CFDA Honorees Aurora James and Dapper Dan Discuss Inclusivity and Change

Written By STEFF YOTKA

The CFDA Awards are the United States’s most prestigious fashion ceremony, but in the 40 years that the organization has doled out fashion honors, a Black designer has never been recognized with the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award, nor has a Black woman has never won an award voted on by CFDA members. (Many have received honors like the Fashion Icon Award or the Founders Award.) Those realities speak to fashion’s continual exclusion of Black talent, even after the racial reckonings of 2020, when many companies and fashion insiders vowed to do better. Some of this will change on November 10 when Dapper Dan receives the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award and Aurora James receives The Founders Award for the 15% Pledge. (Though as James notes, her honor comes at the hands of the CFDA board, not voters. She was nominated in 2016 in the Emerging Accessory Designer category and again in 2018 in the Emerging Talent category, but did not win.) But whether acknowledged by the industry or not, Dapper Dan and Aurora James are two of fashion’s most fearless and resilient creatives. Both have launched independent businesses, weathered personal and professional hardships, and come out as advocates for change—and they are only getting started. James’s 15% Pledge has done tangible financial work to bring Black businesses to a larger market. Buoyed by partnerships with Gucci, Pepsi, and the NFL, and a bustling Harlem atelier, Dan’s renaissance is proving the power of fashion that speaks to its community.

Steff: Thank you both for being on this call today. Have you met each other before? Aurora James: We have never really met before, but in many ways it’s probably quite likely that I would not be here if it weren’t for you. I’m incredibly honored to be on this call today with you.

Dapper Dan: I don’t recall ever meeting you either, but your amazing work has reached me before I got this opportunity to really see you and speak with you. I’m so impressed by how you have impacted fashion. Change always has to come from activism. I know activists—and there are tons of activists—but a true activist has a plan. You are a true activist because you came in with a plan, and that makes all the difference in the world. How did you come up with that idea of the 15% Pledge? Aurora: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. The 15% Pledge was not an organization that I set out with intention to create. It was something that happened out of necessity, that started on Instagram and is now one of the fastest growing nonprofits in America. We’ve carved out over $10 billion going to Black-owned businesses across the United States and Canada, which is incredibly exciting. For me, it was just so painful to be a young person who was so inspired by fashion, loved fashion so much, and just continually saw Black bodies on mood boards and not in boardrooms. Taking the 15% Pledge from an idea to something that’s being honored by the CFDA [with The Founder’s Award], I think holds a lot of weight and will continue to speak volumes to the work that we’re trying to do and push forward in the industry.

Dan: Receiving the CFDA [Lifetime Achievement] Award, to me, feels a little different, because my journey has been so long. What I’ve been thinking over since they announced that I was going to get this award, is that the award could represent two things. One, it could be a recognition for all the work that I’ve put in for the past 35 years that was never acknowledged. It could also be an apology. I’ve seen a lot of people of color who went unrecognized in the past will be apologized to at the moment they finally get an award. I’m as concerned about who presents the award to me as I am about receiving the award and what it looks like for people of color. It has to resonate with people in the industry as well as the people that I feel I represent in my community. I know there’s a bigger story of just getting the award, but I don’t want to just get it. I want them to say, “He’s come a long way. Look what the culture has done. Look what the culture pushed forward.” That’s what I want this moment to represent for me. I sense a strong feeling of insecurity in those who control the fashion industry now. They are not comfortable with the change that’s taken place. They know there has to be a change, but I don’t think they’re quite comfortable with it yet. When you offer them ideas about what change should look like in fashion, they seem to gravitate towards what it was as opposed to what it can be.

