It was 88 years ago, in July 1932, that a color photo first appeared on the cover of Vogue. It featured a woman in a bathing suit holding a ball, and in its graphic simplicity it had something of an illustrative quality. This was a watershed moment for the still young medium of fashion photography, but also for fashion illustration, which for so long had been the lingua franca of the mode. To be clear: Vogue had used photographs before this time, and would continue to use illustrations after it, but the power dynamic had irrevocably shifted. Technology, it seemed, had triumphed.

Illustration never went away, of course, but, as with couture, its purview narrowed and it became more specialized. Both metiers elevate handwork and the individuality that it brings. The feeling of closeness evoked by handwork, which illustration delivers, has become even more desired as we have been isolated from each other amid the pandemic.

Here, we honor the art of illustration with drawings of looks handpicked from the Vogue Runway archive by seven artists. This is how they see the couture.

Grace Lynne Haynes, @bygracelynne

An inaugural member of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock Senegal residency, Grace Lynne Haynes, a New Jersey–based Californian, studied illustration before turning her attention to painting. Taking as her subject “complex topics and stereotypes surrounding Black women and femininity,” Haynes’s paintings are distinguished by the contrasting of bright colors with powerfully flat and graphic silhouettes of black paint “shaped,” she says, “to represent Black female bodies. In my work, she continues, “black appears aspirational, dignified, and sublime.”

“For this project, I chose Valentino’s fall 2019 couture show. This show stood out to me because it set a new template for collections with a conscience. Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli chose to feature several Black models, challenging the token Black model stereotype. His message of inclusivity is resonating in a world in which our leaders seem keen to promote isolationism, otherism, and fear. Piccioli said, ‘The only way to make couture alive today is to embrace different women’s identities and cultures.’ I firmly stand with this sentiment. In our current political climate I find it is important to showcase the Black female figure not only as strong, but elevated and empowered, yet divine.”

Jacky Blue, @jackyblue__

There seems to be lightning in Jacky Marshall’s line; there’s a positive energy that pulses through her color-drenched drawings and collages. Trained as a designer, this Brit knows fashion inside out, and loves it, as her drawings clearly show.

“ I love that Margiela collection, every time I look at it I see something different. The thing about that collection is, for me, having trained as a designer and not as an artist, it’s the kind of thing I would have loved to have designed myself. I love the deconstruction side of things, I love the silhouettes; the colors are amazing.

I started playing around with anything I had around me and collaging. I literally just did it; I just went with the flow. I can have an idea, but I never know until I start. I don’t approach everything the same way, my lines aren’t the same for every designer I draw. [For this drawing] I played with layers. I hand-print my own paper to use, and I happened to have a color that was similar, but it’s also layered with colors behind it. When I bought the paper, they numbered it, and I liked it, so I kept it.”

James Thomas, @jamesthomas

James Thomas has a gift for imbuing abstracted silhouettes and figure studies with an airy poetry. A creative director in fashion for many years, this London-born, New York–based artist creates large-scale paper-cut collages in which blocks of color are syncopated with meditative white space.

“I was inspired to illustrate one of my favorite haute couture looks from Givenchy fall 1996 because it expresses a clear narrative, a larger-than-life concept, and a generosity of spirit: the hallmarks of haute couture.

I set up this illustration by building a life-size canvas on a light box, onto which I collaged acetate paper on three surfaces of glass to create depth and shadow.”

Sara Singh, @sarasinghillustration

There’s a liquid quality to Sara Singh’s work that she maintains as she patiently layers her while ink and a brushwork in layers on the computer. This wet line is more expressive than exact, and Singh, a transplanted Swede, uses it to make dramatic statements that are not mired in detail, but get straight to the heart of her subjects.

“I chose this dress because it looked fluffy and protective, and it was worn by Alek Wek. She has her own look, a natural look—she doesn’t have straightened hair—she has her own beauty. And she got to wear the wedding dress and she was Black, which was unusual at that time. I just thought it was such a strong image.

The drawing is pen and ink and ink washes, and then I scan all the different drawings and layer them in Photoshop.”

Frida Wannerberger, @fridawannerberger

At first glance there might seem to be a floaty, paper doll quality to Frida Wannerberger’s drawings of women; but look closer and read the titles of the works, and it’s clear that these are women, not girls, not playthings, and that they use fashion to navigate their complex worlds. And like Wannerberger, a London-based Swede, her women tend to have penchants for puffed sleeves.

