer Aaron Potts was asked to partake in Black in Fashion Council’s debut showroom, he struck out on his own to start his label. “I can’t even fathom that it’s been five years since I first showed with them. What it did for my brand was transformational,” he said. “It set me on a new course and connected me to this community of creative people.” It’s wild to think how much the world has changed since then, but for Potts, his perspective on the importance of this work has not. “With the current political and cultural state, it is even more imperative for communities [like ours] to build on our own so that we are not beholden to the system,” he explained. With over 20 years as a career designer, Potts is no stranger to how the industry works, but he’s no longer interested in letting it tamper his joy: “My fall collection was a real turning point for me. With the election and all the craziness we’ve been subjected to, I knew that if I dove into my work, it would help me get out of that dark place.” That spirit is imbued into the fall collection in the form of colorful chunky knits, voluminous silhouettes, and French terry cotton covered in fun motifs. It symbolizes the shift from the surface level to something more important to him: people. “I don’t care about the clothes,” he said. “The collection is just a conduit; it’s a tool for connecting people and helping them find themselves.”
“Before I understood the concept of fashion as a job, I felt like it was a way for you to bridge the gap between people’s differences. Styling, for me, has always been the simplest way to create community,” Larissa Muehleder said as we stood next to the collection she had managed to design in just 30 days. Even though Muehleder grew up in New York City, nothing made her feel “less alone” quite like creating clothing, so it’s no surprise that she was compelled to start her own bespoke label back in 2014. Although it’s been over a decade since the inception of Muehleder, there’s still a sort of childlike sparkle in her eyes that reflects her innate desire to create connection through design. The fall collection valorizes this concept by exploring the “multi-facetedness of being a woman” through pieces that can be worn various ways—such as a sharply structured cobalt blue blazer adorned with bows that can be worn as outerwear or a short dress, and an asymmetrical silk charmeuse blouse in a soft eggshell that can be styled as a bubble-hem dress or bundled around the hips as a shirt. Like the designer herself, every piece in the collection has an innate duality that reminds us that the things we think divide us can actually bring us together—if we’re willing to connect the dots.
What stories get to be a part of the tapestry of America’s history? It’s not a new question by any means, but it’s something that New York–based designer Daveed Baptiste clearly thinks about a lot. Before the Haiti-born creative spent time trying to recount the tales of those who came before him through his ready-to-wear collections, Baptise’s journey began when he fell in love with fashion photography. In many ways, his passion for the glossy editorials showcased in Vogue is what sparked his desire to start his brand in 2023. “Storytelling is the thread between my photography and my design work. I’m telling stories about the Caribbean diaspora; I’m telling stories about Haitian immigrants. It’s the same story but in a different medium,” he said. It’s rare for an artist to be able to successfully work with multiple mediums—much less reflect all of the tough realities of humanity through textile manipulation—but Baptiste does so masterfully in a way that’s reminiscent of Glenn Martens and John Galliano. In particular, the most noteworthy piece from his debut collection is a light-wash distressed denim coat with a raised appliqué made from tubing that has been warped to wrap around the shoulders, bodice, and waist in a way that’s meant to mimic the migration routes used to get to the promised land. Although not a light topic to explore, a general jovial and celebratory spirit is attached to the collection through how denim dramatically drapes down the form or zippers expose an accordion of pleats. Baptiste understands that the narrative around immigration has only gotten more negative in recent months, but he gets to decide how to tell his own story with everything he creates.
With so many hurdles for aspiring designers, it’s understandable that Fumi Egbon first found the idea of entering the industry intimidating. “I knew I wanted to get into fashion, but not seeing many people who look like me made me think it might not be as easy,” she said. Any initial trepidation Egbon may have had didn’t stand in her way for too long, though, as she took a leap of faith in founding her size-inclusive label amid the pandemic with no traditional fashion background to rely on. But that tenacious spirit is what has set apart her clothing from the crowd: Hand-knitted coats come with collars covered in tactile fringe; body-con knit dresses are spun from bright shades of sapphire; and the classic cropped cardigan comes alive with oversized cocoon sleeves. Her ability to take risks has paid off, as she’s shown her collection not once, but twice, at the Black in Fashion Council showroom. “I’m from Nigeria but live in Canada, so it’s harder to come by the same opportunities as American designers, but it’s great that the showroom is open to global brands. It’s allowed me to go to places that seemed unreachable before,” she said.
