Willi Donnell Smith (February 29, 1948 – April 17, 1987) was one of the most successful young African-American fashion designers in fashion history.[1] At the time of his death, his company Williwear Ltd. sold $25 million worth of clothing a year.[2]
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Smith was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied commercial art at Mastbaum Technical High School and attended Philadelphia College of Art for fashion illustration. He then moved to New York to go to Parsons The New School for Design, the highly competitive art and design college of The New School university. For a short time Smith freelanced with Arnold Scaasi and Bobbie Brooks's sportswear company.
In 1967, Smith quit Parsons to pursue a career designing on his own. In 1969 he designed a label for Digits, a sportswear company. In 1973, Smith, along with his sister Toukie Smith, founded their own clothing company that soon failed. Smith continued to design and in 1976 he went into business with Laurie Mallet and called the company "Williwear."
He designed the wedding dress worn by Mary Jane Watson when she married Peter Parker in the Spider-Man comic book and comic strip in 1987,[3] and the suits for Edwin Schlossberg and his groomsmen when he married Caroline Kennedy in 1986. Smith also designed the uniforms for the workers on Christo's 1985 wrapping of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris and clothes for Spike Lee's film School Daze (1987).
Smith worked with many other designers and artists during his time at Williwear including Antthony Mark Hankins, James Mischka, Julia Santos-Solomon, Jon Coffelt, John Bartlett and Andre Walker among many others. Smith partnered with Jhane Barnes on some of his earlier shows.
Smith was the costume designer for "Secret Pastures" which premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in 1984, one of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company's first major works.
Smith died unexpectedly at the relatively young age of 39 after contracting shigella and pneumonia while on a trip to India, apparently as a result of AIDS. It is suspected that Smith himself didn't know he had the disease, although those around him knew he was fragile in his last days. Most thought it was just that Smith had pushed himself so hard, being such a perfectionist with his work. John Bartlett, who was working at the time of Smith's untimely death, took over design operations and remained until 1990.
Smith, who was openly gay,[4] has a panel in the original NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and is also lamented in a poem Speak: A Poem for the Millennium March by Keith Boykin, read by its author for the Millennium March on Washington for Equality on April 29, 2000.