In 1994, WWD noted Lawrence Steele as “a new designer to watch” after the spring 1995 debut of his namesake label, which caught the attention of retailers such as Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. Steele a member of the 1985 School of Art Institute in Chicago, had already been bringing his design sensibility to some of Milan’s most esteemed houses, including Moschino, Prada, Marni, when fashion began to take note of his rising star. Today, the designer brings the same conservative flair to Italian ready-to-wear brand Aspesi as its creative director. For “WWD Black In Fashion: 100 Years of Style, Culture and Influence,” he shared not just his experience as a designer, but what he found in Europe that he couldn’t in the United States. Here, an expert from the interview:
“When I was getting started in the industry, there were people like Patrick Kelly who was showing in Paris, Willi Smith and Toukie Smith doing their thing in New York, and then there were all the girls on the catwalks, doing the Saint Laurent shows. . . . It was the ’80s, and it just felt like we had all ended up on the same hike, and here we were all working. . . .I met Franco Moschino at a dinner . . . in Italy. . . . If you look in [the Moschino] archives, there’s a period in which one of the catwalks was covered in Louis Vuitton logos. That was me. . . .I brought some American tropes to his journey and kind of upscaled his language.”
“I went to Prada before Prada was all that and helped to make it all that. I contributed American minimalism, and then there was the European sense of fashion history as a kind of garnish to a clean aesthetic. . . . Working alongside Miuccia for seven years really opened my mind to everything . . . the culture you can express through wearing clothing.”
“When he started his namesake collection in 1997, after Prada, it was about creating something that people could see or feel. Understand my hand, my point of view, my voice. I did things that were overtly and iconically feminine, neckline, body conscious pieces, volume, and things like that.”
From the Fairchild Archive, a look back at Lawrence Steele’s spring 1998 ready-to-wear collection runway show in Milan.
