In a talk Tuesday at Harlem’s Fashion Row’s summit, creator Theaster Gates outlined fashion’s need for a change in thinking.
Group — is working to provide. The three-year incubator for emerging talent across fashion, design and industrial arts is set to surface new talent from little-tapped backgrounds.
Instead, many companies have still rested on the laurels of that familiar trope: “I can’t find enough talented people of color.” That extends to art, too. Jean-Michel Basquiat, for example, didn’t have a formal art education, but relied on the resources he had and the opportunities he created for himself and still rose to more prominence than most. Going even further back, Louis Armstrong did not attend the Manhattan School of Music to become Louis Armstrong.
“Innovation is part of the gift of the undercommons. Part of the gift of poverty is that you’re constantly having to solve real problems — not imaginary problems — so imagine when you give a person who’s been solving life problems all their lives, when you give them a platform and an amplified situation and then they’re solving design problems? It’s an easy thing,” Gates said.
Now it’s not only about fashion making more space in their minds to see talent where they might not have looked, but to cultivate that talent accordingly—whether it’s design talent or other creative or business talent across the reaches of the industry.
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