Black in Action at New York Fashion Week 2025
An interview with the founder of Actively Black, Lanny Smith, about his groundbreaking 2025 New York Fashion Week Show, which he pointedly notes, was not a fashion show.
This wasn’t just an interview. The same way that the September 2025 Actively Black New York Fashion Week (NYFW) show wasn’t just a fashion show. Lanny Smith created something unprecedented at NYFW - a living, breathing, visual and sensory testament to Black excellence, Black resilience, Black unity, Black joy, Black culture, Black family, Black love, Black struggle, Black excellence, Black art, and the power of Black legacy that left me in tears after watching.
As the daughter of a civil rights historian and the designated family historian for my Black family that traces back to antebellum North Carolina, the history highlighted in this show has been heavily on my mind as of late. Despite 400 years of unspeakable terrors committed against us, we are still some of the most innovative, creative, joyful, visionary people on the planet. But this moment in time is heavy and hard. I’ve been thinking a lot about my great-great-great grandfather, Elijah Tatum, born enslaved, who died free with enough land to build homes for each of his 10 children. What he built wasn’t just a life for himself, but a legacy. What Lanny did with this show honored those like him, whose legacies have paved the way.
Black Past
When the lights dimmed at the beginning of the show, you weren’t immediately plunged into the dark past of Black people in America. First, a beautiful, full-bodied Black ballerina came on the runway and walked – or should I say, pirouetted. She was followed by a violinist, who set the stage for models to walk. That didn’t last for long. Our history erupted onto the stage with Ben Haith, the man who invented the Juneteenth flag. This was just the beginning.
Lanny, and Bianca, his partner and co-founder in Actively Black, brought together the daughters of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., walking hand in hand as clips of their fathers played in the background, mirroring shared sentiments on our beauty and pride in our Blackness. They brought Fred Hampton, Jr. Living legends like Ruby Bridges and Cecil Williams. Drs. John Carlos and Tommie Smith. The grandchildren of Bob Marley. When I asked Lanny how he got so many important people in our culture to participate, he made it clear that it was the time he’d taken to cultivate these relationships, and the integrity he showed in respecting the legacies at stake. "Before we put anything on a shirt or on a hoodie, I went to them first and I asked them for permission," he explains. "To make sure I respected their legacies and made sure that we were giving money back to them, it put us in a position where they respected me."
His integrity and relationships opened doors that seemed impossible. For example, when Lanny reached out to Ruby Bridges' manager about participating in the show, the initial response was a flat no. But after explaining the concept and sharing his own story with Ms. Bridges about his mother who integrated schools in Louisiana as well, the parallels in their experiences shifted something. "Ruby Bridges starts crying on the phone with me," Lanny recalls, still processing the moment. "She was like, ‘I'm compelled to be a part of this.'"
The portion of the show honoring Ruby Bridges was one of the most poignant moments delving into our past. First, six-year-old Emma took the stage, flanked by two white men (who are actually Actively Black customers), while playing the actual audio of the hatred Ruby faced - no music, just the raw vitriol of adults screaming at a child in the not-so-distant past. "I wanted people to be transported into feeling and hearing and seeing what Ruby Bridges had to go through," Lanny explains. "I had to ask Emma's parents for permission to have their daughter walking while this is happening.”
Then Ms. Bridges herself walks out. “You see this woman who just turned 71, who looks like she's 45. And it makes it real to you that wait a minute, this didn't happen a century ago. That's her right there." Lanny breathed to me, still in shock.
I asked Lanny why put together this show, and why now, especially after he swore he would never do another NYFW show after his 2023 show. "I honestly wanted it to be like a f*** you to what these people are trying to do," Lanny told me, after asking if he’s allowed to “cuss” in the interview. "Black history being under attack, them trying to remove it out of school curriculum, trying to take Black history out of museums, wanting to rename buildings after Confederate soldiers, wanting to put back up Confederate statues - Blackness has just been under attack. I wanted to do something that was rebellious against what's happening in this country right now."
The Black Past is Present
Our Black past is very present in this moment in our country. We’re still fighting some of our ancestors’ battles, as we were reminded in the next portion of the show. Ms. Bridges wasn’t the only victim of political violence present at the show. Fred Hampton, Jr., Dr. Bernice King, and Ilyasah Shabazz are children of men who were murdered for fighting for Black equality and existence. Cecil Williams documented the violent white supremacist state that forbade him from even drinking from the same water fountains as whites. Drs. Carlos and Smith were expelled from the Olympics and struggled financially while receiving death threats for raising their black-gloved fists. This show was a reminder that as Black people, we have been victims of political violence and domestic terror in this country since time immemorial, yet the flag has never been lowered to half-staff for us.
