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April Callahan
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Cassidy Zachary
Let's see. Payroll check. Inventory check Insurance.
Marcellus Reynolds
Ugh. Good thing Simply Business makes getting small
April Callahan
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Please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows. The history of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.
Cassidy Zachary
Welcome to Dress the History of Fashion,
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a podcast where we explore the who,
Cassidy Zachary
what, when of why, what where. We are fashion histor and your host, April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary.
Podcast Narrator/Producer
Dress listeners, I am just going to highlight some names you may or may not recognize.
April Callahan
Tina Turner, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne, Whitney
Podcast Narrator/Producer
Houston, Salt N Pepper, Missy Elliott, Beyonce, Just a few.
April Callahan
And just what do all of these women have in common in addition to being trailblazing singing and style superstars? Well, they are all featured in today's
Podcast Narrator/Producer
guest, Marcellus Reynolds new book, Supreme Sirens, Iconic Black Women Revolutionize Music, the third installment in his Supreme Women series that highlights groundbreaking models, actresses and now musicians.
Guest Host or Additional Commentator
You may remember that Marcellus joined us back in 2020 to celebrate the success of his first book in that series, Supreme Iconic Black Women who Revolutionized Fashion, the first ever art book devoted exclusively to black models.
Cassidy Zachary
And now he is back to talk
Guest Host or Additional Commentator
to us about the women who revolutionized music and also harness the power of fashion to do it. Marcellus, a warm welcome back to Dressed.
April Callahan
Hello. Marcellus, welcome back to Dressed.
Marcellus Reynolds
Hello. I could not be more excited. Good morning.
April Callahan
Good morning. You have been very busy since you were first here in September 2020, which is amazing. That was almost four years ago. You have done the Supreme Models documentary and you've written two more books. So congratulations.
Marcellus Reynolds
Thank you very much. Yeah, I am not slacking. I am on it. I am pushing forward.
April Callahan
As someone who knows how much work goes into the creation of a book, to have written two in the time span of four years is incredible. And to do the documentary, I mean that is really a feat of work and research and what beautiful books you have produced.
Marcellus Reynolds
Thank you. I know that like when I sit down and I think about it, it's like three books in five years. And the documentary, it just sounds crazy, but. Yeah, it is. But you know what's the craziest thing is that Supreme Models, the first book is turning five this year.
April Callahan
Wow.
Marcellus Reynolds
It seems like yesterday the Supreme Models came out. Like, I cannot believe. If this was a kid, I'd have like a five year old. He'd be going to like, you know, kindergarten.
April Callahan
I mean, I'm sure in many ways this is your baby, right? That was like your first book. And such an incredible feat of work and just a testament to the beauty of black achievement across modeling and now acting and singing, which is what we're going to talk about today. And in many ways, the creation of this series has been a deeply personal and maybe even a lifelong journey for you. I'd love if we could start with reminding our listeners about your path to the fashion industry. Starting with maybe if you have an earliest memory of fashion or dress that
Podcast Narrator/Producer
first sparked your interest.
Marcellus Reynolds
Well, my first memories of fashion are always going to center around the great loves of my life, my mother and my grandmother. And they were very different women. My grandmother, of course, came from this. This space of understanding the power of clothing. So she was always very well dressed when she left the house. She came from an era where you wear gloves and your hat, your gloves, your purse and your shoes matched. My grandmother also understood and taught me the importance of design and the importance for people of color, of dressing well. Right. She believed that if you dressed well, it made it easier for you out in the world. So my grandmother was the woman that left the house wearing a dress and stockings. And she wore fur and she wore cashmere. She wore the finest things. We went shopping together on Saturdays when I was a very little boy. And if I was good, and I was always good, the reward was like a ladies lunch. There's an incredible store called Marshall Fields in Chicago which no longer exists. It's a Macy's, but it was the store in Chicago back in the day, right. And she had two salespeople at Marshall Fields. And when she walked into the building, it was like people knew. It was like money in the room, right? People knew that Ms. Gillespie was coming and they would set things aside from her. And I was the little, like, gay kid that would be like, grandma Cashmere Grandma her. And she'd be like, boy, go get me a size up in this dress. And I'd run out and get her an 8, you know what I mean? I knew how to find the sizes and I could talk to the salespeople.
April Callahan
That's an incredible education in fashion.