“I’m fascinated by the ways in which dress has, and continues to be, linked to history and how we progress as societies [in terms of] identity, power, and seduction. [When I was] growing up in the mid 2000s, the couture shows were the pinnacle of staged narratives—I was fascinated by how many small details (of a look) worked together to make up a character (look) that plays a part of a larger narrative (show, ad campaigns, editorials).

John Galliano and his Saint Martins trajectory was the reason I wanted to study at CSM, so it’s mainly due to this collection—and thorough studying of the Runway Supplement bibles 2003–2006—that I am in London! I chose to be quite selective with the details here, bringing the headpiece, the sense of adornment around the face through the jewelry and the necklace, into focus. The elaborate full skirt is bleeding off the page.

I worked with a fine liner on 300 GSM watercolor paper. It’s an odd size that originates from leftover paper scraps from a commissioned project. I got used to the size and enjoy working with the crop / placement of the body on the paper. I always start with the eyes, then the rest of the face, and let that guide me with the rest of the figure. I enjoy just working with the lines; it’s very meditative for me. I sometimes sketch out indication lines for various options of angles of the body, but I do enjoy being quite assertive with my marker and seeing where it takes me.”

Chris Gambrell, @gambrell_

In his quick sketches, Chris Gambrell is able to convey character through the smallest gestures. His finished works are moody studies of color and texture. Having gotten “up to his eyes” in the Vogue Runway archives, from his hometown of Bristol, England, he whittled 50 selects down to just one.

“I drew look 12 of Jean Paul Gaultier’s spring 2010 couture collection because its drama and beauty was crying out to be rendered in inky textures. This look stood out for me because of its balance and imbalance; the weight of the broad shoulder section with the tapered fringe-like epaulettes meeting the extensions of the hat and everything tipping and swinging to one side, you can feel the movement. Like a cloud across a lilting horizon or Icarus meeting the elements, the drama drew me in.

As with everything I draw, the subject matter chooses itself, the dark textural background rendered in inky aquarelle throws the protected white areas forward with the marks of wax crayons an ode to the handmade nature of couture.”

Mary B., @mary_b_illustrations

Mary B., who is based in Amsterdam, uses colored pencils and oil pastel for her portraits and fashion drawings. There’s an engaging awkwardness to some of her work that, to this viewer, calls to the mind the unforgettable walk-stomp Leon Dame revealed on the runway at Margiela and was so riveting. Perfection can be off-putting, imperfection is invitingly human.

“What I love about couture is the craftsmanship and the dedication to the materials and fabrics. I wanted to grab that feeling and to catch the textures and prints in my drawings. For me it’s important that a drawing ‘lives’ and breathes. Drawing this haute couture dress from Lacroix was fun to do; it really obsessed me in a positive way! I used color pencils, and I chose this [ensemble] from spring 1988 because it’s still a very powerful look after so many years. It’s both chic and tough/cool with strong colors and a beautiful design.”

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Miss Juneteenth Sean-Maree Swinger-Otey waves to the crowd during the celebration parade in Denver, Colorado, on June 20, 2015. June 19, 2020, marks the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth. Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images

The holiday’s 155-year history holds a lot of meaning in the fight for black liberation today.

As demonstrators across America fight to liberate black people, whether through calls to abolish the police or through legislative action against systemic racism, the country is getting ready to celebrate the 155th anniversary of one of its earliest liberation moments: Juneteenth.

A portmanteau of “June” and “nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when a group of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned that they were free from the institution of slavery. But, woefully, this was almost two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation; the Civil War was still going on, and when it ended, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger traveled to Texas and issued an order stating that all enslaved people were free, establishing a new relationship between “former masters and slaves” as “employer and hired labor.” As much as Juneteenth represents freedom, it also represents how emancipation was tragically delayed for enslaved people in the deepest reaches of the Confederacy.

Newly freed black people celebrated the first Juneteenth in 1866 to commemorate liberation — with food, singing, and the reading of spirituals — and take pride in their progress. But a century and a half later, Juneteenth is still not taught in most schools, nor is the event a federal holiday despite decades of pushing from activists. In 1980, Texas became the first state to declare Juneteenth an official holiday. In 2020, Washington, DC, and nearly every state recognize the day as a holiday or observance.

