Jay Jaxon

Jay Jaxon was born on the twenty-eighth of June 1941 at New York, the son of a New York Black family of the principal post-Great-Migration Harlem community. He was raised in the principal Harlem Black community of the late-1940s and 1950s.

He completed the bachelor's degree at Hampton Institute at Hampton, Virginia in 1962 — and enrolled at the Traphagen School of Fashion at New York in 1963 on the principal Hampton Alumni scholarship.

He was hired in 1965 at the principal Seventh Avenue New York fashion house of the white couturier Mollie Parnis as a junior sketcher — and at the principal Seventh Avenue New York fashion house of the white couturier Anne Klein in 1966 as a junior designer.

He relocated to Paris in 1968 — at the principal post-1968 Paris couture-industry expansion period — and was hired at the principal Parisian couture house of Yves Saint Laurent rive gauche as a junior assistant designer in 1968.

He was hired in 1969 by the principal Parisian couture house of Jean-Louis Scherrer as the principal head designer of the principal Scherrer haute couture collection — at the principal post-1969 Scherrer transition period after Scherrer's departure from the founding atelier — the first Black-American designer to head a principal French couture house. He held the principal Scherrer head designer position from 1969 to 1972.

He joined the principal Parisian couture house of Christian Dior in 1972 — at the principal post-Marc Bohan Dior assistant-designer programme — and held the principal Dior assistant designer position from 1972 to 1974.

He opened the principal Jay Jaxon Atelier at Paris in 1974 — and operated the principal Jaxon Atelier at the rue Cambon at Paris from 1974 to 1979.

He returned to New York in 1979 — and was hired at the principal Saks Fifth Avenue fashion-house custom department as principal head couturier from 1979 to 1985.

He operated the principal Jay Jaxon private couture practice at New York from 1985 to his retirement in 2000 — at the principal post-1985 New York Black-American private couture clientele tradition.

He died at New York on the thirteenth of February 2006 of complications of a long illness, at sixty-four.

He is honored here as the first Black American designer to head a French couture house.