Five little-known black designers took the spotlight on the final day of Milan fashion week
The fashion designer Claudia Gisèle Ntsama’s cocktail dresses are a feat of engineering, their spools of unravelled thread seemingly suspended around the body as if held in a spider’s web. Ntsama, one of five little-known black Italian designers in the spotlight on the final day of Milan fashion week, supported herself by working as a cleaner while she created the collection, for which she cites the high-concept Japanese designers Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto as inspiration.
The Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean, a protegee of Giorgio Armani who launched her label a decade ago, describes Ntsama as “a great talent of haute couture”. Jean, a campaigner for equality and diversity in Italian fashion, believes the challenges Ntsama has faced “render her story all that much more extraordinary and admirable, considering how sophisticated and at what a high level her work is executed”.
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