Marcellus Reynolds
It was such an education. And my mother was very Modern in a way. So my mother had like bell bottom flat front jeans that she would bedazzle herself and she put things like peace on the jeans, you know what I mean? And I would help her bedazzle her jeans and she'd wear like tight T shirts that have slogans on them. And then she was also that woman that worked. And one of the things that I love about my mother was learning the rituals of making money. So every Friday after she got her check, she would go and she would get her hair done. So she'd come home with a fresh. Like when you're a black woman, you're in the salons all day, you know what I mean? She'd come home and her hair would be done right. It would be like. Some days it would be like a big curly afro with blonde highlights or it would be. I remember being fascinated as a child because one day she came home with a very strict, almost like Chinese looking bob and it had bangs. And what was so amazing about it is she had the nerve to have these two Chinese combs put in her hair on either side. And I was like, oh, my God, you look amazing. And so those women really, like, that was fashion for me. And I understood the importance. I understood when my mother would get dressed to go out on a Saturday night, you know what I mean? And if she was going on a date with a man, she dressed very different than she dressed when she was going out with her girlfriend, right?
April Callahan
Was there a generational gap between, like, your mother, it sounds like your mother, and how your grandmother dressed? Obviously was very different. Your mother is embracing kind of the youthful fashions of her era was definitely a generational difference.
Marcellus Reynolds
But I will say this. My there was a difference. But my mother, if my mother was going somewhere with my grandmother, my mother dressed for that. And when my mother had to go to, let's say, a meeting at school, she dressed for that, you know what I mean? She understood very much the same dynamic. They came at it from different ways. I think my mother dressed for her beauty. My mother dressed to slay people in the aisles, right? My grandmother dressed for the safety of her blackness, right? My grandmother dressed because she knew that dressing well as a black person was an act of rebellion, but it was also an act of safety. It was a way to get more respect. Whereas my mother dressed in this way, like to show off, you know what I mean? My mother was very pretty. And then she had, quote, unquote, good hair. So she understood the politics of putting on makeup and the politics of how tight your dress was or the importance of wearing a leather skirt and the power that that communicated. So I don't think it was about safety for her because her safety was the currency of her looks. For her, however, it was like, oh, I'm about to, excuse the expression, I'm about to give these bitches some heat. I'm about to make them mad right now. That's how I always thought my mother would leave the house and the other women would be like, here she come.
April Callahan
I love it. And I can't remember which book it was, but you wrote about how important fashion magazines were for you, how they were like air for you growing up.
Marcellus Reynolds
I write a little bit about how fashion saved my life in all three books. Right. Because I think especially for women, fashion is armor. So definitely there's a through line with all three books about how important to fashion is for these women to communicate their power, their talent, their self expression.
April Callahan
You just published the third book in the Supreme Women series. So you've added singers who have revolutionized the music industry to your illustrious list of iconic actresses and models who revolutionized Hollywood and fashion, respectively. So I would love if you could talk about the inspiration behind the supreme series, starting with, did you ever intend this to be a series or was it a byproduct of the first book's success?
Marcellus Reynolds
I did not think it was the series. It took forever to sell Supreme Models the book. I came up with the idea in 2011 because I collect art books as a fashion stylist. But let's go back even further. From a very young age, I understood the importance of magazines, art books, and encyclopedias. My grandmother bought me a set of encyclopedias when I was little because I was the kid that was always asking like crazy questions that she had no idea how to answer. So I'd be like, mama, why don't zombies eat each other? I was like that kid. And then I saw mahogany at like 8, which is the ultimate fashion movie. And I remember running into the kitchen and asking her where Italy was. Because Diana Ross leaves the south side of Chicago and she goes to Rome to become like a supermodel. And my grandmother was like, go get that eye encyclopedia and figure out where Italy is. And when you figure it out, you come in here and you read it to me. So when you learn, I'll learn. So I went and got the I encyclopedia and I learned about Italy. And then if you're Italian, you speak Italian. And Italian is one of the Romance languages, and the Romance languages are Portuguese, Italian, and France. It took my mind on the journey. And if Diana Ross could become a model from coming from the south side of Chicago, I could leave the south side of Chicago and go do whatever the hell I wanted to do. And my grandmother had Ebony and Essence and Jet in the house and she would make me read them to her from COVID to cover. And what I just discovered in my 50 plus years on this planet is when my grandmother was making me read to her, it was because she did not know how to read well herself. I think this is a woman that had a fifth grade education, right? So now she has this super smart grandson that started reading early and loved reading. And now I'm responsible for reading to her. And as I'm reading these magazines about black excellence, I'm learning that you can be excellent. And I'm incorporating that into my life and into my journey. When I hit a certain age in high school, it was fashion magazines, it was gq, it was Vogue, it was Interview magazine, which I loved because I love the whole idea of New York as this mecca. And I love the whole idea of how they would interview artists and photographers and models and actors and anybody that was like really interesting to be interviewed and interviewed. And it also fostered this idea that you could come from nothing and be famous. You just had to get