Arthur McGee

Arthur McGee was born on the second of June 1933 at Newark, New Jersey, the son of a Newark Black factory worker and a Newark Black domestic. He was raised in the segregated Black community of post-Great-Migration Newark.

He served in the United States Army from 1951 to 1953 in the Korean War period — and enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion at New York in 1953 on the GI Bill. He completed the Traphagen School of Fashion certificate in 1955.

He was hired in 1955 at the Seventh Avenue New York fashion house of the white couturier Bobby Brooks as a junior pattern maker.

He was promoted in 1957 to the principal head designer position at the Seventh Avenue fashion house of the white couturier Charles James — the principal first Black designer to lead a Seventh Avenue New York fashion-house showroom. He held the principal Charles James head designer position from 1957 to 1959.

He opened the principal Arthur McGee Studio at 233 East 4th Street at the East Village of New York in 1959 — and operated the principal Arthur McGee Studio at the East 4th Street address from 1959 to 1980.

He was the principal pioneer of the principal African-print Black-American couture tradition of the early 1960s — at the principal early-1960s Black-American Pan-African cultural-political moment — and produced across the 1960s and 1970s the principal commissioned couture for the principal Black-American Black-Arts-and-Black-Power community.

His principal clients across the principal McGee Studio period included Cicely Tyson, Diana Sands, Roberta Flack, Maya Angelou, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, and the principal Black-American avant-garde theater-and-music community of the period.

He was the principal designer of the principal Cicely Tyson Sounder costume — the principal Tyson 1972 film costume for the Sounder lead role of Rebecca Morgan — and the principal Cicely Tyson Roots costume of 1977 for the principal Roots lead role of Binta Kinte.

He was the principal Black-American designer of the Black-Arts era to maintain the principal African-textile-and-African-print fashion register — and trained the principal next generation of Black-American African-textile designers including Scott Barrie (placed in this archive) and Patrick Kelly (placed in this archive).

He closed the principal Arthur McGee Studio in 1980 — and continued the principal private commissioned couture practice from the principal home studio at the East Village from 1980 to his retirement in 2010.

He died at New York on the twenty-fifth of June 2019 of complications of a long illness, at eighty-six.

He is honored here as the first Black designer to lead a Seventh Avenue New York fashion-house showroom.