Stephen Burrows (designer)

Stephen Burrows (born in Newark, New Jersey on May 15, 1943) is an American fashion designer based in New York City. He went to the Fashion Institute of Design, then began work in the New York City's garment center, alternately managing his own businesses and working closely with luxury department store Henri Bendel. He is known for being the first African-American fashion designer to develop a mainstream, high-fashion clientele. His garments, known for their bright colors and "lettuce" curly-edges, became an integral part of the "Fun City" New York City disco-dancing scene of the 1970s.[1]

Stephen Burrows was born in Newark, New Jersey on May 15, 1943. He was raised by his mother, Octavia Pennington, and her mother, Beatrice Pennington Banks Simmons (sometime sample hand for Hattie Carnegie). Fascinated with his grandmother's zigzag sewing machine, he learned to sew early. He made his first garment for a friend's doll when he was eight years old.

As a high school student, Burrows took dance lessons and loved the mambo. He began heading to Manhattan on Sundays to dance at the Palladium, and then it was a natural step to begin sketching dresses he wanted for his partners. However, when he graduated from Newark's Arts High School, he first enrolled at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art, intending to be an art teacher.

Inspired by dress forms he came across during a tour of the college, he transferred to New York City's Fashion Institute of Technology, but found it frustrating. FIT professors taught a set of basic draping rules that Burrows had no patience with. Even then he had established his spontaneous style of cutting at all angles, stretching edges off grain, and draping as he went. Nonetheless, he graduated in 1966.

Burrows began his working career with a job at blouse manufacturer Weber Originals.[2] While working there, he created pieces for his friends to wear out dancing. Gradually his work was picked up by small shops, and in 1968 he began working with Andy Warhol and his entourage at Max's Kansas City, selling across the street at the O Boutique. Burrows' clothes were described as the fashion embodiment of the electric sexuality of this era. The women who wore his clothes gave off this aura of frantically creative days and wild nights filled with disco music and glamorous people.

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