If you want to make veteran fashion designer, Byron Lars cry with joy, just arrange a surprise appearance by his brother, Vincent Lars. That was one of the highlights that took place at this year’s Harlem’s Fashion Row seventh Annual Fashion Show and Style Awards as Byron was presented with the Designer of the Year Award by his sibling. Vincent, who is a musician, shared with the audience his admiration for Byron’s universally praised talent.
“When you have a brother or sibling you don’t always know the talent they have until they envision everything they dreamed up,” he said. “I don’t know anything about fashion but I am so proud of him.”
The awards presentation continued with additional honorees including Beverly Johnson, who is celebrating the 40th anniversary of becoming the first African American woman on the cover of Vogue in 1974. Johnson found the HFR ICON 360 Award to be particularly timely and significant since the lack of diversity on fashion runways remains an issue.
“That Vogue cover is as significant today as it was when I got the cover. I went to a [runway] show today and there were no women of color in the show,” Johnson said. “That is why it is important that we can shine our own spotlight on ourselves.”
Additional honorees included former editor-at-large of Essence magazine Emil Wilbekin (Maverick Award), Huffington Post’s Julee Wilson (Journalist of the Year) Umindi Francis (Fashion Publicist of the Year) and Wouri Vice (Celebrity Stylist of the Year). Afterwards, there was a runway show by Lars, K. Milele by Kianga “Kiki Kitty” Peterson, Josh & Nicol and Harlem Haberdashery. The latter nearly stole the show with another surprise of the evening: rapper Fat Joe walking the runway in a dapper ensemble.
The nightlife comes to New York Fashion Week
New York City Midtown passersby were in for a few unexpected sightings as they came across the glass atrium of a commercial building during this season’s New York Fashion Week. The location was converted into an “Urban Garden Room” by arts organization, chashama and nightlife legend, Susanne Bartsch. It was all part of, Art-a-Porter, a takeover of NYFW with a cornucopia of multimedia that fused fashion, theater, performance and visual art by over 50 artists.
