# Christopher Paul: The Future of Fashion: Rejecting the System as a Designer of Color

14 January 2022

ClickerMe interviews Christoper Paul, a design student from Houston,TX that inter-sectionalizes wearable art, fashion design, and sculpture through the frame work of Afro-American abstract art movements, his African American cultural identity, and Black critical theory and musical compositions. Christopher’s body of work both dissects and conceptualises the intricacies of black life and liveliness. Jumping between the adversities and liberation’s of blackness within, but not limited to the African American retrospect and the African diaspora. To discover what it means to be Black in this world and sometimes other worlds.

**What do you see for the future of Fashion?**

I see the future of Fashion no longer being referred to as “Fashion” in the way in which we use it today. It’s too confining. As we begin to embrace slower ways of creating, developing, producing, and consuming. We’ll begin to shift our focus to longevity, reusability, and simplicity. Leading to increased creativity/conceptuality, inclusivity, immersiveness, and social equity. Fashion will not be fashion it will be something else entirely.

**What are your career aspirations?**

After graduation I intend on further developing into both an independent label and a working fine artist. Holding small collections/capsules that are directly inspired by my own sculptural pieces. Lending itself to organic conceptual processes and aligning myself with a strict operation of lower consumption rates and ensuring a longevity of product. Additionally I’m interested in teaching, and educational programming. I’m thrilled to enmesh these principles in an initiative to creatively educate people of all ages from my ethnic heritage. Creating a co-op space where they can learn abstract creative design processes simultaneously allowing collaborative professional development to take place through live project briefs in tandem with collections I would produce for my independent label.

**Do you feel it is important to be recognized as a black designer? Is it a title that confines or liberates you?**

I am both a black designer/artist and a designer/artist. I identify as a Black queer designer because I am defined in this world as a Black queer person in the division of labor and society, but I don’t seek to be complacent in this position. I identify as a Black queer individual for myself not the industry or any pre-disposed system therefore my art must express this rejection of such a system/industry. As this is what art has always been. A rejection of a system or an industry. Especially an industry that has commodified off of the fruits of black/Afro-American culture and has re-packaged it for white commodification to make blackness digestible. While at the same time dismissing me and placing me into a niche that romanticizes my oppression. I am not a sub-category to the default whiteness or a victim mourning my dystopian reality. I am fiercely conscious and liberated in this state which allows me to create, like my ancestors, liveliness within the dystopia of my collective black reality. It’s liberating, but confining when those whom are non-black try and define me for their own digestibility.

**What does disrupting the industry look like to you?**

Disrupting the industry looks like being anti-industry. In whichever facet you choose to view it in.

**Do future designers need design institutions to have a budding career in the industry?**

Future designers do not need them but do need them. We live in an age where the highlights of our lives are out on display for people to be immersed in and people have found communities through this process and opportunities to collaborate with people in the industry. But at the same time the road to get there is a lot longer and the pool of people a lot denser as we battle against people who can afford to go to top design institutions that have connections with design conglomerates and important publications that can carry them to the status of ‘budding’ a lot quicker. The real question should be why does the industry continue to claim inclusivity and diversity but prioritize access for those who can afford to have seats at the table over those of us who have to crawl before we can even begin to walk and sit at the table?

**How can Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity be implemented effectively in the design industry?**

I believe the industry needs to re-educate its miss education of diversity and inclusivity by creating IED (Inclusion, equity and diversity) programming into the fabric of its shell. The way the industry uses these words today is performative. Once this miseducation is addressed then equity can happen so that the industry can create opportunities for those of us who come from diverse backgrounds.