Willi Smith Brought Fashion to the Streets—Now the Cooper Hewitt Is Bringing the American Sportswear Pioneer Home to You

is the first institution to dedicate an exhibition to Smith, an African-American designer of sportswear basics. The “street couture” in the show’s title comes from that of the designer’s 1983 collection, which was a collaborative multimedia experience. Smith’s desire to bring art into the lives of many resulted in groundbreaking partnerships with architects, dancers, graphic designers, filmmakers, and visual artists. He was absolutely ahead of his time.

Smith died of AIDS-related causes at 39 in 1987 and while Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Cooper Hewitt’s curator of contemporary design, and her team found little to mine in history books, they discovered Smith and his work was very much alive minds, hearts, memories , of friends, family, and fans. “Smith’s community,” said Cameron, “revealed to us that he was more than a designer—he was an activist, an entrepreneur, a cultural catalyst, and a confidant.

“I don’t design clothes for the Queen, but for the people who wave at her as she goes by,” Smith once said. Through this technology, says Cameron, the public can “rectify history” and actively shape the dialogue around Smith, who clearly deserves a throne.

It wasn’t something that we had planned; it sort of really carried us forward, like a wave is the only way I could describe it. When we began researching Smith’s life and work we realized that the majority of information that existed about him was in the memories, storage spaces, closets, and the histories of his friends and collaborators and [chosen] family. That’s something that we wanted to put forward in every aspect of the exhibition and also the book.

The clothes were designed to be transformational for people. Willi’s message was the people made the clothes, not vice versa. People were coming to us saying, ‘I remember my Williwear, I wore it to my prom,’ or ‘This one blazer I had made me feel like this.’ We have [an ongoing] open call to crowdsource information for research. We wanted to really capture those stories and put them alongside some of the interviews that we did for the book with people like choreographer Bill T.

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