to New York. Then when I got to a certain age, I started buying art books because I was self educating that way. I wanted to know something about architecture and art and photography and movies. And I started using art books when I became a fashion stylist as references to come up with ideas. And always movies, you know, always the French Connection or Bonnie and Clyde or the Stepford Wives. I will always go back to the original step for wives as a fashion reference when I'm styling something. And so I always had art books in my house, not just because they were beautiful to stack a bunch of them, but because they actually were reference materials for me to self educate and to learn. And so in 2011, a book came out called Vogue Faces of Beauty. It was the British Vogue book. And I got that book and I read it. It just came out and I read it from COVID to cover. And there were only two black models in it. It was Iman and Naomi. And I was incensed. This book had over 100 models in it and they only chose Iman and Naomi. And being a modelizer, having come through fashion as a kid, reading Essence and Ebony and always learning about black models, and then becoming a model myself and knowing so many models, I was like outraged. Where was Tyra Banks? Where was Veronica Webb? Where was Dhonielle Luna, the first black woman on the COVID of any Vogue, who was actually on the COVID of British Vogue? That's what spurred Supreme Models. That was the nexus. That was the impetus for Supreme Models. Because if you go on Amazon right now, there's a review of that book from me, giving it one star and listing why and listing those women that I just spoke of. And then I was like, there's no other book like this. There's a hole in the market, and that's why I created Supreme Models.
April Callahan
That makes perfect sense. We had Bethann Hardison on last year, and of course, she is featured as the trailblazer, as I think you call her, the godmother in Supreme Models. And she wrote her letter to the fashion industry just calling each brand out who didn't have black models represented in their collections. I think that was in 2013. So the fact that that book came out in 2011 makes sense. It was right around that time they had that reckoning.
Marcellus Reynolds
It was right around the time of the whiteout. There's a period in fashion from the late 90s that lasted well into the 2000 teens where designers were not using black models. It was the era of no black mod on the Runway or one black Runway. We went from the heyday of fashion, which is the 90s, until the late 90s, like 98, where black girls worked everywhere all the time. There were so many name black girls. Naomi, Tyra, Karen. There was Veronica Beck, Leah. The list goes on and on. And then all of a sudden, boom. You hit, like, 1998. And the bigger black girls that have been working for years step out because they're getting older. They want to do other things. They want to have kids, they want to act, they want run businesses, they want to do whatever. And then there's no space for new black models to come in, so there's the white out. And it took Bethann. It took Naomi and Edward Inenfel pointing out to Bethann that there were no black models. And Edward went to Anna Wintour, and Edward went to Franca Sozani, and Edward went to Steven Meisel. And he was like, where are the black girls? And then all of a sudden, those people were like, where are the black girls? What happened to the black model? And then Beth Ann was the person. They went to, Bethann. And Bethann was the person that had the connections, and she was the person that really came through and was like, y' all not using black models. And I'M a list every single show, every single designer that shows at New York, at Paris and Milan Fashion Week, and how many black models they use, how many models of color.
April Callahan
Yep. And they published her letter, too, which was just incredible, calling out all of these brands, which is interesting, though I think that was in 2013. But you say it still took five or six years for you to get Supreme Models off the ground. Why do you think that was?
Marcellus Reynolds
I started pitching Supreme Models very soon after I came up with the idea. I think within a day or two of having the idea and creating this master list of there's over 70 models who matter. 70 black models who matter. So there's enough black models to do a book. I started doing interviews, and at the time, I was celebrity fashion stylist Marcellus Reynolds, or I was ex reality star Marcellus Reynolds. And I was a fixture on E. And I was on bet, And I would turn up on CBS talking about fashion. I was like a fashion talking head. So there were publishers who wanted to meet me, and they would ask me during the meeting, do you have an idea for a book? And I'd be like, do I have an idea for a book? Supreme Black Models? Because that was the original title. And I can't tell you. Well, I can tell you at least three times, three major publishers told me to my face, three white men, that a book about black women wouldn't sell. So when it finally got traction in 2018, when it finally looked like Supreme Models was going to happen, it was stunning. And then when Supreme Models came out, it was this bestseller in the art book space. And compared to other art books, it's very inexpensive. You know, the Tom ford books are $150. The Rihanna books are 200 plus dollars. Naomi released a book that was over $200. My book came out, it was $50. And that's because Abrams and I, my publisher, made the conscious decision to keep our book as inexpensive as we possibly could because we wanted to get it into the hands of the people who needed it most. And in my opinion and Abrams opinion, it was little black girls. So for us, it was like, let's make this as inexpensive as possible so that the key audience that we. Maybe not the key audience, because the key audience is the adult that loves fashion or the adult that loves art books. But our heart of hearts key audience is little black girls. We want them to be able to walk into a bookstore anywhere in the world and look at the Tom Ford book and dream and look at the Rihanna book and dream and look at the Peter Lindbergh art books in Dream, look at the Chanel art book and dream and then be able to grab the Supreme Model's book, and now the Supreme Actress book, and now the Supreme Sirens book, and see a book that's populated by beautiful images of women that look like them telling a story that they can relate to, and take that book home.