If designer Heart Roberts looks familiar, it may be because his initial foray into fashion was as a model. Notably, his first runway show was for No Sesso’s fall 2022 collection. Although Roberts knew modeling wouldn’t be his career path forever, it was formative in unveiling his purpose: fashion design. “I didn’t realize I wanted to pursue designing until the pandemic,” he said. “At that point, I couldn’t find pants that fit my legs, so I thought, why can’t I just make them?” Soon, Roberts was spending his free time scouring bins at beloved vintage spots in Brooklyn in search of denim, fur, and other textiles to upcycle. But it wasn’t until this season’s Black in Fashion Council Showroom that Roberts finally decided to show his first collection for Hearthrob. After spending more than a year studying source materials such as the film Resident Evil and the entire Walking Dead comic series, he titled the collection Apocalypse. While the general aesthetic of the range is described by Roberts as “beautiful chaos”—think ultrabaggy jeans covered in an array of distressed denim patchwork and a white leather blazer with a hand-painted contrasting black trim—there’s a deeper linguistic and design choice happening here. “The Greek meaning of the word apocalypse is “the great unveiling,” so this is like the great unveiling of my brand,” he explained. “With this collection, I wanted to explore the consensus of these films, where people are coming together as a community to defeat things that are unnaturally against us, against things that we can’t control.” In an age when it’s easy to feel like everything is the end of the world, where we’re in constant fear over the state of our planet, it can be comforting to connect with someone just to chat about some cool upcycled jeans. It’s not revolutionary, but it gives us one more familiar face in a new world.
“I think immigration leaves a sort of wounding that we don’t often think about, right?” Busayo Olupona said when reflecting on what first compelled her to return to Nigeria to reconnect with her roots. Unbeknownst to her then, those trips would be the catalyst for her leaving her career as a lawyer to focus on building her namesake label in 2012. As with her approach to law school, Olupona spent so much of those first few years studying everything she possibly could in the business. However, no amount of reading could prepare her for the challenge of having to step back from the brand for a short time because it didn’t make financial sense. “I made so many mistakes in the beginning because I was trying to figure it all out on my own,” she admitted. But she wasn’t alone forever. Things began to change for the better when she started to connect with others in the fashion community through programs such as RaiseFashion and BIFC. “That changed the trajectory of my life and the business. It’s how I got picked up by Saks and Nordstrom,” she noted. While things have been great for the brand since then, there are still moments that Olupona struggles with navigating—mainly, how to balance her label’s commerciality with artistry: “I want to make wearable things, but what’s the point of creating something that doesn’t strike any emotion or doesn’t move people? It’s a complex, delicate balance for sure.” Despite her doubts, her fall 2025 collection masterfully weaves a thread between pragmatism and idealism—most notably through tailored shirtdresses hand-dipped in bright tie-dye and woven button-down shirts meant to resemble her ancestral fabric. Whatever initial wounds Olupona may have felt about her journey as an immigrant, a designer, or a human being, those seem to be long gone now: “When I started, I knew I wanted to reconnect with Nigeria. Something in my spirit was like, You’re gonna start going back home,’ but I could have never imagined it would have brought me here.”
Craftsmanship inherently requires one to commit to carrying on knowledge from the past in the hopes of creating something new in the future—that’s something that designer Durrell Dupard has conquered without fail. Originally from New Orleans, Dupard doesn’t have a technical background in fashion but was taught to sew by his grandparents. Like many designers, creating first began as a form of self-expression, but Dupard slowly started to make bespoke creations as more people approached him, asking, “Can you make those for me?” The true catalyst that led him to start his label finally came from the personal tragedy of his grandmother’s, grandfather’s, and uncle’s deaths. “After they passed, I figured it would be a good way to honor them. Instead of being sad about it, [design] was like my stress reliever. It made me feel closer to them,” he said. While Dupard doubled down on his craft by launching his label in 2020—named after his late uncle—he didn’t come around to releasing his collection until this season’s Black in Fashion Council Showroom. Much like a flower that takes time to bloom after the deadening cold of winter, the collection drew inspiration from nature in New Orleans through dimensions, textures, and colors. As Dupard elaborates: “The collection is called Magnolia Muse, which is our state’s flower. I love nature; I wouldn’t say I grew up in the country, because it’s Louisiana, but I was drawing from the landscape.” The references are reflected the most in a single piece, the one that Dupard says is the embodiment of his creative journey: An androgynous leather puffer jacket is covered in a Technicolor floral print with clear drops on the outside meant to resemble all of the “rainy” periods in his life that led him to grow.