While Juneteenth celebrations span the world — the global diaspora has adopted the day as one to recognize emancipation at large — the calls for Juneteenth to be a national holiday have grown stronger amid a climate seeking justice for black lives. Just this month, a number of corporations and institutions like Nike and the NFL have announced plans to recognize Juneteenth as a company holiday. Coinciding with the worldwide protests against systemic racism, and the mounting cultural pressure to reckon with America’s racist history, Juneteenth is receiving increased attention in 2020.

Setting the foundation for Juneteenth

During the Civil War, the US Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1862, which authorized Union troops to seize Confederate property, including enslaved people. The act also allowed the Union army to recruit black soldiers. Months later, as the nation approached its third year of the Civil War, President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, would affirm the aims of the act by issuing the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. The document declared that “all persons held as slaves […] are, and henceforth, shall be free.”

Lincoln wrote:

I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

In 1863, the proclamation legally freed millions of enslaved people in the Confederacy, but it exempted those in the Union-loyal border states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky. These states held Confederate sympathies and could have seceded; Lincoln exempted them from the proclamation to prevent this. In April 1864, the Senate attempted to close this loophole by passing the 13th Amendment, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude in all states, Union and Confederate. But the amendment wouldn’t be enacted by ratification until December 1865.

A group of formerly enslaved people who worked as laborers and servants with the 13th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War, circa 1862. Corbis via Getty Images

And though the Civil War ended in April 1865 when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia, enslaved people in Texas didn’t learn about their freedom until June 19, 1865. On that day, almost two and a half years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger of the Union army arrived in Galveston and issued General Order No. 3 that secured the Union army’s authority over Texas. The order stated:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free.’ This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts, and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

The order reveals how slavery slowly unraveled as an institution in the early 1860s, as Union armies bored south, occupying plantations from the Southern border to the Deep South and finally to the periphery in Texas. Emancipation came gradually for many enslaved people, the culmination of a century of American abolition efforts, North and South.

Freedom came gradually ahead of the first Juneteenth celebration

Still, even under Order No. 3, as historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. noted, freedom wasn’t automatic for Texas’s 250,000 enslaved people. “On plantations, masters had to decide when and how to announce the news — or wait for a government agent to arrive — and it was not uncommon for them to delay until after the harvest,” he wrote.

According to Gates, newly freed black women and men rallied around June 19th in that first year, transforming it from a “day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite.”

The first Juneteenth celebration took place in 1866 in Texas with community gatherings, including sporting events, cookouts, prayers, dances, parades, and the singing of spirituals like “Many Thousands Gone” and “Go Down Moses.” Some events even featured fireworks, which involved filling trees with gunpowder and setting them on fire.

At the core of the celebrations was a desire to record group gains since emancipation, “an occasion for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating rising generations with the values of self-improvement and racial uplift,” Gates wrote.

Communities would read the Emancipation Proclamation as part of the tradition, which was especially significant during Reconstruction, when the holiday reinforced hope. Reconstruction (1863-1890) was a time to rebuild the Southern economy and society through the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, black-run Southern governments, and the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau, among other efforts.

President Rutherford B. Hayes oversaw the end of Reconstruction. After the Civil War, reformers aimed to rebuild society through the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, black-run Southern governments, and the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Universal Images Group via Getty Images

But the goals of Reconstruction were consistently countered by white supremacists. For example, ex-Confederates were able to reestablish white supremacy throughout the 1880s after Democratic Congress members awarded Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the 1876 presidential election in exchange for the withdrawal of Union troops from the South, according to historian Richard M. Valelly’s The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement. After Hayes’s win, leaders at the state and local levels “weakened black voting in the South by means of gerrymandering, violence, and intimidation,” Valelly wrote.

Then in 1890, Mississippians drafted a white supremacist state constitution to disenfranchise local black people; it included provisions that required people be able to read and understand all parts of the state constitution in order to vote, according to the New York Times. This barred thousands of illiterate black people from voting in the 1890s.

Meanwhile, the Federal Elections Bill, or Lodge Bill, to oversee Southern elections failed in the summer of 1890, effectively closing the last window for national voting rights jurisprudence for decades to come. This signaled the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of Jim Crow. “Once black southerners were disenfranchised by the early 1900s, the stage was set for a systematic entrenchment of white supremacist norms and public policies,” Valelly wrote.

Then, and now, the symbolism and spirit behind Juneteenth remain sorely needed.