April Callahan
You actually segued right into my next question, which was about the significance of representation, because I love that these books are all direct except extensions of one another. But they're also in many ways, in conversation with each other, especially because they. They share these central themes like celebration and then representation, which are really at the heart of all three of these books. As you talked about and as you just spoke to how incredibly important it was for you as a child to not see yourself represented or what it meant when you did see yourself represented, and then to provide that for children. Now it's so incredibly important. And that's such a key theme across all of these books.
Marcellus Reynolds
You asked me earlier, did I know it was going to be a series? I absolutely did not. But when you're in the space of writing a book, it's almost like that book is never finished. You finally send it to the publisher and you hope that they accept it and they don't have any more changes or the edits are smart, but the book is never done. I look at Supreme Models and I'm like, oh, I wish I chose another picture. Oh, I wish I had included that model. Or, oh, I wish I had gotten an interview with this person. But each book births the next book. So Supreme Models was definitely about mahogany and Diana Ross and growing up black on the south side, and my grandmother and my mother and about my journey as a model and a fashion stylist and actually working in retail and loving women and learning from women. So that's what Supreme Models was definitely about. And being curious about their stories, about the stories of women. But then when I was finishing Supreme Models, it just made sense to do Supreme Actresses because there's actually an edit of Supreme. There is a pass of Supreme Models that has a section called Model to Actress. And I included models like Tamiko Frazier and Tyra Banks, because, remember, Tyra Banks was, you know, she did Life Size, where she played a model who comes to life with Lindsay Loy and Iman, because Iman was in out of Africa and she was like in that horrible dominatrix movie with. With Rosie o' Donnell, and she was in no Way out with Sean Young. Mom was like an actress, honey, at one point. And so that I had too many pages in the book, so that section got cut. But it had me in this mindset of models want to become actresses. Hey, why don't you do Supreme Actresses? And let's be honest, I didn't think of it as a series because I was going to call Supreme Actresses Black Dresses as a play on Black Ish, which was a show that was doing really well on ABC at the time, that was fronted by Tracee Ellis Ross. And everybody I said Black Dress to hated that as a title. And my publisher, when I pitched Blacktresses, my publisher was like, why are you moving away from Supreme? Just call it Supreme Actresses. And that was where the idea of the series, you know, started. So, yes, it was a series because it was both books by the same author, both kind of books by the same topic that are inspired by each other. But I wasn't going to call the second book supreme, right? I was going to go off the ranch, you know, and then. And then that's what happened with Supremes. With Supreme Actresses. I was in this space of the original Dreamgirls on Broadway that gave us Loretta Devine and Shirley Ralph and Jennifer Holiday. And then I was in the space of the Dreamgirls movie with Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce and Anika Noni Rose. And then I'm always in the Mahogany phase. And you can't think about Mahogany without thinking about Diana Ross and how she made two very important black movies, Lady Sings the Blues and Mahogany. So I was in this space when I was finishing Supreme Actresses of black women singing of black women as a multi hyphenate of black women performing. And so I knew that Sirens was. Was the next book. And I wasn't calling Supreme Sirens Supreme Sirens. I was calling it Supreme Songstresses, which is the clunkiest word ever. And it was my literary agent, when I pitched Supreme Songstresses to her, she was like, songstresses, why don't you call the Sirens? And I was like, damn it, that's such a good word. And that's how Supreme Sirens became Supreme Siren.
