Dr. Elka Stevens Is Building the Next Generation of Black Fashion Designers — One Howard Graduate at a Time
You know what we don’t talk about enough? The people who build the people who build the future.
Dr. Elka Marie Stevens is an associate professor of visual culture and studio art at Howard University. She’s also the program coordinator for the Fashion Design program (BFA and MFA), the curator of the Fashion, Textiles, and Accessories Collection, and one of the most important people in fashion education that most people have never heard of.
She’s an artist, a scholar, a quilter, a digital humanities builder, and — most importantly — the person making sure the next generation of Black fashion designers has the training, the context, and the confidence to walk into any room and own it.
The Work
Let’s start with what’s on her desk right now.
Dr. Stevens is digitizing a historic costume collection so students and researchers can study garments without traveling across the country. She’s building searchable media databases focused on Black political figures and African American fashion designers — so if a Howard student needs to research Shirley Chisholm’s wardrobe choices five minutes before class, she can.
She just published a book chapter called “Race-ing Rebellion and Revolution: An Analysis of Dress in John Singleton’s Higher Learning” in the anthology From ‘Higher Learning’ to Charlottesville (Palgrave, March 2026). The thesis: film costume isn’t decoration — it’s communication. Singleton knew it. Carter knows it. She’s making sure the next generation of designers knows it too.
She’s also a working artist. She’s a quilter — commissioned to create four quilts commemorating faculty participation at Howard. She created garments for a traveling exhibition of Alma Thomas paintings (Alma Thomas was the first graduate of Howard’s Art Department, 1924). Her first solo exhibition, 38.8% Visualizing Racial Identity in Search of Selfhood and Others, opened at Michigan State in 2022 during her Critical Race Studies residency.
PhD from the University of Minnesota. Published scholar. Digital archivist. Quilter. Professor. She doesn’t stop.
The Roots
Dr. Stevens came up through the academy the way a lot of Black scholars do — by being excellent in spaces that weren’t designed for her. She earned her PhD at the intersections of visual culture, material culture, globalization, and identity, and landed at Howard, where she could pour everything she learned into students who look like her.
Under her coordination, Howard’s Fashion Design program isn’t just teaching students how to sketch. It’s teaching the history of the cloth, the politics of the garment, the economics of the industry, and the cultural weight of what they’re creating.
Why It Matters
Fashion is not frivolous. Fashion is infrastructure.
Every Black designer who graduates from Howard and starts a label, joins a major house, teaches the next cohort, opens a boutique, or costumes a film — they’re all carrying what Dr. Stevens poured into them. She’s not just an educator. She’s a multiplier. One professor times hundreds of students equals an industry transformed.
When she says textiles and clothing are a “lens of analysis,” she means: look at what we wear and you’ll see who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. She’s making sure the people telling that story next are Black, trained, and ready.
Quick Facts
- Education: PhD, University of Minnesota
- Current role: Associate Professor, Howard University — Department of Art
- Also: Fashion Design Program Coordinator (BFA/MFA) | Curator, Fashion, Textiles & Accessories Collection
- Recent publication: “Race-ing Rebellion and Revolution” in From ‘Higher Learning’ to Charlottesville (2026)
- Art practice: Quilting, fiber art, mixed media — solo exhibition 38.8% (MSU, 2022)
- Current projects: Digitizing historic costume collection, building databases of Black political figures and African American designers
- Follow: elkastevens.com
