Black Fashion Designers Get Spotlight In ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot

Gossip Girl just got a reboot with a whole new generation of rich kid and cool kid drama — and all the fashion we can stan. It’s still set in NYC’s richest neighborhoods, but this time around it’s not so white-washed. The new student body checks off nearly all of the diversity boxes for race, sexuality, and intersetionality. (Even the lead actress, Jordan Alexander, is a Black woman).

[SEE ALSO: Christopher John Rogers Brings Runway Drama To New Target Collection]

Eric Daman, the costume designer for both series, tapped into social media to redefine fashion couture for the series. It’s younger, fresher, and much more fluid. That’s where luxury Black designers like Christopher John Rogers, LaQuan Smith, and Brittain’s Grace Wales Bonner come in.

Rogers gets his shine in the premiere episode with an epic fashion show that rivaled the best of New York Fashion Week’s presentation.

He has been making waves over the past few years, winning both the 2019 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund and the 2020 CFDA American Emerging Designer of the Year awards. So, when he made headlines for Zendaya’s winning 2020 Emmys look, Daman was tuned in.

Daman was also tuned in when Rogers presented his Spring 2021 Collection 006 as a digital lookbook last fall. So much so that that collection is now a full-blown fashion runway show in the series premiere.

“I’m so grateful that the internet led me here,” Daman said in a recent interview. And so are we, to see all of his structured silhouettes, contrasting patterns that would make Cruella swoon, free-flowing fabrics, and vibrant prints come to life on stage.

It seemed all perfectly timed, too. The new collection is now available in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman (just one month after his limited-edition Target launch sold out in days).

Paparazzi photos show looks from Smith’s Fall/Winter 2020 collection, including this sheer bodysuit are set to make an appearance as a must-have for Alexander’s character, Julien Calloway.

Of her style, Daman told WWD, “I really looked toward early VMAs of the late ’90s, early Aughts of Destiny’s Child. Looking at that led me to LaQuan Smith. LaQuan had just come out with that collection that felt very VMAs, very Destiny’s Child, of that era, but it was contemporary high fashion.”

The diversity doesn’t end there, either. MONSE fashion duo Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia pulled up for the premiere episode with their own preppy-meets-chic collection also graced the premiere with a live fashion show. Kim is South Korean and Garcia is Dominican.

We expect to see more diverse looks and can’t wait to explore looks from Whitney Peak’s character, Zoya, who Daman shares are fused with her activist and sociopolitical background “to show fashion as a platform that has a voice and has a power and that she can use that in the way she dresses to kind of sum up who she is.”

Watch Gossip Girl on HBO Max. New episodes drop Thursdays at 3 am EST/ 12 am PST.