April Callahan
And I love it too, because you just said a word that is a theme throughout Supreme Sirens, which is multi hyphenate. And you write a black female singer is always more than just a singer. She is a multi hyphenate performer. She creates art where none existed before. And I love that word because of course, you're speaking to something you just talked about, which is she's more than just a singer. These women defy One categorization, right? They're actresses, dancers, models, possibly also business
Marcellus Reynolds
moguls, producers, fashion icons, fashion designers, stylist, hair and makeup artists. They're everything, right? They're everything. They are image architects, darling.
April Callahan
So important. And that's no more encapsulated than the first Supreme Woman. I want to talk about today. So switch into focusing on your Supreme Sirens book. I want to talk about Josephine Baker, who I think is in Supreme Actresses. I don't know if she's in Supreme Models. I guess she was never officially a model, but she was certainly a fashion icon. And you credit her with really laying the foundation upon which so many black performers would follow. Can you talk about why she is so significant?
Marcellus Reynolds
Baker is the blueprint, right? Josephine Baker is the start. My whole theory with these books is one woman's success makes it easier for the next woman's success. One woman opens the door for the next woman and the next woman after her. To me, Josephine Baker, who was the first black singer, performer to also be a movie star, she opened the door for the women after her. So she opened the door for women like Lena Horne and Hattie McDaniel and Diane Carroll and Dorothy Dandridge, who were the actress, singer, dancer. Josephine Baker did it first. But make no mistake, when Josephine Baker was on the stage at the Folies Bergere in Paris, and she's dancing topless in a banana skirt, and she's bringing out the cheetah, and she's doing a parody of Africanness that's palatable for white audiences. She's creating what we know as performance art, and she's setting the stage for performers like Grace Jones, who aren't just singers, they're performance artists. She's setting the stage for white performers like Lady Gaga and Madonna, who, again, are not just singers, they're performance artists. But she's also setting the stage for Beyonce and she's setting the stage for Rihanna, and she's setting the stage for Janelle Monae. She's setting the stage for all these people that marry all these different things. The act of performance, the act of singing, the act of acting and marrying them all into one career. That's what Josephine Baker did. And she actually opened the door for this idea that, hey, you can be a movie star and you can be a singer and you can be a live performer. You can be a dancer. You can be a dancer who sings than a singer who dances.
April Callahan
Exactly.
Marcellus Reynolds
She's the one that decided to create the banana skirt and the bracelet. So she's styling her own performances. She's art directing her own shows. When she decides that we need a leopard backdrop or we need to do this or we need to do this or the set of my shows that I perform against has to be this. She's so much more than just the performer.
April Callahan
We are so excited to share that
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April Callahan
And of course because this is a fashion history podcast, I'm going to ask you this question. But from Josephine Baker to Beyonce, all of these performers you just mentioned, these multi hyphenate women have had a huge impact on fashion culture and many of them are fashion icons in their own right. Can you just talk a little bit about the central role of fashion in many of these performers lives and legacy and that extends on and off the stage, right? I mean maybe starting with Grace Jones because she is such an incredible performer.
Marcellus Reynolds
The thing that is so amazing about Grace Jones is she started her career as a model so she understood the importance of fashion and commerce. Being a model changed Grace Jones life and it changed the life of her family because Grace Jones was a very successful model and she used her connections in the fashion world to decide what she wanted to do next. Do I want to act? Do I want to sing? But she wasn't just your typical singer. She was this performance artist and she understood the power of fashion as a medium to communicate what it was she wanted it to be. Grace Jones was a very tough, sometimes masculine looking woman and she played with androgyny. She used fashion as a way to create characters and moments. When you have Grace Jones slave to the rhythm being painted by the artist Keith Haring in a bodysuit or naked with just like a pair of panties and then Keith Haring's art, that's fashion. That's communicating this character that she wants to do. When you have Grace Jones wearing an Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo and giving you this woman that looks like a man singing I need a man in a gay nightclub to a bunch of men, that's creating something that didn't exist before. And it's communicating this idea of what is sexuality, right? And you get that because she chose to dress like a man, looking like a man with her super short cropped haircut and her bone structure and her deep, you know, baritone of a voice. And I think she's one of the people that opened the door for what we see Beyonce doing during the Renaissance tour. The change in costumes. Each section, each song is a different costume. Each song evokes a different mood. But I think more than anything, Beyonce is like the visual artist of our time. She's taken what somebody like Josephine Baker has done and Grace Jones has done, and she's morphed it into a even bigger, more important medium.
April Callahan
1. She pays homage to those influences too, because I think you said that. Did her and Grace Jones collaborate, or at least she paid homage to Grace Jones.
