80's Icon

When fashion was truly art in the 80′s there were a few designers that stood out. Willi Smith was one of them. A large part of the dance community scene was built off of the fashion component. It went hand and hand with self expression and movement. Nowadays a lot stuff looks the same. Here is a bio on one of the guys that was prominent in 80′s. Inspired by the streets and the soundtrack that pulsed in clubs like the Gallery, The Loft, and the Garage. In Chi-town the energy of Willi’s apparel caught fire and was a standard amongst dancers and fashionistas.
If you don’t know about this young black design educate yourself.

Willi Smith 1948–1987
Fashion designer
At a Glance…
“Streetwise” Fashions Caught Public’s Imagination
Sources
Rising quickly in the fashion world to become one of the industry’s most successful young designers, Willi Smith was part of a vanguard of hip young black designers who first made their mark in the late 1960s. The sportswear he created for WilliWear Ltd. in the 1970s and 1980s was noted for its relaxed, street-smart, and often oversized look that made it functional but fun. Youthful and often unfitted, his clothes had a free-flowing look that often featured unusual color combinations. Smith also introduced a design innovation by matching plaids, stripes, and colors in single articles of clothing.
Smith always wanted his clothes to utilize natural fibers, and he strove to keep his clothes affordable to the general public. “I don’t design clothes for the Queen, but for the people who wave at her as she goes by” said Smith, according to the New York Times. In Who’s Who in Fashion, Anne Stegemeyer said that Smith “brought fashion verve to the moderate price range.”
The seeds for Willie Donnell Smith’s later successes were planted during his youth by his parents, both of whom were extremely clothes-conscious. “I came from your typical black middle-class family, where every event called for an outfit,” Smith told Essence. Focusing on clothes also helped distract the family from their impoverished life in the Philadelphia projects. Smith’s mother would dress up frequently, never having any concern about the stares of onlookers when she was “overdressed” for an occasion. His father tended to wear oversized clothes, an influence that may have impacted Smith’s later design choices.
As a boy Smith spent a lot of time drawing with his mother, and he nurtured dreams of becoming an artist. After his parents were divorced, his grandmother, Gladys Bush, became an important figure in motivating Smith to pursue his artistic interests. She defended her grandson when he missed family curfews because of lingering too long at the Philadelphia Museum of Art or when he spent untold hours sitting on the floor sketching. While studying fashion illustration at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, Smith began developing a greater interest in clothing design.
Smith’s grandmother urged him to pursue scholarships that enabled him to enroll in the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1965. While at Parsons,
At a Glance…
Bom Willi Donnell Smith, February 29, 1948, in Philadelphia, PA; died of pneumonia, April 17, 1987, in New York, NY; son of Willie Lee (an ironworker) and June Eileen (a homemaker; maiden name, Bush) Smith. Education: Attended Philadelphia College of Art, 1962-65, and Parsons School of Design, 1965-69.
Worked for Arnold Scassi, New York City, 1965; sketches Bobbie Brooks, 1969; designer, Digits, Inc., 1969-75; formed own design studio and worked as freelance designer, 1974-76; designer and vice-president, WiliiWear Ltd., 1976-87; introduced WiliiWear Men line of clothes, 1978; sponsored and designed clothes for Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival, 1984; designed clothes for film School Daze,
Member: League in Aid for Crippled Children, Bedford Stuyvesant Children’s Association.
Awards: Designer of the Year, International Mannequins, 1978; Coty American Fashion Critics’ Award for Women’s Fashion, 1983; Cutty Sark Award, 1986, for mens-wear design.
Smith freelanced as a sketcher after school and on weekends. He got his first design-related job one summer with designer Arnold Scassi, a position he landed due to one of his grandmother’s contacts—Bush had been a maid to one of Scassi’s clients and had mentioned that her grandson was a fashion designer.
Smith worked across the full gamut of the sportswear industry in the late 1960s: for companies ranging from the mass-marketed Bobbie Brooks to chic little houses such as Digits, where he was employed for six years. Extremely hard working, he began to build a solid reputation but had trouble breaking through to the top tier of designers. Socalled “black design” was very trendy at the time, but Smith resented pressure to be “more black.” For a brief period he made himself over, wearing long braids that went against his preferred clean-cut image, but this new identity didn’t last long.
