Every Wednesday in February, Bobby Couch hosted a variety of Black fashion designers and talent at his clothing boutique, Hosful Collective, in Old Town East.
The arts and lifestyle director is a familiar figure in the Columbus fashion community, from the Columbus Fashion Alliance to the Columbus Black Fashion Expo.
Couch first hosted the expo in February 2019. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the expo hasn’t been held in recent years.
He wanted to ensure the 2022 event would be its largest-ever attended, especially following the social justice protests and increased isolation of people in 2020. But new variants of COVID-19 have led organizers to decide to postpone the expo again until this summer.
To keep the momentum going, Couch partnered with Parsons Avenue clothing boutique Hosful Collective and its owner, Lindsay Drahos, to spotlight Black fashion talent throughout February. The boutique is a community-oriented initiative that houses small brands without a physical storefront, and seemed like the perfect place to spotlight Black fashion designers.
Black fashion designers and other talented people are unique in their experiences and challenges in the industry. In Columbus in particular, fashion plays a major economic role but often takes a back seat culturally. Whether they’re preaching about the importance of ownership or advocating for opportunities for advancement, their challenges mirror those facing the Black community at large.
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Black Fashion Expo’s smaller, retail-focused events are an opportunity to build community while also spotlighting Black creators in the fashion industry, like By the People’s Kiera Chatman. Chatman, a real estate agent and former fashion buyer, originally launched By the People in 2020 as a marketing tool for her real estate business.
The line, which includes t-shirts, hoodies, and other items, features slogans about generational wealth, supporting Black businesses, and encouraging Black homebuyers, while also highlighting the systemic obstacles that have and continue to stand in their way.
There are also cultural references related to real estate and community building.
“We have a lot of people who aren’t in our community who come in and say, ‘What’s 40 acres and a mule?'” Chatman said, referring to one of the many slogans printed on By the People clothing, “So this is just to encourage people to question and dig deeper.”
Like By the People, Love Savage is also featured on Hosful, a shop that focuses on small, local brands and designers, providing an accessible and affordable space while also raising awareness.
Scott Keyes started Love Savage a little over a year ago. Originally from Cincinnati, he went to school in Columbus and returned a few years ago after more than a decade.
He said he’d always been interested in fashion but didn’t really understand the stories behind the clothes he was wearing, which made it important for his own brand.
The message he’s trying to get across is two-fold: love what you do, but be relentless in it.
“Part of my brand is being fiercely driven with what I love, and this is what I love – my clothing line – and I’m so passionate about it,” Keys said. “I’m working really hard to get it out there.”
Black fashion designers claim ownership
As a business owner, Couch said business development has served him well in an industry where ownership is paramount.
After a situation where a “major fashion organization” tried to block him from starting his own company, he says he was able to use the experience as an opportunity to really learn about intellectual property and understand what it means to be a business owner and entrepreneur.
He is also the marketing lead for My Brother’s Keeper Village and the Columbus Fashion Alliance, a Columbus youth fashion program that launched a clothing collection last year. The project started with a group of Columbus youth starting a line they initially called “Industry Plant,” but the group pivoted to the “Made to Grow” line after the previous name was already a business.
While the project successfully overcame a name restructuring and successfully incorporated Industry Plant into the brand’s collection, it also demonstrated firsthand the importance of trademarking and protecting intellectual property.
“It’s about how you deal with those challenges in terms of trademarks and licenses and making sure you have proper ownership of your name,” Couch said.
Yohanan Terrell, founder of the Columbus Fashion Alliance and marketing firm Warhol & Wall Street, said the fashion industry is tricky to navigate because of fashion cycles and a lack of truly new ideas.
As part of its efforts to help up-and-coming business owners navigate the industry, the Columbus Fashion Alliance has partnered with intellectual property attorneys to teach business owners how to protect their names and ideas and will host workshops to learn more about things like trademarking and how to partner with bigger brands.
Terrell himself got his start in the fashion industry by working with several small fashion brands and organizations. His work with the Creative Columbus committee inspired the creation of the Columbus Fashion Alliance, whose mission is to provide opportunities for people to grow and succeed through fashion in Columbus, Terrell said. “Fashion isn’t just for retailers. It’s for everyone here.”
Black fashion talent gets support from major retailers
Terrell points out that although Columbus ranks third in the United States in terms of the number of designers working in the area, the city’s fashion community is very fragmented compared to the top two cities, New York City and Los Angeles.
“If you look at other markets like New York and Los Angeles, there’s a symbiotic relationship between culture and brands,” he says. “The creative class and retail industries go hand in hand.”
With organizations like the Columbus Fashion Alliance focusing on building opportunity as well as infrastructure, there’s room for big names in Columbus’ fashion industry to pitch in to support Black creators.
“The first step is breaking down those barriers, getting out of the silos and starting to integrate more with the community,” he said. “There’s a huge opportunity for retailers here to recognize and embrace the wealth of talent that’s here.”
Model Genevieve Effa, for example, had no idea how many fashion retailers were founded or headquartered in Greater Columbus before she moved here.
A Maryland native, she moved to Columbus in 2016. She was initially signed with an agency in Akron, then found her footing in the Columbus fashion world and eventually signed with Heyman Talent Agency, a Midwest talent agency with offices in Cincinnati, Louisville and Columbus.
Effa has high praise for the Columbus fashion industry, and Heyman in particular, which has provided her with many opportunities and has kept her employed to this day. “That was the moment that really took off,” she says.
Effa then met people like Couch, who introduced her to black fashion creators in Columbus. Effa said that most of the fashion designers she first met were white, and that black creators needed more space and opportunities.
“I think this not only inspires other Black models and creators like me, but shows them that they can do it too,” Effa said.
Terrell said the problem is that there isn’t much of a pathway between Black designers and entrepreneurs and major retailers, and Black creatives may be hesitant to work with major retailers for fear of losing control over their designs.
But there are opportunities there, he said, particularly in unique partnerships and hiring designers who entered the industry through non-traditional routes.
Columbus retailers include Lane Bryant’s partnership with artist April Sunami, Abercrombie & Fitch’s collaboration with artist Francesca Miller and Columbus lifestyle boutique Madison USA’s hiring of marketing director Lavelle Stillwell as a designer, to name a few.
“Especially in this day and age where we want to create more meaningful things,” Terrell said, “I think it’s really valuable for local retailers to partner with these designers.”
Keys believes that major retailers giving opportunities to Black creators will help them get to the next level.
“I think it’s really great to shine a spotlight on great people doing great things in Columbus. It gives us an opportunity that we didn’t have before,” he said. “Especially in Columbus, give us a chance, a chance.”
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