Over time, Juneteenth spread to neighboring states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eventually to California as black Texans moved west; it also appeared in Florida and Alabama in the early 20th century due to migration from Texas, wrote historian Alwyn Barr in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 4: Myths, Manners, and Memory.

According to Barr, Juneteenth observations declined in the 1940s during World War II but were revived in 1950 “with 70,000 black people on the Texas State Fair grounds at Dallas.” The celebrations would decline again as attention went to school desegregation and the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s. But they picked up again in the 1970s as advocates in Texas launched the first effort to make Juneteenth an unofficial “holiday of significance ... particularly to the blacks of Texas.”

On January 1, 1980, Juneteenth became a Texas state holiday after state Rep. Al Edwards put forth legislation. Since that move, 45 states plus Washington, DC, now commemorate the day as a holiday or observance. Cities have also taken steps to specifically recognize Juneteenth at the municipal level. Philadelphia, the site of one of the country’s largest Juneteenth parades, recently passed an executive order designating Juneteenth an official city holiday for 2020. “This designation of Juneteenth represents my administration’s commitment to reckon with our own role in maintaining racial inequities and our understanding of the magnitude of work that lies ahead,” said Mayor Jim Kenney.

The shift in opinions and recognition of Juneteenth

Over time, Juneteenth has been called Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, Juneteenth National Freedom Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, and Black Independence Day. Despite the many monikers, the day has faced competition from other emancipation holidays and has been mostly unknown to many Americans — until perhaps this year.

January 1 was once observed as Emancipation Day, for when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1863. Juneteenth has also long been overshadowed by July 4, commonly known as America’s Independence Day, which marks the day the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Various cities celebrated emancipation on other days: In New York, people celebrated on August 1 to acknowledge the end of slavery in Great Britain; in DC, observers commemorated emancipation on April 16 for the day slavery ended in the District in 1862.

Performers during the 48th Annual Juneteenth Day Festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 19, 2019. Dylan Buell/Getty Images for VIBE

Perceptions of Juneteenth have also changed over the past century. During World War I, white people and some black people even considered it un-American, unpatriotic, and shameful “because it focused attention on a dark period in U.S. history,” according to the authors of the academic article “When Peace Come: Teaching the Significance of Juneteenth.”

President Donald Trump, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on June 18, said Juneteenth “was an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.” He was apparently unaware that his administration has previously commemorated the day.

One reason Juneteenth’s history has remained widely misunderstood, or even unknown, is because it’s not often taught in schools. Karlos Hill, an author and University of Oklahoma professor of African and African American, told Vox in 2018 that “Juneteenth as a moment in African-American history is not, to my knowledge, taught.” As for history textbooks that already tend to whitewash history, “I would be willing to guess that there are few, if any, mentions of this holiday,” Hill said.

In “Teaching the Significance of Juneteenth,” Shennette Garrett-Scott and others wrote, “It is sometimes hard to teach small but pivotal moments in American history. Survey classes mostly allow for covering the biggest events and the most well known people.” But to help students understand major moments like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is important to teach the smaller historical milestones. To Garrett-Scott, teaching Juneteenth gives students a fuller picture of the long, enduring fight for freedom.

Another obstacle that remains for Juneteenth is the pervasive idea that it’s a “black thing,” much like Kwanzaa. “It is seen as a holiday that is just observed by African Americans and is poorly understood outside of the African American community. It is perceived as being part of black culture and not ‘American culture,’ so to speak,” Hill said.

In 2020, the meaning of Juneteenth is being seized more broadly by activists as an opportunity for the United States to come to terms with how slavery continues to affect the lives of all Americans today — it is something for everyone, of every race, to engage in. Stereotypes about black people as being subhuman and lacking rationality are rooted in slavery; these harmful notions still rear themselves today as police officers disproportionately kill black people under a racist regime. Advocates argue that the national holiday obviously wouldn’t put an end to racism but would rather help foster dialogue about the trauma that has resulted from the enslavement of 4 million people for more than 250 years.

In the weeks leading up to Juneteenth 2020, a slate of companies, including Twitter and Nike, announced their decision to recognize the day as a paid company holiday. Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who has released a resolution each year to recognize the historical significance of Juneteenth, has plans to introduce legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Other US citizens are taking the call to action into their own hands too, like 93-year-old Opal Lee of Fort Worth, Texas. Lee launched a Change.org petition seeking 1 million signatures to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Almost 300,000 people have signed it thus far.