Aurora: For everyone that’s taken the pledge—28 businesses and counting—there are a lot who haven’t. The Pledge is only 15%, but Black-owned businesses were taking up less than 1% of shelf space in most stores. Going from very little to 15% means a lot of money going to people who are, as the industry calls them, “underrepresented.” Black-owned businesses aren’t just underrepresented, they’ve been excluded and a lot of that exclusion has been very intentional. I am really happy that there are a lot of large companies who are agreeing to shift their revenue to support people that haven’t had opportunities in the past, but it also begs the question: What about the retailers who aren’t willing to change? You can’t have racial justice without economic justice. You just can’t. Dan: When I was forced underground and was underground for 20 years, I used to travel from New York to Chicago, hitting all the Black cities and going to all the Black stores. I would see amazing stores with amazing merchandising in Black communities with Black owners. These stores, these businesses died on the shelf; in other words, they had no ability to reach a larger market. What you have done is to enable them to reach a larger market. Thank you for that.

Aurora: Thank you. That’s the whole thing to me. Once you get to a certain place in the fashion industry and you have a quote-unquote seat at the table, well, what are you going to do at that table? Are you going to come to a fancy place and just sit there and eat with everyone and not say something? Or are you going to deliver a message that needs to be delivered to a room of people that need to hear it? I can only be where I am because I’m standing on the backs of other people, like you, who, for many years, were not able to be involved in certain rooms because people fought very hard to exclude you from those rooms. Now they are willing to let me into the room, let Kerby [Jean-Raymond] into the room, let Christopher John Rogers into the room. I then have a responsibility to make sure that after I enter a room, the door can be open and other people can walk through it. Those people can come into that room and say, no, this room is not for me and go build their own house, but it’s important for them to have that opportunity. I’m not saying that every Black person should shop at these stores that’ve taken the Pledge, but what we need to make sure is that white consumers have Black-owned businesses available to them to buy, so that Black communities aren’t expected to solely be dependent on Black people for their existence. White people also need to be making that investment too.

Dan: I think the most amazing element about what you have done is that it affects the bottom line. It makes sense for stores to put creative people of color in these spaces. It is an economic platform not a charity platform.

Aurora: Listen, my grandmother used to say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” meaning that you need to put more than just intention behind yourself if you’re trying to actually make change. That’s why it was so important to make all of our pledge-takers sign a contract. With Nordstrom, for example, that’s a 10-year contract and we audit our pledge-takers every quarter and push for progress. Like you said, it’s an economic proposition. We are a data-based nonprofit, we want to know data and we want to know dollars. There is an emotional side that comes with it as well, but that is a lifetime journey. Black people are not a monolith. Everyone’s going to need their own sort of reckoning, their own sort of healing, and their own sort of discovery. What I’m just hoping for is more autonomy for Black business owners who want to support their own Black communities, so that we can gain more independence in this country. I think, in general, that in 2020 people made a lot of promises, but if they don’t have outside partners holding them accountable, well, then I don’t know that you can expect much to change.

Steff: How important is it for both of you to operate in the quote/unquote fashion system, which has been traditionally very exclusionary of Black people while appropriating Black culture? Dan: I have to give you a little bit of background. When I first opened my store, all the rappers used to come to me. Rappers then started taking off. I was the only designer who all the rappers used to wear on Yo! MTV Raps and in all the venues that were available to them at that time. Once the fashion industry discovered how I built this following, they said if the artists wear anything that is made by Dapper Dan, we will not advertise with you. The most powerful vehicle we had to promote our brand was taken away from us. We lost the influence. I think everything that happens today has everything to do with the power of influence. My concern today is that hip-hop music has a powerful influence on fashion. What I noticed about the jazz age, the blues age, and all those ages when Black cultural influence has proliferated is that, for example, you see the roots of R&B filter out into the Beatles and then we lose the power over our own culture.

Aurora: I think what they did to you in terms of oppressing your art is really egregious. In a lot of ways, the oppression of African-American creativity and African-American empowerment is still happening. And oppression has many forms. Brother Vellies had these shoes that were doing so well, making them in Ethiopia with women who, in some cases, were working for the very first time in their lives. Steve Madden comes out with shoes that are the same, branding them the same way. Nobody said anything. That’s a form of oppression. Or if I go somewhere and stand up for what I believe in [at the Met Gala], the Right Wing media attacks me and attacks another woman of color. That’s the same tool of oppression. In a lot of ways, it’s easier for these major companies to continue to support people who don’t say anything, who aren’t a threat, and who are going with the status quo. You have brands that have a ton of money who are just paying people to just roll with the flow instead of actually supporting people who are pushing forward. That is still oppression. It’s just packaged differently. It’s a lot more covert now, but it’s very real.

