at home: Artists in Conversation | Hylan Booker
Conversation
March 18, 2022
Hylan Booker, Couturier/Painter, in conversation with Christine Checinska, Senior Curator of Africa and Diaspora: Textiles and Fashion, Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
at home: Artists in Conversation
Join us for lively and inspiring conversations with some of today’s most notable artists. at home: Artists in Conversation brings together curators and artists to discuss various artistic practices and insights into their work.
About Hylan Booker
Born in Detroit in 1938, Booker went to Cass Technical High School in Detroit where he studied commercial art. He soon became interested in designing women’s fashion. After graduation, he worked as a window dresser in a high-profile department store. A year later, he joined the U.S. Air Force and was stationed in Fairford, England, for three years. While there, he studied fashion design part-time at Swindon Technical College. Booker went on to study fashion at the Royal College of Art, London, and soon went into business for himself, starting Hylan Booker Ltd., designing coats and suits for women. In 1967, he won the Yardley Award for best British designer of the year.
In 1968, Booker went to the House of Worth, a French fashion house founded in 1858 by English designer Charles Frederick Worth that specializing in haute couture, ready-to-wear clothes, and perfumes. By 1970, he was head designer. Booker moved back to the United States in 1980 and launched Hylan Booker Couture in Miami with his wife. During his career, he designed a women’s line for Cannibal Clothes, an upscale ready-to-wear label sold in the United States at Saks Fifth Avenue and Washington, DC-based Garfinkel’s. He also was a design consultant to several manufacturers. Booker created Mia Cosmetics, a range of make-up and skin care products for dark skin, in partnership with cosmetic marketing consultant Barbara Attenborough. Booker lives and works in Los Angeles.
This program is presented through the generosity of the Terry F. Green 1969 Fund for British Art and Culture.