This year, Juneteenth will be commemorated with protests, marches, a general workers strike, and opportunities for healing and joy across the country. It will also be celebrated as it has been for decades, with cookouts and parades, as well as church gatherings and spirituals, keeping in touch with the original tradition. In 1937, formerly enslaved man Pierce Harper recalled the first Juneteenth: “When peace come they read the ‘Mancipation law to the cullud people. [The freed people] spent that night singin’ and shoutin’. They wasn’t slaves no more.”

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I want to feel the peace that white people have enjoyed at my expense.

A few days ago, I got a call from a friend in distress. I heard the breath expel from her lungs as she blurted into the phone, “I just can’t take it anymore.”

She was calling me from the park. While she made sure her 2-year-old didn’t eat leaves, she updated me on her efforts to get an academic institution — the same one that had commissioned her for a creative project to promote “diversity” — to release a statement in support of Black lives. They had expressed little interest in the concept, instead placing the burden on her to write it on their behalf, for free. What began as a simple request has now gone into mediation, putting her alone, and at odds, with a board of old white bureaucrats.

“They made me into the angry Black woman — again,” she said, her daughter squealing for the leaves over a distant siren.

This is an all-too-familiar narrative that I and many people who look like me have been weathering our entire lives. It’s been particularly pronounced the past two weeks. Since George Floyd’s death, I’ve had more conversations with my Black friends than I can count where we’ve collectively rejoiced at the global response against anti-Blackness. But we’re also recoiling in horror at what it means to witness the global awakening of white people.

I am prepared for disappointment. I’ve been prepared for it my entire life.

But what I was not prepared for was what actually happened: the phone calls. The emails. The guilt-ridden confessions from people I hadn’t spoken to in years who all of a sudden decided to “check in,” when what they really wanted was for me to confirm that they were “one of the good ones.” The dozens of asks from people wanting me to educate them on racism, despite the fact that the essay that led them to contact me is about the trauma of shouldering feelings of white guilt.

Everywhere I turn, I’m being forced to engage with people who are just now acknowledging that racism is a problem. Two weeks ago, if I had attempted to convey my frustration over a racist argument, I would have been met with a pair of rolling eyes and a half-hearted “I’m sorry that happened to you.” Now, I’m watching the same people who once punished me for talking about racism discuss it with reckless abandon. But instead of being relieved, I’m seething with resentment.

Almost overnight, my lived experience has become fodder for white people’s long overdue reckoning with themselves — which only came about with the death of George Floyd. Not Sandra Bland. Not Breonna Taylor. Not Tony McDade. Not even with Eric Garner, whose last words were immortalized before George Floyd repeated them. I’m still expected to bear witness and guide people along this journey like a Magical Negro who exists solely for the spiritual development of white protagonists, who continue to center themselves in the pain that they’ve caused. Except now, I’m old enough to know that there’s nothing noble about it, and I’m not sure how much more I can handle.

Even after white people decided to care about racism, too many of them still find it easier to put the burden of a better world on the people who have been fighting for it since we first realized that this one wasn’t made for us. White people get to be mediocre, while Black people get to be martyrs. And still, they demand more.

This isn’t who I am. I am an artist. I am an author. And yet, I know that being a writer of color means being a dozen other things as well: an activist, a teacher, a philosopher, an academic, a political commentator whenever something race-related happens — and a nobody when nothing does. Meanwhile, the high-school canon is full of racist white men who spent their lives having affairs and getting drunk. This is the discrepancy I want to correct and fight against moving forward. I want to get drunk and write stories about alternate realities and time machines, too.

Year after year since Trayvon Martin’s murder launched Black Lives Matter, I have felt myself becoming more and more beaten down by the time-honored practice of white peers devaluing what I have to say. As a Black woman, I take inventory of the cynicism, anger, and pain that I’ve accumulated in place of the peace that my white constituents enjoy at my expense. I think about the people we’ve lost along the way, and worse — I think about the sacrifices to come. I don’t want to be one of them, and I don’t want my friends to be either.

“This is what they do to us,” I said back to my friend on the phone. “As long as we’re fighting for the right to exist, as long as we’re explaining what racism is, we’re not happy. We’re not present. We’re not the people we should be. This is how they kill us.”

Of course, as we all know, that’s not the only way.