Marcellus Reynolds
Beyonce and Grace Jones collaborated on Renaissance. And you know, you can't get Grace Jones to collaborate on anything. The list of people who have tried to get Grace Jones to. To sing on the track is legend. But Beyonce did it. And Beyonce, actually, I think in the early 2000s, did a whole performance dressed as Josephine Baker with images of Josephine Baker on the screen. And Beyonce, more than any other artist, is the artist that uses fashion references from different time periods to create something. She'll be inspired by a movie that is by Bill Fosse, and you'll see her literally work that out in fashion, in a video. Right? That's where Beyonce, more than I think any other performer, really uses fashion to create a moment and to sell a complete idea of what she's working on and going through at that moment.
Cassidy Zachary
And on that fashion note on the Queen Bee dress listeners, we will leave off in our conversation with Marcellus today, but he will be back on Friday with a conversation that begins with a fantastic discussion of the futuristic metal studded confections worn by Patti LaBelle when she was part of Patti LaBelle and the
Guest Host or Additional Commentator
Bluebells in the 1970s.
April Callahan
Yeah, and really, really learning about the decade long fashion trajectories of some of my favorite singers was definitely a highlight of reading this book, April. And there is so much more supreme siren fashion history coming your way, dress listeners. But until then, may you consider the style evolution of your favorite supreme fashion icon next time you get dressed,
Podcast Narrator/Producer
please
Cassidy Zachary
head to restpodcast on Instagram or Rest Podcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
Podcast Narrator/Producer
And remember, we always love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.com DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses and you can check out whatever else we have of our finely tailored sleeves.
Cassidy Zachary
We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books, so if you are interested you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop dressed and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles and
Podcast Narrator/Producer
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Cassidy Zachary
We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dressed and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio.
Podcast Narrator/Producer
Thank you as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of dress media.
Dressed: The History of Fashion
Episode: SUPREME WOMEN: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion, Hollywood and Music with Marcellas Reynolds, Part I (Dressed Classic)
Date: April 8, 2026
Host: April Callahan & Cassidy Zachary
Guest: Marcellas Reynolds
This episode of Dressed dives into the groundbreaking influence of Black women in fashion, Hollywood, and music, focusing on Supreme Sirens, the third book in Marcellas Reynolds’s series celebrating iconic Black women. Reynolds, a fashion stylist, author, and documentarian, returns to discuss the evolution of his Supreme Women series and the crucial role of representation. The conversation explores personal stories, the genesis of his books, the social impact of fashion, and the legacies of supreme figures like Josephine Baker and Grace Jones.
“My grandmother dressed for the safety of her blackness, right? … dressing well as a Black person was an act of rebellion, but it was also an act of safety.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (07:48)
"I was incensed. … Where was Tyra Banks? Where was Veronica Webb? Where was Donyale Luna, the first black woman on the cover of any Vogue?"
— Marcellas Reynolds (13:16)
“One woman’s success makes it easier for the next woman's success. One woman opens the door for the next woman and the next woman after her.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (25:10)
"Josephine Baker is the blueprint, right? Josephine Baker is the start.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (25:10)
“We wanted to get it into the hands of the people who needed it most… in our heart of hearts, [that] is little Black girls.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (18:50-19:30)
On Family and Fashion Armor:
"My grandmother dressed for the safety of her blackness, right? … dressing well as a Black person was an act of rebellion, but it was also an act of safety."
— Marcellas Reynolds (07:48)
On Market Resistance:
“I can't tell you—well, I can tell you—at least three times, three major publishers told me to my face, three white men, that a book about Black women wouldn’t sell.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (16:47)
On Series Evolution:
“Each book births the next book.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (20:23)
On Josephine Baker’s Influence:
“She’s the one that decided to create the banana skirt and the bracelet. So she’s styling her own performances. … She’s so much more than just the performer.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (27:12-27:38)
On Grace Jones's Impact:
“Grace Jones was a very tough, sometimes masculine-looking woman, and she played with androgyny. She used fashion as a way to create characters and moments.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (31:46)
On Beyoncé as a Fashion Visual Artist:
“Beyoncé, more than any other artist, is the artist that uses fashion references from different time periods to create something ... to sell a complete idea of what she's working on and going through at that moment.”
— Marcellas Reynolds (34:18)
The tone is celebratory, insightful, deeply personal, and sometimes humorous. The conversation is rich with passion for fashion history, a sense of duty to representation, and pride in highlighting Black women’s contribution to global culture.
Stay tuned for Part II, where the discussion continues into the fashion journeys of more musical icons like Patti LaBelle.