Fashion Film Series | Mahogany

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"Mahogany is a 1975 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_in_film) feature film (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_film), produced by Motown Productions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown_Productions) and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Pictures) on October 8, 1975. Directed by Motown founder Berry Gordy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Gordy) (taking over after British (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) director Tony Richardson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Richardson) was dismissed from the film), Mahogany stars Diana Ross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Ross) as Tracy Chambers, a poor African-American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American) woman who rises to become a popular fashion designer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashion_designer) in Rome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome). Fresh from the success of Lady Sings the Blues (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Sings_the_Blues_(film)), this film served as Ross' follow-up feature film. Ross plays Tracy Chambers, a sassy industrious young woman living in the projects of Chicago who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. She has worked her way up from salesgirl to secretary and assistant to the head buyer at a luxury department store (modeled after, and filmed at,Marshall Field's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Field%27s) on State Street, Chicago). Her boyfriend Brian Walker, played by Billy Dee Williams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Dee_Williams), is running unsuccessfully for office in the district. When Brian insists Tracy give up her dreams for his, Tracy flees in the middle of the night for Rome, where she becomes a muse to a former client."

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Opening remarks by Drake Stutesman.

Drake Stutesman teaches Costume Design in Film at New York University and The Pratt Institute. She is writing the biography of the milliner/couturier, Mr. John, who created two fashion empires in the 1930s and the 1950s. She is on the board of the London/New YorkFashion in Film Festival and on the board of the New York Women in Film and Television's Designing Women, a yearly event for film + TV costume/hair/makeup awards. She has interviewed all the honorees since 2000. Shewas the Co-Chair of The Women’s Film Preservation Fund during 2006-2012 for which she organized panels and screenings, annually, at the Museum of Modern Art, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Tribeca Film Festival and other venues.

She isthe editor of Framework The Journal of Cinema and Mediaand her fiction and non-fiction has been published by the British Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Koenig Books, Reaktion Books, Indiana University Press, Rutgers University Press, Reality Studios, andBookforum.

This event is a part of the Fashion Illustration Exhibition (http://www.fashionillustrationexhibition.com/) at the Brooklyn Public Library.

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