Lanny featured a prison-program, Between the Lines, in the show, highlighting the work being done to battle our system of mass incarceration, which has aptly been described by Michelle Alexander as “the New Jim Crow” for its impact on Black Americans. And also, the crowd saw a visible reminder that just this year alone, over 300,000 Black women were forced out of the workplace, in a segment highlighting Actively Black’s “Black Women are Superheroes” collection.
Our joy was present too, though. Everything from West Coast folks getting hyphy to dancers on the New York subway defying gravity while in motion. From folks jumping rope and double-dutching to Miles Morales, the Black Spiderman. The show even “featured” Princess Tiana, the first Black Disney princess. My younger cousins, Lenci, Shayla, and Shayna Pinder, walked the show in this segment. I’ve watched them grow from little girls into beautiful young women, and this is their second time participating in the Active Black fashion show. I didn’t have a Black Disney princess to look to growing up, but my cousins walking this segment was a tangible reminder that our present is shaping a better future for us. It was a reminder of our legacy.
And then the Fast Life Yungstaz led the crowd in the Swag Surf, which has become a rallying formation for Black people across the country, particularly at HBCUs - which were put in the forefront next. Terrance J, one of the more famous A&T Aggies, announced the upcoming drop of Actively Black’s HBCU Collection from the runway right before a drum major marched out. I loved this, because some of my personal favorite Black pageantry is at an HBCU halftime show (as a former band girlie). There is no amount of oppression, no firehosing or redlining, discrimination or inequities, that have been able to dim our shine, and the runway in this portion of the show illustrated that perfectly.
Our Black Future Is Bright
For me, the most powerful moment of the show came when Bianca walked out, stomach revealed, and strutted the runway in her “Beyonce moment,” announcing that she and Lanny are expecting their first child. Their son's very name (which I’ve agreed not to share yet) carries the inheritance of revolution. "We started with the Black history, we went to the Black present, and we ended with the Black future," Lanny explains. "This is our village. This is the tribe that we're building. So we're sharing this moment with the tribe."
When I asked Lanny what legacy he wanted to leave for his son, he shared a letter he wrote to his unborn child that captures the weight of bringing a Black child into this world. What struck me most from that letter was this: "You come from a legacy of people that have survived the worst of humanity and still kept our own humanity.”
That point was encapsulated well by the complexity of the poet and renowned lyricist, Tupac Shakur, who was featured via video in the fashion show. Black people and communities have been fractured by the centuries of downward racist pressure on us, and it has created an environment that can pit us against one another. Tupac gave voice to many of us, doomed in urban blight and siloed Blackness, yet his murderers were among us as well. Lanny's voice carries pain, and not a small amount of anger, when he talks about the criticism he faces from Black consumers who rail against the brand and don't understand the complexities of building a supply chain from scratch.
"I've turned down deals that could have put millions in my pocket, because it would have meant I had to compromise," he says. "We had a collaboration with Peloton on the table, and they wanted to do some corporate BS and put unity and togetherness on a Peloton - Actively Black collaboration that they wanted to release during Black History Month. And I told them, 'Hold up, no, no, no, that unity and togetherness and peace - don't preach that to my people, preach that to your people.'” He killed the deal rather than compromise his message. The sacrifices seem harder when the people at the core of his vision and legacy are unsupportive.
Yet, that sacrifice was worth it. Despite noting that no other Black organization that he approached for partnership said yes - meaning he took a financial loss to execute the show - the praise for the show was immediate, and it also generated over $250,000 in sales in less than a week, according to Smith. And, it has helped to tee up the next move for the company. While Actively Black currently operates as an athleisure brand, Lanny's vision extends far beyond clothing. He's developing an app, to come later this year, and a content and media arm with shows designed to heal the divisions within our community. His vision for healing extends across the diaspora: "If we can all see ourselves as one tribe, and we're connected by something that pulls us all together, do you understand the power that we can have when we are finally together on something? The mass of the Diaspora is so vast that we are not the minority in the world, but we have allowed ourselves to be separated and segmented so much we don't even understand - the DNA that's inside of us actually connects us.
Black as Action, Not Just Identity
Black is not just an adjective or a noun. Black is a verb; an action. Despite centuries of attempts to destroy us, "we still are the most influential culture on the planet," as Lanny noted to me. For anyone who hasn't watched this fashion show, you need to see it immediately. It's one of the most powerful pieces of art, activism, and affirmation in recent years.
Lanny Smith created something that was both defiant and healing. We’ve never rolled over as a people, and we damn sure won’t now. “You will be a fighter. You will be intelligent. You will be creative. You will be a leader. And your mother and I are building something that we hope will be a tool and a network for everything you will need. There is greatness in your DNA," Lanny wrote to his son.
He spoke to his son, but he spoke to me too. And he spoke to us all. We are still here. We are still rising. We do indeed have greatness in our DNA. And we are Actively Black.
*Since the writing of this piece, Lanny and Bianca have welcomed their son, Toussaint Amir Smith.
Watch clips of the show here.
