Di Petsa Autumn/Winter 2026 - Medusa's Lover

Britain’s top honor for its designers is a knighthood or damehood, and four of these got one. Hardy Amies became Princess Elizabeth’s dressmaker in 1951, was officially dressmaker to the Queen from 1955 until about 1993, and was knighted in 1989 (Encyclopedia.com). Paul Smith was made a CBE in 1994 and knighted in November 2000 for services to British fashion (Encyclopedia.com). Vivienne Westwood famously went knickerless to collect her OBE in 1992, and she was made a Dame in 2006 (LBC). Mary Quant, credited with bringing the miniskirt to the masses, became a Dame in the 2015 New Year Honours (Danielle Wightman-Stone, FashionUnited; The Gazette). Alexander McQueen, John Galliano and Stella McCartney were all honored too, but as CBEs and OBEs, a step below knighthood (The Gazette).

Cross Colours (1989): Carl Jones and TJ Walker launched it in LA with the slogan “Clothing Without Prejudice.” Will Smith wearing it on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air made it a celebrity favorite (Document Journal).
FUBU (1992): “For Us, By Us.” Daymond John set it up after making his first hats at home in 1989 (Ohio State University, Fashion2Fiber).
Ecko Unlimited (1993): Marc Ecko started out designing T-shirts in his family’s garage with his twin sister, Marci, and his friend Seth Gerszberg. The rhino logo came a few years later, inspired by his father’s collection of rhino statues (Encyclopedia.com). Ecko went on to launch Complex magazine in 2002 (Caiza Andresen, Title Magazine).
Mecca USA (1994): Tony Shellman, Lando Felix and Evan Davis launched it around 1994. It sold $20 million of clothing in three seasons and became known for its slogan “Rock Mecca. Keep your lunch money” (Cynthia Rose, The Seattle Times; Title Magazine).
*NOTE: When I was a kid, we would tease each other and say Mecca stood for: Murder Every Civilian Child Alive. Don't know why I remember that, but I do. Maybe it was Islamophobic, War-on-Terror stuff, or kids just being stupid, idk.*
Enyce (1996): In February 1996, the trio walked away from Mecca, saying it had been pigeonholed as hip-hop, and started Enyce with backing from Italy’s Fila. Its name is pronounced “en-ne-che” (The Seattle Times; Title Magazine). Sean John bought Enyce in 2008.
Sean John (1998): Sean Combs founded it and hired a Ralph Lauren executive to help build it. In 2001 it became the first designer runway show broadcast live on TV (Encyclopedia.com).
Rocawear (1999): Jay-Z and Dame Dash started it a year later (Mike DeStefano, Complex).
Billionaire Boys Club (2003): Pharrell Williams and Nigo, the founder of BAPE, launched it, later adding the sister label ICECREAM. The astronaut logo was sketched over one dinner in Tokyo (Kerane Marcellus, Essence; Billionaire Boys Club).

SHOUTOUT TO BRAZIL AND LULA!!

When Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in 1500, he named the land Santa Cruz. But within a decade, maps were calling it terra de brasil, “red-dyewood land” (Etymonline). Europeans already knew “brasil” as the name for a red dyewood from the East Indies, now called sappanwood, and the word likely comes from the same root as “embers,” for the wood’s glowing color (Etymonline). Portuguese traders found that Brazil’s pau-brasil tree held the same red dye, brazilin, in its heartwood. Extracted from the sawdust and fixed with a mordant, it colored European textiles (Stephen Harris, University of Oxford Plants 400). Less than two decades after the Portuguese arrived, the first map of Brazil already showed Indigenous people cutting the wood. It stayed a major export until the mid-1600s and drew pirates and rival empires, until overharvesting helped collapse the trade in the 1700s. Today the tree is rare in the wild, its trade is regulated by CITES, and its main use is making bows for stringed instruments (Oxford Plants 400).