Dan: Very well said.

Steff: How do you stay motivated to keep going?

Dan: Well, the first thing I learned was how to do bad. Everybody knows how to do good but how many of us know how to do bad? Because of that I always knew that I could start all over again; I created a platform to be able to start all over again. I immersed myself in the community that made it possible for me to be who I am today—and I constantly nurture that, I constantly nurture that and keep that active.

I take the buses, I take the trains, I sit on the corner and talk to people even though I know they can’t afford luxury fashion. I stay motivated through them, through knowing that they are there for me and always will be there for me.

Aurora: I think in my case, staying motivated is just knowing how hard it’s been at different points for me. I still own 100% of Brother Vellies. That was not a choice. It is because no one was ever willing to really place a bet on me. There are 1,500 Black-owned businesses that we’re monitoring and talking to all the time at the Pledge. Seeing the potential that they have to grow and the opportunities that they’re going to have to expand—that’s really what it’s all about to me. Growing up, there was Tracy Reese [who was popular in the mainstream] and, really, that was it. Even to this day, when you think about the CFDA, who was the last Black female designer to win a CFDA award? I think Tracy Reese was nominated, but I don’t know that she ever won. [Ed. note: Reese never won a CFDA Award; she is currently on the CFDA Board of Directors.] More recently, I’m pretty much the only Black woman that’s been nominated—and, listen, this is the first CFDA Award that I’m being given and it’s because it was voted on by the board of directors. I think there’s so much of looking outward for a lot of this external validation, like who wore it? Where was it? What award did you win? My advice for young designers or young entrepreneurs would be: Focus on your immediate community and get the people that are close to you excited about that. I think the best brands are the ones that really spread organically within their community. I created the Pledge because someone was talking about another brand and said well, they love Black people. They donated $2 million to the NAACP. Black people spend more than that in the first hour on any given Tuesday that most major retailers are open! A donation is not love. That’s not respect. That’s a slap in the face. We really have to raise the bar. Black people work really hard for their money. The data is there. We know what Black women’s pay is compared to white men. We have to work way, way, way, way, way harder than white men for that money—and we are giving our money away to people who do not even care about us at all. They put one Black model in a campaign and they think that is OK! What’s important to you should be how those people are showing up for your community in a real way—not just now, were they showing up before? Every single time you spend a dollar, every time you click something, every time you like something, you’re advocating for that thing to be alive and thrive.

Dan: That’s a good point. What I love about you is that your product is who you are and what you stand for. I think nothing is more powerful than who you are. The first question I ask myself when designing is: if I’m going to create a garment, why should I expect somebody to wear it? To me, the most important thing is, who creates that fashion? What do they stand for? Why would somebody want to be connected to that? Yesterday Salma Hayek came into the store and said, “Dapper Dan, I want that big Swarovski patch.” Wall Street guys who only wear pinstripe, navy, or gray suits come in and say, “Dapper Dan, I want your name on our back.” People now recognize me for who I am and what I stand for.

Aurora: In the beginning of this conversation, when you spoke about what this award meant to you, the first thing that popped into my head was apology. I think that every single person that’s in attendance at this awards show should be on that stage to give you this award because everyone has been complicit in this and we all need to collectively realize that. I think you and I being up there is really an amazing thing, but there are a lot of other people that are never going to have that moment. My heart just breaks. Talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not. I think about all of the amazing people that the world has missed out on because we’ve been too blind to see them. I’m so grateful that now I get to be in spaces with you and learn from you. And hopefully both of us can continue to teach other people and make the world feel a little bit less harsh.