Oluwatoyin Salau, a Black Lives Matter protester, was found dead in Tallahassee, where I grew up and went to college. During my time at Florida State University, I remember thinking that George W. Bush was the worst it could get (file that under “the folly of youth”). Now I think of Derek Chauvin pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, just six days after Malcolm X’s birthday. I think of the conditions necessary to create a leader like him, and how much — and how little — has actually changed since the ’60s. I think of the other young people — Tamir Rice, 12; Salau, 19; Ahmaud Arbery, 25; Rayshard Brooks, 27; Riah Milton, 25; along with too many others to name — martyrs now, because they were stolen in their youth. Even while we talk about the loss of Black lives, we continue to lose more.

Those of us left behind mourn them while we try to survive. We cry on the phone about the guilt we feel in stepping back from projects that humiliate us, even while the energy we pour into them makes us question our value as artists and leaders. The sacrificial demand of Black time and energy eats up our best and brightest voices, then spits them out for the greater good.

While expressing all of this to my friend, I tried to tell myself to resist the temptation to weigh in on a conversation that’s been reducing me to tears since I was a child. And my response is that if I don’t say something, not enough people will. I tell myself that carving out hours of the time that is meant for my family, for my life, for my joy, is better spent on repeating myself, yet again, to people who didn’t listen the first hundred times.

“Anyway,” my friend said with a deep sigh, over more children squealing in the background, fighting over leaves, twigs, and dirt. “What are you doing for Juneteenth?”

This year, I’m proposing a new tradition for my friends and myself. I want us to sit and meditate for a few minutes on what our lives would look like if we didn’t have to talk about or consider racism every single day. I want us to imagine what our families would look like if we didn’t have to cater to the intellectual laziness in which the countless conversations we’ve had about race with white people have always resided. I want us to imagine a life where we speak about race on our terms, in a way that feels empowering instead of exhausting. I want us to imagine ourselves as happy old women surrounded by grandchildren we can’t keep up with — trying to keep the leaves out of their mouths. And I want us to put ourselves first, while everyone else is just beginning to catch up.

If that’s not the freedom Black people fought and died for in the Civil War, the freedom that Black people have been fighting and dying for since 1619 — then I don’t want it.

By The CUT.

(Statement From School Founder Patricia Smith On Sustaining The Momentum To Bring About Real Change)

For anybody that knows me, or has ever attended a meeting, an assembly, or even a graduation at CATCH Prep, you’ve heard me say the following: 

“I started my life in Segregation.  I was born in The South in 1950, and I stand before you as a product of hard work, a little luck, and a college education.”

— Miss Pat

In other words, Take It From Me…

Take it from me, CATCH Community:  The violence, looting, and intentional agitation in the streets of Los Angeles, and across the country, this weekend are not the solution to the endless killing of unarmed Black men, or the systemic racism communities of color continue to experience 50+ years after the Civil Rights Movement.

Take it from me:  When the dust settles, if there aren’t politicians, police chiefs, and policy makers with agendas for change, we’ll find ourselves right back where we started on June 19, 1865 — Juneteenth — “Freedom Day” for enslaved African-Americans.

Take it from me:  There are two ways that we can move things forward.  The ballot box.  And a commitment to education.  Both create access to economic, social, and political opportunities that simply wouldn’t exist otherwise.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out to Mike Wallace during an interview in 1966 (when I was the same age as many of our students), “A riot is the language of the unheard.”  

So make them hear you.  With your vote.  And your diploma.  And your Bachelor’s degree.  And the people you elect to be mayor.  And the folks you empower at your job as a lawyer, a judge, or a journalist.

And if you can’t take it from me, take it from someone you trust.  Someone who knows.  And someone who’s proven to you they care about justice and change.  About Philando and Stephon.  Breonna Taylor.  George Floyd.

Maybe a parent.  Or a grandparent.  A teacher, or coach, or mentor.  Or maybe you prefer taking it from a president.  In which case, you can do that too. Just click HERE or on the mural below.

Like President Barack Obama, “I recognize that these past few months have been hard and dispiriting.”  And like him, I believe that we can take effective action to make this moment a turning point.  Through education and the ballot box.

In the words of our 44th President, “Let’s Get To Work!”

