Bill Blass Speaker Series

Upcoming

A row of mannequins wearing clothes.

Monday, September 29, 2025, 6 p.m.—Monday, September 29, 2025, 7 p.m.

Dandy Wellington is a bandleader, presenter, entertainer, event producer, and creative consultant born and raised in Harlem, New York. An ambassador of the sartorial idiom of the Harlem Renaissance and an expert in the cultural history of Black Americans, Wellington contributed to the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”  

Past speakers

Please see the archive for recent Bill Blass speakers.

We've been honored to host the following guests in previous years: 

  • Sharon Kilfoyle, textile artist
  • Alastair Macleod, chairman of UK-based Hand & Lock Embroidery
  • Fran Morris-Rosman, Director of the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation
  • Lesley Frowick, Halston’s niece and author of the book Halston: Inventing American Fashion
  • Joanne Eicher, Author, dress scholar and Professor emeritus, University of Minnesota
  • Barbara Natoli Witt, jewelry artist
  • Alexander Julian, Fashion and Textile Designer
  • Brian Smith, founder of Ugg boots
  • Carmen Benavente, artist and author of Ninhue: Stitching Chilean Rural Life
  • Erich Biehle, textile designer
  • Jo Paoletti, Dress scholar and author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America and Sex and Unisex: Fashion, Feminism, and the Sexual Revolution
  • Joe Kucharski, Costume Designer and Project Manager, Walt Disney Imagineering
  • John Tiffany, author of Eleanor Lambert: Empress of Fashion
  • Julian Roberts, fashion designer and instructor of Subtraction Cutting
  • Natalie Chain, fashion designer and founder of sustainable fashion company Alabama Chanin
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and paper/textile artist Mary Hark
  • Susan Neill, Exhibitions Planning Director, the Field Museum
  • Lora Morlock, lecturer, Ryerson University