PS: How would you assess the state of racial inclusivity in fashion?
"Often, these companies don't understand our culture or our style, yet they're the ones making the final decision on what's being sold to us."
MW: The pandemic definitely played a big role, and it's terrible that it took situations like George Floyd and protests for our community to get to a level where retailers like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's are doing the Fifteen Percent Pledge to include Black designers. But 10 years ago when I started, that did not exist at all. So even though the progression is slow, I'll take slow and steady over stagnant any day. At some point, the efforts need to be more than buying our product just because there's a quota to fill. We need to get to a space where it's more people that look like us in the positions to make important decisions and know what's necessary for our culture. Often, these companies don't understand our culture or our style, yet they're the ones making the final decision on what's being sold to us. So we need more people that look like us to properly tell the stories of designers like myself, who are actually doing this for the culture and understand what we want.