The economic squeeze brought on by the coronavirus pandemic is becoming more like a vise. Retail sales declined 16.4% in April, and the futures of American fashion stalwarts from J.Crew to Victoria’s Secret are in question. Neiman Marcus is the first luxury retail to enter bankruptcy protection; J.C. Penney has also declared bankruptcy, while Nordstrom is insulating itself by closing 16 of its stores and its three Jeffrey boutiques. Speculation about Neiman’s future is growing: Will the company be sold to Hudson’s Bay Company and merge with Saks Fifth Avenue to make an American retail conglomerate? Will Bergdorf Goodman, now owned by the Neiman Marcus Group, be spun off in a sale to LVMH? Either way, what happens to Bergdorf’s legendary 57th and Fifth Avenue store?

The high temples of New York fashion are thinning out: Barneys is gone, as is Jeffrey, as is Opening Ceremony. Can fashion lovers afford to lose Bergdorf Goodman? Can the city?

The good news is that Bergdorf’s is probably not going anywhere. While the Neiman Marcus debt is staggering—$5 billion with refinancing loans in the hundreds of millions—Bergdorf Goodman has the advantage of being the last grand dame of fashion in New York. And what a dame it is.

Lyssie Pero, Gertrude Clarke, and Madame Sassau modeling dresses with the feeling of Paris couture at Bergdorf GoodmanPhotographed by Edward Steichen for Vogue, May 1, 1928

Models in the display room at Bergdorf GoodmanPhotographed by Edward Steichen for Vogue, May 1, 1928

“Like a fine French dress, the Bergdorf Goodman building has a restraint in line and ornament,” Vogue proclaimed in its May 1, 1928 issue in a feature extolling the virtues of New York’s poshest retailer. Begun as a tailor shop in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and transformed into Bergdorf Goodman with Edwin Goodman in 1901, the store had bopped around locations in Lower Manhattan, settling in the Vanderbilt mansion on 57th and Fifth Avenue in 1928. With the feeling of a “private drawing room,” it was celebrated for its exacting selection of hats, furs, frocks, and bags, one that eliminated “everything that is not in perfect simplicity and perfect taste.”

That’s a high bar to live up to, but in the 92 years since then, the retailer has retained its air of exclusivity, etiquette, and panache. The store’s longtime association with Halston, who was its in-house milliner in the late ’50s and ’60s before launching his namesake brand in the 1970s, helped it bridge the shifting tastes of the mid-to-late century and establish it as the go-to for elegance across decades. “I think in many ways that being stocked at Bergdorf Goodman, for designers it kind of means they’ve made it,” says the store’s former senior vice president of fashion and public relations Robert Burke.

Michael Kors agrees. “Bergdorf’s has always symbolized the idea of connoisseurship—the best customers looking for the best product, at the best location, in the best city in the world,” he tells Vogue. His relationship to the store dates back to the 1980s, when he worked at Lothar’s, a boutique across Fifth Avenue from B.G. “One afternoon I was in the window dressing mannequins when a tall, attractive woman came in and started speaking to me. She asked who designed the clothes in the window and I replied that I did. She seemed quite surprised. She introduced herself as the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman and told me that if I ever designed a collection on my own to give her a call. I promptly went home and started sketching out the designs for what would become my first collection—fall 1981.”

Halston famously designed Jacqueline Kennedy's pillbox hat for her husband's inauguration. As Bergdorf Goodman's in-house milliner, he outfitted dozens of other women with custom toppers, like Virna Lisi, seen here in 1964 with the designerPhoto: Getty Images

In 1965, Barbra Streisand filmed her My Name is Barbra TV special on Bergdorf's first floorCBS Photo Archive

That woman was Dawn Mello, Bergdorf’s longtime fashion director and president in charge of culling the wheat from the chaff. Her anointing of Kors helped establish him in New York—and then the world—and he has remained a B.G. mainstay ever since. “I had no experience manufacturing, no business partners, but I rolled up my sleeves and somehow made it work. A few months later my collection was in the windows at Bergdorf’s, and I did my first successful trunk show at the store. Dawn and her team put me on the map.” The Bergdorf effect stuck with him. “The customers at Bergdorf’s have always been incredibly discerning. They’re sticklers for quality and the kind of women who have a real sense of style. Fifty-Seventh Street was my starting point, but now, almost 40 years later, the B.G. attitude permeates everything I do globally.”

But you don’t need to be in fashion to feel the Bergdorf Goodman effect. Much like other Upper East Side institutions, the word Bergdorf has become a shorthand for über luxury. In 1965, Barbra Streisand hosted her TV special My Name Is Barbra from its fine-jewelry floor. Liza Minnelli and Dudley Moore palled around in Bergdorf’s in the 1981 movie Arthur, and by 1984 the Muppets had moved in for The Muppets Take Manhattan.

