Black Excellence: Hindman Presents the Arthur McGee Collection
Hindman’s March 14 Spring Fashion auction celebrates two hundred years of fashion history with important collections that are new to the market and gathered from around the United States. Headlining the sale is a collection of designs created by Arthur McGee (1933-2019), an American fashion designer known as the “Grandfather of Fashion Designers of Color”. In addition to the 45 ensembles in this sale that were created by Arthur McGee between the 1970s and the 1990s, the sale also includes McGee’s archive, with design sketches and inspiration, hundreds of photographs from throughout McGee’s career, a collection of letters written to the designer, business documents, and several prestigious awards given to McGee later in his career.
Brought to Hindman by consignors and longtime friends of McGee, Johnetta Shearer and Maxine Gordon have carefully preserved this collection for years and even established an LLC to preserve his legacy. The net proceeds of the sale of the collection will be donated to the Arthur McGee Legacy Scholarship Fund to support the career of an emerging designer.
Explore select highlights of his collection up for auction below.
Unraveling the Legacy
A trailblazer in his designing talent and professional determination, Arthur McGee became the first African American to oversee a design room of an established New York Seventh Avenue apparel company at just 24 years old. Garnering acclaim from Harold Koda, the former curator at the head of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Arthur was not a firebrand, instead his confidence in his own talents was like water seeping into the hard rock of racism — effortless seeming, but effective in breaking through.” Over his expansive career, McGee touched the lives of many and inspired a myriad of designers that proceeded him.
McGee was known for incorporating into his designs, elements of African and Japanese-inspired textiles, patterns, and techniques, which came to characterize his signature works. We see this specifically in garments included in Lots 1, 2, 7, 10, and 16 below. The designs in Lot 7 feature traditional West African Indigo dying techniques, including starch- and tie-resist dyes, while McGee’s archive in Lot 1 and the designs in Lot 16 provide evidence of McGee’s interest in studying origami and using it in his design process.
