Douglas Says

File:Douglas Says.jpg

Douglas Says for Miss Honey

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Photograph of Tracey Africa Norman wearing a dress made by Douglas Says

Douglas Says (born, March 1961, Newark, New Jersey) is an American fashion designer, stylist, author, and make-up artist. He is known for using stretch fabrics in eveningwear and has worked with figures in the ballroom scene, including his longtime muse Tracey Africa Norman. In 2024, he was featured in the Newark Museum of Art’s exhibition The Story of Newark Fashion: Atelier to Runway and the short documentary film Miss Honey: The Catsuit, directed by Brandon R. Nicholas premiered at NewFest, which highlights the legacy of drag performer Moi Renee and features a signature catsuit designed by Says.

Career

Douglas Says began designing clothing in the 1970s while attending high school in Newark, New Jersey. After taking a course in men’s tailoring, he began producing garments for classmates and friends. He initially explored modeling but shifted his focus to design and eventually found greater interest in creating clothing for women. By 1983, he had completed formal training in fashion design. In the 1980s and 1990s, Says participated in Newark's fashion and nightlife scenes, including involvement in drag pageants, ballroom events, and local discos. Some of his clients have included has worked as model Iman, singer Celia Cruz, and runway coach Miss J Alexander. He has also worked with photographers including Gerard Gaskin, Mike Ruiz, Alex Chatelain, Ghillian Lewin, Fadil Berisha, Marc Baptiste, Dah Len, Keith Majors, Anthony Barboza, and Jerry Jack.

In the early 2000s, Says began presenting annual fashion shows in Newark. By 2007, his designs were included in the Black Style Now exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. His work was also featured in the Thurgood Marshall College Fund’s annual fashion shows in both 2007 and 2008. Visual records of his collaborations with prominent icons in the ballroom scene like Sinia, Danielle Revlon, Karen Covergirl, and Octavia St. Laurent, also appear on platforms like Google Arts & Culture's Ballroom in Focus.

Alongside his design work, Says self-published two books, Amuse (2009) and The Red Dress (2013), which document his creative process, the women who inspire his clothing, and feature models wearing his garments. His work has appeared in several books and anthologies, including Mainhattanmanhattan, NYC Go-Go by Slava Mogutin, The Way We Wore by Michael McCollom, and Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community edited by Whitney Strub.

Legacy

Publications like Black Fashion History, Swerv Magazine, and the Vera Center for Arts and Politics, among others focused on Black fashion history and ballroom culture have recorded Douglas Says' visual and material contributions. His work has circulated through both independent and institutional channels like the Newark Museum of Art. For the exhibition "The Story of Newark Fashion: Atelier to Runway" curated by Kristen J. Owens, the museum commissioned the painter Mickalene Thomas to create a full-length portrait of Tracey Africa Norman wearing a Douglas Says gown. While much of his recognition has come from within the ballroom and Black fashion communities, his design sensibilities and styling practices have influenced how femininity, glamour, and body diversity are performed and represented on and off the runway.

Swerv magazine featured Douglas Says and Tracey "Africa" Norman on the cover of the September–October 2017 issue. The feature article celebrated their decades long friendship and collaborations as designer and muse respectively. Visual records of his collaborations also appear on platforms like Google Arts & Culture's Ballroom in Focus, where he is featured alongside ballroom icons he styled like Octavia St. Laurent and Tracey Africa Norman, captured by the photographer Luna Luis Ortiz. Says also first introduced Gerard Gaskin a prominent photographer of ballroom culture to the ballroom scene in 1993. Gaskin's first series Douglas' Girls was the beginning of his 2013 book Legendary: Inside the House Ballroom Scene which won the Center for Documentary Studies /Honickman First Book Prize.

Douglas Says still resides in Newark, New Jersey, where he remains involved in local fashion and arts communities.His work across design, authorship, and styling has continued to inspire designers. Scholars Mary Rizzo and Christina Strasburger reflecting about how Douglas Says influenced the creation of the Queer Newark walking tour write their essay within the anthology, Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community, "Fashion Designer Douglas Says saw the closing of Murphy's as a huge loss to Newark's gay community. He said, "we have no place to go. There's no gay spots. None, absolutely none. Once Murphy's left, that was the last of it.... It's like we've been shunned, kicked--it's like we've been pushed back in the closet." Say's words complicated media narratives about LGBTQ communities,which often describe gay people as experiencing more freedom over time." Rizzo and Strasburger use Says’s account to argue that establishments such as Murphy’s functioned as vital cultural and social infrastructure, and that their disappearance marked not progress but contraction—revealing how gay bars and clubs were central to sustaining Black LGBTQ community life in Newark and why figures like Says remain important witnesses to these histories.

Miss Honey: The Catsuit

In 2024, Miss Honey: The Catsuit, a short documentary directed by Brandon R. Nicholas, documents how Douglas Says created his signature cut-out catsuit and traced its origins to Caribbean artist Moi Renee’s televised performance of the song “Miss Honey” which was later sampled on the Grammy Award–winning album Renaissance by Beyoncé. The film screened at festivals including NewFest and Queer Voices: NYC Film Festival, and serves as a proof of concept for a planned feature-length documentary about Renee’s life and work. Interviews and industry discussions surrounding the film have situated Says’s design work within broader histories of Caribbean and Black LGBTQ fashion and performance, underscoring his role in shaping the visual culture of queer nightlife. Douglas Says’s design work has appeared across film, television, print, and publishing. He is credited for his work on Rip the Runway ’11 (2011) and has contributed clothing to several independent films, including Smooth the Game Is Dead, Don’t Go to Strangers, and The System Within.

Institutional Documentation and Archival Presence

Says’s work has been documented through museum exhibitions, oral history projects, and archival initiatives focused on Black fashion and LGBTQ cultural history. His inclusion in the Newark Museum of Art’s exhibition The Story of Newark Fashion: Atelier to Runway situates his work within broader narratives of Newark’s fashion history. An oral history interview was conducted by Rutgers University’s Queer Newark Oral History Project. The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) has initiated archival projects preserving records of his design practice and collaborations, reflecting institutional documentation of his work within fashion history and Black LGBTQ cultural life.

References

This article "Douglas Says" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Douglas Says. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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