In 2004, Vogue editor Plum Sykes published her first novel, Bergdorf Blondes, turning the bubbling Page Six party scene of UES society into a story about jewelry, shoes, men, and—of course—highlights from the John Barrett Salon. “At the time of writing around 2004, it was just the In thing to be one of those Park Avenue princess blondes, and there was only one place to get your hair done: Bergdorf Goodman,” Sykes tells Vogue. “I honestly was far too broke to ever buy anything that I really wanted from Bergdorf Goodman, but because I worked for Vogue I did get my hair done pretty much for free once a month, which was amazing. Having said that, the tips I had to dish out were absolutely bankrupting!”

Bankrupting oneself at B.G. wouldn’t be hard. “I think the thing that made it so different was the experience of walking through the door on Fifth Avenue and finding yourself gazing at some of the most beautiful diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in the world,” Sykes continues. “It just set a tone that was so incredibly glamorous, that represented the classiest side of American consumerism and made even a pretty modest customer like myself feel like a princess.”

A model lounges in Bergdorf Goodman, wearing an ensemble from HalstonPhotographed by Deborah Turbeville, Vogue, June 1975

Real princesses did shop at Bergdorf’s, of course. Princess Diana of Wales was a regular customer. First ladies too. During her time in the White House, Jackie Kennedy routinely wrote letters to her Bergdorf’s personal shopper Marita featuring hat designs and shoe requests.

Those who could not shop at Bergdorf’s assembled outside on Fifth Avenue to gawk. “It was a tradition in our family to see the holiday windows in New York, and the Bergdorf windows always stood out—they always became the ones I would wait for,” says filmmaker Matthew Miele, who directed the 2013 documentary Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. “It was the first brush with storytelling that I really experienced in my life. I mean, you could see in those windows a three-act structure of just great storytelling.”

So, will Bergdorf’s have a happy ending? It’s been through difficult times before and come out back on top. “The only thing I can liken this time period to is being at the store after 9/11 and during the financial crisis of 2008 and not knowing if it felt right to be selling, wearing, and promoting high luxury goods,” Burke recalls. “During both, especially the financial crisis, there was the feeling that luxury would never be the same and it would never come back. But I think that there is obvious luxury, there is gaudy luxury, and then there is tasteful luxury.” Bergdorf’s, by Burke’s estimation, falls in the latter camp. “I think that hopefully Bergdorf’s stands for taste and some sensitivity of what is going on today and can represent that,” he continues. “After the financial crisis and the recession, they offered to either let you walk out with a brown bag or a Bergdorf bag. That lasted for a while, but not for terribly long.”

The store’s plans for reopening in a post-pandemic world remain unknown—email requests to its in-house press department have gone unanswered—but as per Governor Cuomo’s latest briefing, New York City could reopen by the first or second week of June. Reflecting on his documentary, which saw Joan Rivers, Tom Ford, and other A-listers expound on the virtues of Bergdorf Goodman and its version of the American fashion dream, Miele says, “The New York Times called it an ode to consumerism, [but] as we stay at home in our pandemic, don’t we want consumerism to happen more than anything right now? I mean, it’s the one thing we miss and we want to go out and do.” While luxury e-commerce is seeing success, the act of in-person shopping and the thrill that comes along with it is hard to replicate virtually. He continues, “Bergdorf’s represents a great American story…[Bergdorf’s] is the aspiration, and if you lose that, what are you looking forward to if you do succeed?”

Rihanna said it best, when she was given the keys to the kingdom to celebrate her Fenty collection just three months ago. Standing in front of a display of her collection, just past displays by Marc Jacobs and Gabriela Hearst, Rihanna recalled her first trip to the store: “I remember the price tags, and saying maybe one day I could buy clothes, but today, maybe I’ll just buy perfume. I feel really great to have this full-circle [moment] where I can have my own brand that I created in a space like this that offers such a luxury experience to their customers and now mine as well.”

Michael Kors celebrated the 35th anniversary of his brand in 2016 with celebratory Fifth Avenue windows at Bergdorf GoodmanPhoto: Getty Images

Rihanna stands outside Bergdorf Goodman's Fifth Avenue windows celebrating her Fenty collection in February 2020 Photo: Getty Images

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BY STEFF YOTKA