initiative, a $25,000 pledge from childrenswear brand Janie & Jack, and funds raised by HFR through ticket sales to virtual launch.HFR’s second annual designer retreat, held virtually in July, connected 75 designers with industry titans, including Terri Agins, Donna Karen, Ralph Lauren, and Tracy Reese.
In addition to her full-time job, Daniel was studying international trade and marketing at FIT, and volunteering at Harlem menswear boutique B. Oyama to learn more about the retail business. Oyama quickly agreed to present at the show, but it was a hard sell for others. “It was really tough to get people on board because no one knew who I was,” Daniel says. “I asked for so much help.”
Save for a few contributions from friends and small partnership deals, Daniel funded the early years of HFR through her savings and 9-to-5. She could have done things on a smaller scale, but noting the adage that when you’re Black you have to work twice as hard to get half as far, she willingly spent what was needed to ensure HFR shows were on par with those on the official New York Fashion Week calendar.
“Young people tell me all the time, ‘I’m a fashion designer,’” Smaltz says, “and I never want to discourage anyone, but you need money to run a fashion business, and how many Black designers have that kind or money or have a sponsor?”in 2009, was introduced to Daniel by fellow designer Kiki Peterson, and was selected to present her collection during HFR’s 2010 New York Fashion Week event. At the time, her designs were, in her words, “very bubblegum”—lots of spandex and neon and bows.
Today, during a watershed moment in race relations, Daniel’s message that the fashion industry has a responsibility to support and celebrate designers of color is no longer falling on deaf ears. She still has the notebook she took to dinner with Smaltz that outlined her vision, and she’s finally starting to see it come to fruition. “We’re not having a surface dialogue anymore,” she says. “We’re having honest conversations about systemic racism, and it feels like real change is here.