Cover image: Newspaper article about Jay Jaxon (cropped)
Source of original article unknown - fair use claim

Last week, when I posted about ETBP's newest walking tour, Black Paris Pilgrimage - A Walk through Père Lachaise Cemetery, I began thinking about the all-too-short life of fashion designer Patrick Kelly.  A 2020 article in i-D of the Vice Media Group states that he was the first American designer to make it in Paris, and I was ready to believe that.

Patrick Kelly
Screenshot from video called "Rifat Ozbek and Patrick Kelly," fashion 1989
Fair use claim

But when I began searching for information about other black designers in Paris, I learned that this is not true.

Jay Jaxon is described by the New York Times as "a promising young designer in Paris in the late 1960s and early ’70s" who "worked in the ateliers of esteemed Parisian fashion houses like Jean-Louis Scherrer, Yves Saint Laurent and Christian Dior, creating couture and ready-to-wear for them."

Newspaper clipping about Jay Jaxon
Original source unknown - fair use claim

The Times article goes on to say that Jaxon became the first Black designer to work in the top-tier couture ateliers in Paris.  He stayed there for several years, returning to New York City in 1973.  Jaxon's biographer and champion, Rachel Fenderson, describes him as having been largely "hidden in the fashion and historical narrative."

Kelly arrived in Paris six years later.  Though he was not the first African American to "make it" here, he was the first American to be accepted into the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode.  To be precise, he was accepted into the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode (the Union Chamber of Couturiers’ and Fashion Designers’ Ready-to-Wear). He was inducted into this illustrious institution in 1988.

Following in Jaxon's and Kelly's footsteps are Olivier Rousteing, appointed creative director of Balmain in 2011 (at the age of 24), and Virgil Abloh, the first African-American artistic director for Louis Vuitton (appointed in March 2018).  Though raised in France by adoptive parents, Rousteing claims African-African heritage (Somali mother and Ethiopian father).

Olivier Rousteing in 2016
My Wall Art
CC-BY 4.0

Virgil Abloh Virgil Abloh at Paris Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2019
Myles Kalus Anak Jihem
CC-BY-SA 4.0

In 2021, Haitian-American Kirby Jean-Raymond became the first Black designer to show his work as part of the official couture calendar for the Fédération.

For more information about black fashion designers and details about the nuances surrounding the Fédération, click HERE.