“I think all forms of artistic impression, be it music, books, fashion, or sculpture, are stories of our time,” Rene Moshi Macdonald said emphatically, even though it must have felt like midnight for her as she grappled with jet lag. It seemed time was one of the most imperative parts of Macdonald’s story, as she didn’t set out to start her business, Lisou, until her late 40s, when her children had left the nest. “As they got older, they were the ones who encouraged me to start my brand. They said, ‘You’ve given us all this time, and now is your time.’” Macdonald may have gotten the initial blessing from her children to start her business—something that continues to this day, as her son was able to show up for her at the Black in Fashion Council Showroom while she was traveling through Thailand—but pivoting from her academic background as a professor at London University wasn’t as effortless. “I’m kind of the typical African girl, in the sense that, if I had told my dad, ‘I want to study fashion,’ he would have been like, ‘That’s a hobby,’” she said. It’s easy to glean that Macdonald’s early life was shaped by the fact her parents sacrificed so much to send her to boarding school as they worked for the United Nations, so it wasn’t until the right time in her life appeared that she felt free to explore her love for fashion. That feeling of liberation is embedded in every aspect of her work, especially in her ability to transform timeless silhouettes through Technicolor prints that she created herself. Possibly one of the best examples of how she’s able to use her academic background to inform her design aesthetic is the fall 2025 print she’s coined Afrocamo. Her son helped her print out every country on the continent of Africa, arranging them into a camolike print. “I wanted to do a collection about colonialism, which is why it’s called Empire, weaving the words we cannot speak, which sort of seems pertinent to the moment we currently find ourselves in,” she explained. Although the collection’s print centers on a serious topic, like all of Macdonald’s work, bright color palettes and portions make the pieces more approachable for wider audiences. Of course, she doesn’t necessarily design with the idea of reaching a specific consumer; rather, her approach is about unearthing the story that defines why she designs: “I spent so much time thinking about what my purpose was with Lisou, and then I came into the studio one day and my team had put these words on the wall that I used to say all the time: ‘Joy is our purpose.’”
Community has become a word often thrown around as a marketing ploy, but for Shareef Mosby and Jon Cope, it’s central to everything they create. It was sort of fated that the head designer (Mosby) and fashion communication director (Cope) met many years ago: Both had familial ties to Richmond, Virginia, but didn’t cross paths until they randomly moved into the same apartment building over 15 years ago. One of the first signs that they’d work well together is how they instantly saw each other from the start; so rarely are we in community with someone by simply letting them be themselves. “I think that is what it’s about at the core of fashion. It’s about asking yourself, How can I find a way to vibe with this person who may be so different from me? Because, me and Shareef? I’m queer, and he’s straight, but he’s like my family; he listens to me and values what I have to say,” Cope said. Even as a bystander, it’s nearly impossible not to feel the admiration that these two have for each other; it’s affirmed by tiny little interactions, as when Mosby shared his nickname for Cope. “I call him V, because when I met him, he had all of these old copies of Vogue; he’s a voracious reader,” said Mosby. For both creatives, being able to honor each other’s differences has allowed them to explore parts of themselves that might be “uncomfortable” through the collections they create, which manifests as tailored staples with dark twists (e.g., a white deconstructed button-down shirt covered in grommets or sleek crescent bags covered in studs). “Designing is about being vulnerable; it’s about allowing ourselves to tap into our shadow sides, which is why we named the brand Victim15. We’re in this space of redefining what victim means and learning how to integrate that into our lives in a way that won’t bring us down but empower us,” Cope said. The symbiotic relationship between the two has allowed them to scale the brand in ways they could have never imagined, such as being able to financially support a creative team, showing their collection for the first time at the Black in Fashion Council Showroom, and, more recently, moving to Los Angeles to start a new chapter. When probed about their hopes for the brand’s future, Mosby admitted, “I’m trying to go on this journey without having too many huge expectations. But I think we’re finally coming into this space of being in community with everything around us; we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be.”