She Was Always Worth This. The Industry Just Never Acted Like It.

Shawn, raised in a predominantly Black city, Detroit, Michigan, was exposed to fashion and aesthetic styles at an early age.

Most people not familiar with Detroit look surprised when I tell them, going to high school in the 1980s was like a New York fashion show competition. It was normal to see Butter Soft leathers, Gator boots, Gucci gym shoes, Levi Jeans with silk shirts, and Yves Saint Laurent or Cazal eye glasses, and we were kids! I remember kids working, hustling all summer for one simple reason, to come back to school the fall semester Fresh, straight up.

— Shawn Brown

Years later, as an adult, he understood something those brands never did. The names he worked all summer for took the money and the loyalty of his community without ever building anything for it. One of those same houses later released an ad widely condemned as blackface. They wanted the spend. They never wanted the people.

Carrying that same standard, quality as a right and not a privilege, he eventually landed in the Caribbean and saw something he had never seen in an American public scene. Women wearing their sleepwear the way it was always meant to be worn. Not hidden in a bedroom. Not saved for sleep. Lived in. Moved through. Worn to the market, to the neighbor's door, to the morning air. Comfortable without apology. Naturally beautiful without effort. Completely, unapologetically theirs. Vibrant.

He looked at what they were wearing. A lifelong student of the art of fashion, he had to know where it came from. He looked at how it was made. "It reminded me of watching my grandmother and aunts when I was a kid, gathering together, cutting fabric into square shapes, making quilts for winter bedding. Some of their quilts lasted decades. The quality, the history of a skill that was developed out of necessity in the American South during slavery, that grew into artistic designs from incredible people, God's people."

While learning the history of Caribbean sleepwear, the development of the craft was similar, except the warmer climate did not require quilts. The French and Spanish colonizers gave enslaved people burlap for clothing to minimize cost. On the islands, quality sleepwear was only worn by the wealthy. Periodically, scraps of discarded worn soft linen fabric would end up in the hands of the oppressed. They would collect and save.

This is where he learned of his connection, their connection. Although separated by water, the resourceful genius of the diaspora remained the same. From the scraps of fabric given to them, enslaved women produced and designed their own garments that they wore as daywear and sleepwear. The always-visible handmade garments caused European women to secretly envy how they created an attractive, cooler look in the warm climate. Eventually those garments "influenced French European fashion in the late 18th century." He learned that when wealthy white women, and eventually Marie Antoinette, adopted the simple styles worn by enslaved and free women of color, they started adapting them into "daywear" for themselves. They took the craft. They never gave her the honor.

No One Built This for Her.

When he returned to the US, he looked at what was being sold to the women who deserved it most. He found almost nothing. Nothing that culturally connected on an artistic level, incorporating quality, style, functionality, comfort, and a fine-tuned balance of artistry.

Not nothing in terms of artistic expression. Nothing in terms of intention.

No one had built this for her. Not really. Not with her proportions considered, her culture honored, her budget respected, and her quality guaranteed. The mass market sold her disposable fabric and called it comfort. The luxury market charged her $200 for silk that yellowed in three months and called it an investment.

She deserved neither of those things.

Who she is. What she carries. Where she comes from. She was owed more than this world was ever built to give.

This is our answer to that debt. Our expression of comfort. Our interpretation of Art.