My mom, Dana, built tool sets at a tool factory; on the weekends she became a sexy Donna Karan power woman. My Grandma Hattie was a factory knitter, but she moonlighted as a feline Patrick Kelly–esque dame, particularly on Sundays. Read the full story by Charles Harbison ’03 in The Atlantic.

I’m a fashion designer. My muses are working-class Black women, like my mom and grandma.

By Charles Harbison ’03 | The Atlantic

My mom, Dana, built tool sets at a tool factory; on the weekends she became a sexy Donna Karan power woman. My Grandma Hattie was a factory knitter, but she moonlighted as a feline Patrick Kelly–esque dame, particularly on Sundays.

Growing up in small-town North Carolina in the ’90s, I loved watching them: their joie de vivre and sexual confidence contrasting with the blue-collar reality of their lives from 8 to 5 every weekday; their armor and shield, sword and dagger, in the form of suits, clutches, earrings, and sheaths. I became a fashion designer, and they are my consummate muses, working-class and Black.

High fashion has ignored these women’s stories. But they are a pillar of American fashion, a conduit of sartorial expression. These women took artistic license to write their own beauty narrative, one that refused to be boxed in by the utilitarianism of blue-collar work.

Continue reading this article in The Atlantic →

Charles Harbison ’03 is a fashion designer, artist, and Park Scholar in the Class of 2003.