This particularly ornate dress is by Oliver Rousteing. I chose this dress primarily because even from far away I could instantly recognise the designer, but mainly because I found it interesting how the FIT museum included Oliver Rousteing as a ‘black’ fashion designer as he was raised in France, adopted at the age of one. However, I also noticed how the exhibition demonstrates and curates its objects by several generations of fashion designers of African descent from the 1950s to the present. The inclusion of Rousteing projects an eccentric perspective of a black designer from a starkly different cultural background that is not entirely American or African.

Moreover, unlike other designers in the exhibition, like Patrick Kelly Duro Olowu, who eminently convey race and roots in their design, Rousteing’s design focuses on gender and female empowerment, which is another interesting and diverse angle the museum offered. For instance, “Patrick Kelly… drew inspiration from his American Southern roots. The colourful buttons on his knit dress reference the mismatched buttons his grandmother used to mend his family’s clothing.” And Duro Olowu drew on multiple cultural perspectives that stresses Africa’s historic role in cultural production and international trade. Rousteing however in his interview with the British Vogue stressed that “A woman who is going to wear Balmain is a warrior,” and that “The women I dress are powerful, they are strong, they are women who are going to change the world.” Furthermore, in terms of fashion history, Rousteing is one of the designers who strongly made use of social media and celebrities as a marketing tool of the current generation. His impact, although it may seem trivial at the moment, on Instagram have had tremendous impact in the fashion industry including the Kardashians, Jennners and his so called ‘Balmain Army’ who he uses these women to essentially have “deeply personal relationships and self identity” to clothing, as mentioned in Why Women Wear What They Wear by Sophie Woodward. Thus, I feel that this particular garment and the designer himself, Rousteing, was included in the exhibition to approach the multi faceted characteristics that black fashion designers communicate in their designs.