Determined to make his own mark, he started his own business in 1973 with his sister Toukie—who often modeled her brother’s clothes—and a friend. Smith’s lack of knowledge of the business side of fashion put his fledgling company out of operation in no time, and he was forced to enter into a partnership with a Seventh Avenue firm that gained the rights to his name in return for financial support. The result was a very unhappy period for Smith. “I was doing all of these designer clothes out of expensive fabrics, very young couture,” he told Esquire reporter Lynn Darling. “They were clothes that people didn’t need.” Smith sued to regain the rights to his name, then worked freelance and pursued career options with other large sportswear companies.
“Streetwise” Fashions Caught Public’s Imagination
In 1976 Smith met up with Laurie Mallet, an old friend who at the time was selling shirts imported from India. At Mallet’s suggestion, Smith accompanied her to India to design a collection at a factory near Bombay. A company called WiliiWear Limited was set up, with Mallet as president and Smith as vice-president and designer. The following winter Smith’s collection generated only about $30,000 of business, but one of Smith’s pants designs became extremely popular. Characteristic of what would become the Willi Smith look, the pants were a baggy fatigue with a high, wrapped waist and became known as the “WiliiWear pant.”
Before long the streetwise and sassy WiliiWear designs caught the public’s attention in a big way, and other designers soon copied the style. Smith’s next collection sold $200,000; by 1982 WiliiWear had an annual gross topping $5 million. In 1978 Smith introduced WiliiWear Men, a line of clothes that incorporated both formality and casualness. Smith struck fashion gold again with this new line, winning the 1986 Cutty Sark Award, the most prestigious honor for menswear design.
Smith concentrated primarily on separates, and his consistency from season to season allowed pieces from previous years to be mixed with his new designs. Pieces ranged from oversized blazers and long dirndls to dhoti pants and poufskirted dresses. Everything he designed showed a sense of humor and spirit, as if inviting the wearer to get up and move. He paid acute attention to all aspects of design and manufacture, designing his own textiles and taking several trips each year to India to overlook production of his collection.
Many influences were cited by Smith as affecting his work, from art to watching people. His apartment in the Tribeca section of Manhattan was filled with African, Oriental, and contemporary art, and many of his clothes featured unusual color blends that he had seen in artworks. Smith also had many friends who were artists, and he worked with some of them. In 1985 he designed 600 uniforms for workers who helped the artist Christo wrap the Pont Neuf, a bridge in Paris, with pink material.
Smith would often stroll down New York City streets, his designer’s eye picking up strange color mixes or “attitudes” that people conveyed through what they wore and how they moved. As he told Essence, “What is happening on the streets of New York is happening to me, so I put it right in the collection.” Smith himself was known for talking as much with his hands as his voice, and he often gesticulated dramatically. He almost never wore his own designs, thinking that he needed some distance from his work to remain objective. Although Smith was generally soft-spoken, his design shows on Seventh Avenue were far from it and were known for their outrageousness.
By the mid-1980s Smith’s designs were hanging in 1,100 stores in the United States, as well as stores in London. WilliWear grossed $25 million in 1986, and by that time the company’s designs were taking on a more traditional, tailored appearance as Smith decided to “mature.” However, he created a bit of a furor with the uncharacteristic look he designed for Edwin A. Schlossberg for his wedding with Caroline Kennedy in 1987. The groom’s outfit featured a navy blue linen suit with a silver tie.
After one of his usual trips to India to supervise production in 1986, Smith became infected with shigella, a parasitic disease. The parasite led to serious complications that proved fatal. Suffering from pneumonia, he was later admitted to a New York City hospital and died in 1987. At the time of his death at age 39, Smith had just been requested to design the wedding gown for the comic-book bride of Marvel’s Spider Man.
Sources
Books
Stegemeyer, Anne, Who’s Who in Fashion, second edition, Fairchild, 1988, pp. 192-93.
Milbank, Caroline Rennolds, New York Fashion: The Evolution of American Style, Abrams, 1989, pp. 291-92.
Periodicals
Daily News Record, April 30, 1987, p. 12.
Esquire, December 1984, pp. 407-15.
Essence, July 1987, p. 49.
Jet, May 4, 1987, p. 9.
New York Times, April 19, 1987, p. 34.
People, November 14, 1983, pp. 76-8.
—Ed Decker