Douglas Says it All – Preserving the Legacy of Designer, Douglas Says

SPARC is pleased to bring you a guest post by scholar and FIT Fashion and Textiles Studies Master’s program student, Andy Salzer. Andy holds a BFA in Fashion Design with an Art History minor from FIT. During their studies, they spent one year at Polimoda in Florence and another completing their senior thesis collection at Politecnico di Milano. Andy’s enrollment in the FIT Master’s program marks their turn away from fashion production towards the preservation of the past. Their areas of research include queer studies, subcultural styles, and late 20th century Avant Garde designers. Andy interned in SPARC over the summer of 2025 as part of FIT’s Fashion and Textile Studies program. While here, they focused on a project researching the work and life of Douglas Says while Says was depositing his collections with FIT’s archive. 
Three Black people, Roshumba, Douglas Says, and Danielle Revlon, two wearing white lace with hoods and Douglas wearing a red jacket and a leopard print dress shirt.
Roshumba and Danielle Revlon wearing Douglas Says, pictured in center, backstage at Danielle’s ball at Sally’s Hideaway, early nineties.

In the spring of 2025 a portion of Douglas Says’ archive was donated to the FIT Special Collections with more materials anticipated to join in the future. This mutually beneficial addition to the collection diversifies SPARC’s offerings and brings Douglas Says’ work to a broader audience. This introduction to his contribution and influence within fashion and queer history is intended as an invitation for future researchers to more deeply explore any one of the many corners of his life or as a path to research one of his peers.

Black model, Tracy Africa Norman, wearing a body hugging black dress with cut out shapes.
Tracy Africa Norman wearing cutout dress from Douglas Says’ 1992 collection, photo by Preston Phillips.

Scattered in between posters from underrepresented 1980s Newark, NJ, fashion shows in the newly donated and still unprocessed archives of Douglas Says are flyers from legendary 1990s New York balls. Sitting at the intersection of these two worlds was the fashion designer Douglas Says. Douglas’ story and archive is first and foremost a representation of him, but it also envelops the history of the Black and queer fashion and ballroom scene in Newark, NJ, and the New York City boroughs in the eighties, nineties, and beyond, particularly highlighting the muses he worked with over the years.

Some background on Ballroom culture: it dates back to the late 1800s as drag pageants and social events in Harlem and Lower Manhattan where the queer community would compete, dance, and dress in elaborate costumes. By the 1960s Black and Latinx/a/o queens were hosting their own balls in reaction to the marginalization they faced in the larger scene. With the formation of Houses, beginning with Crystal LaBeija founding the House of LaBeija in 1972, ballroom has persisted as a safe haven of expression and chosen family for Black and Latinx/a/o members of the LGBTQ+ community. This background is abbreviated from Jasmine Chiquito and Tea Rose’s project at the University of Michigan, The History of Ballroom where more information can be found on this topic. 

Douglas’ clothes are the manifestation of his fascination with the beauty of fully embodied Black women like those he was surrounded by from a young age and throughout his life. Born Douglas Aaron Williams on March 14, 1961 and raised by his supportive single mother in Newark, NJ, as a kid he looked up to his older cousin LeeGee Wong. Leegee crossdressed every day and was part of the drag family House of Wong along with Leegee’s drag sister Gigi. Douglas was equally enamored by Leegee’s friend Puddin and other trans women on the block and would follow them to the store, watching unknowing men ogle at them. He recalls his mother lending LeeGee clothes and always welcoming everyone into their home with open arms. But Douglas’ first real introduction to the world of fashion was through his friend and model and later first muse, Rosemary Cousar, whose intrinsic sense of style he was instantly drawn to.

Colorful fashion design sketches by Douglas Says
Sketches of Douglas Says’ 1992 Cutout collection.

Douglas’ life and career has been shaped by his pursuit of beauty. He sought it out through his career as a model, modeling coach, drag queen, burlesque dancer, makeup artist, stylist, and designer. His aesthetic is informed by his identity as a Black gay man, exposure to influences like Patrick Kelly, Willi Smith, Isaia, Iman, Grace Jones, and experiences in queer New York nightlife in the eighties and nineties. His style evolved as he became more established, eventually landing his focus on colorful body-conscious day-to-night womenswear, essentially personifying his love for the women in his life through his use of stretch jersey. He is quoted many times as saying “I make clothes like I’m hugging a woman and saying “I love you,” because his jersey dresses embrace the women who wear them. A fabric known for showing every curve and slinking move down the runway, he had the Femme Queen legends of the early nineties ballroom scene clinging to his dresses.

Low lit snapshot of a drag queen performing on stage wearing a gold, body con, long sleeved animal print dress
Douglas Says performing as his drag persona Omni, wearing his own creation, circa 1991.

This was a world he entered through his best friend Tracey “Africa” Norman who was the mother of the House of Africa and the first known Black trans model. He never had the chance to dress his cousin LeeGee who tragically passed away in a car accident, but he developed close bonds with Tracey, Danielle Revlon, Octavia St. Laurent (featured in Paris is Burning), and many others through routinely dressing them. According to Douglas, Danielle even claimed that “the girls got pumped” to fill out Douglas Says clothes, alluding to surgical gender affirming body modifications. The Femme Queens also trusted him to ensure they always appeared “soft” whenever photographer Gerard Gaskins was capturing their image. And although Douglas would attend balls to support the girls, he preferred to socialize with them outside of the ballroom scene because he felt that he never fully understood the politics of ballroom culture. He regularly dressed drag queen Harmonica Sunbeam, and Moi Renee for her iconic 1992 TV performance of “Miss Honey” in a cutout catsuit. He also designed for his own drag persona, Omni*, a name he got from the popular sci-fi magazine of the same name.

Douglas Says’ work is evidence that community fosters creativity, and the proof is in the lives and output of all his collaborators and muses. He is a living record of a community that is foundational to queer and trans life today and an example of a life lived as a fully independent fashion creative. His archival practice, wealth of knowledge, and lived experience are invaluable to preserving not only his life, but the lives of those lost to the AIDS crisis and otherwise who are no longer here to tell their story. For many of the ballroom girls that Douglas Says dressed, their insistence on their existence is their legacy. Their names, dates, and the spaces they occupied matter because they amount to a vital BIPOC-centered queer history and lineage, and Douglas Says them all.

*Douglas’ drag name choice was unaffiliated with the House of Omni, which was later renamed House of UltraOmni.
**Images in this post are from Says’ Facebook page and the new Douglas Says collection in SPARC.

Flyer listing details about a ballroom event
Ballroom flyer featuring all the Femme Queen Legends from Snowball 1992, hosted by the David Father Of The House Of Xtravaganza Ultima (Formerly The Father Of The House Of Xtravaganza), January 5th, 1992.
Two models wearing green tops and satiny blue wide loose pants
Octavia St. Laurent & Danielle Revlon wearing Douglas Says. Makeup by Tracey Africa Norman and photo by Harold Maynor, 1990.

 

 

Flyer advertising a fashion show with black and white photographs of a model and the designer
Flyer for a Douglas Says’ fashion show featuring Newark talent including Rosemary Cousar and Tracee Norman, 1983.

Please join us for our first Archives Salon on October 9, at 7pm: Douglas Says will be interviewed by Joyce Hancock. Free and open to the public! Details can be found here.

 

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