By Stacy Lee Kong

Think about your favourite red carpet fashion moments from the past few years. Odds are, you’re probably thinking of a Law Roach look—especially if that look was on Zendaya. The actor in the hot pink Tom Ford breastplate from the 2020 Critics’ Choice Awards? That was Roach. That vintage Versace dress at the 2021 BET Awards? Roach again. At basically any Met Gala, but especially 2018, when she referenced Joan of Arc for the Heavenly Bodies theme? You guessed it. And that’s not even counting his other clients—he was the stylist behind Ariana Grande’s grey Giambattista Valli gown at the 2020 Grammys (that would be the one with the 20-foot-wide skirt), Kerry Washington’s gorgeous Egyptian-inspired Zuhair Murad gown at the 2020 Vanity Fair Oscar party and both Hunter Schafer and Megan Thee Stallion’s respective attention-grabbing looks at this year’s Vanity Fair Oscar party, for which he also styled four other clients.

Until a little over a week ago, Roach was one of Hollywood’s most powerful and influential stylists… and one of the vanishingly few who are Black. But on March 14, he posted a now-deleted message to Instagram, saying, “My Cup is empty. Thank you to everyone who’ve supported me and my career over the years. Every person that trusted me with their image, I’m so grateful for you all. If this business was just about the clothes I would do it for the rest of my life but unfortunately it’s not! The politics, the lies and false narratives finally got me! You win… I’m out."

It was an unexpected announcement that threw the fashion world into a fair amount of turmoil. Roach followed his announcement with a Vogue interview where he clarified that yes, he was actually retiring, and a sit-down with The Cut editor-in-chief Lindsay Peoples, where he went into more detail about his reasons for leaving styling (though not fashion). In short, he’s tired of the racism, the disrespect and the pace he has felt pressured to maintain. But while his announcement has sparked very necessary conversations about the state of the fashion industry and what we all lose when someone like Roach steps back (as well as a lot of gossip and speculation about past drama), I don’t think we’re paying enough attention to the last part: his need for rest.

But first, a small primer on Law Roach

Roach didn’t come from a ‘traditional’ fashion background. As he told Peoples in their interview, he (seemingly still) considers himself a street kid. “My mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and I was the oldest of five, and she decided one day to take my brothers and sisters and to leave me, right? And so I literally lived in an abandoned house,” he says. “She also told me when she left me, ‘Well, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.’ And so when you tell a 13, 14-year-old that, you know, that means you have to do whatever you have to do to survive and to eat.”

He was forced to provide for himself any way he could, including returning people’s shopping carts at the grocery store so he could keep the quarter deposits to buy food. He discovered a love of fashion while shopping for himself at thrift stores, and eventually, that’s how he was able to make a living, sourcing authentic vintage pieces and selling them at his own boutique, Deliciously Vintage, which had locations in Chicago and New York City. He was catapulted to fame in 2009 when Kanye West became a regular at the Chicago store, drawing the attention of paparazzi and, crucially, other celebrities. He eventually moved to L.A. to pursue styling, where he was introduced to a then 14-year-old Zendaya, who needed a strategy to transcend her Disney roots. “What helped me create an avenue and lane of my own outside of Disney Channel was fashion. Me and Law [Roach] would show up at stuff I had no business being at just so I could get the look,” she told Issa Rae in 2021.

While most of the news coverage of Roach’s retirement has focused on his relationship with Zendaya, his influence is wider than just one celebrity. He credits his time styling Anne Hathaway for showing Hollywood that Black stylists can work with A-list white talent. And everyone credits him for Celine Dion’s fashion revival. “Law is who those on the cusp of stardom go to when needed to be taken seriously,” culture write Ayan Artan explained in Refinery29. “A lot of outlets snidely mention that his ‘image architect’ moniker is ‘self-proclaimed,’ but why shouldn’t it be? This is the man who took Celine Dion, who had been stuck in a style rut, and relaunched her cultural relevancy. He did it with just a Vetements Titanic sweatshirt. He did the same with Tiffany Haddish (who he famously no longer works with), turning the comedian into a red-carpet staple in dresses matching the cultural clout she had been accumulating.”

All of which is to say, Roach isn’t just talented, he’s also impactful. His career has opened doors for other Black stylists, and helped change mainstream (white) perceptions of their capabilities. He has been recognized for that work with magazine covers and, most recently, a CFDA award. But… he’s also a perpetual outsider, something he hinted at in his retirement announcement when he said, “the politics, the lies and false narratives finally got me” and later told Peoples directly.

Roach’s retirement is a good lens to explore what it’s like to be Black in fashion

So yes, we should absolutely be talking about what it’s like to work in fashion as a Black person, and how much has—or perhaps more accurately, hasn’t—changed since 2018, when Peoples, then fashion market editor at The Cut, wrote an article titled “Everywhere and Nowhere. What it’s really like to be black and work in fashion.” That piece was one of the first times I had ever seen candid conversations about how common racism is in every area of the fashion industry, and while I’m not Black and didn’t work in fashion, so much of it felt familiar. (Turns out, the same shit happens in all creative industries! So fun.) Roach was one of the people she interviewed, and he was candid about why there were so few Black stylists at his level, saying, “the manager goes to the publicist to ask for suggestions. And the publicist hires the same people, over and over. The studios call the same publicists, and they call the same stylists, and that’s why there aren’t any opportunities for other people. New talent is just passed up. I think that the work should speak for itself, right? It just perpetuates this idea that only certain people can help your career, and it’s not inclusive.”

But it’s not just about access to opportunities; it’s also about respect. Almost immediately after Roach announced his retirement, people online began speculating if he was having a tantrum over a perceived slight at the Louis Vuitton show at Paris Fashion Week, when he and Zendaya arrived and there was no seat for him in the front row. Roach took pains to explain to Peoples that this wasn’t the reason he was retiring, nor was there any tension between him and his longtime client. But, he said, it was about having to fight for pay equity and proper credit, and fight against the narratives that have been crafted about him by industry gatekeepers and sometimes even his clients’ own teams—that he’s difficult, mean, a diva, fame-hungry, disrespectful. That he’ll never treat any client as well as he treats Zendaya. That he won’t follow through on his promises.

Raise your hand if you’re a person of colour who has been told you are (or have been hyper-aware of your behaviour so as not to appear) difficult, diva-like or disrespectful. I’m going to bet that all of us have had this experience, and I think it is important to recognize that money, prestige and even the power that Roach accumulated over the course of his career wasn’t enough to protect him. In fact, his experience is yet another reminder that increased visibility isn’t the same thing as legitimate progress, and that opportunity doesn’t equal equity.

But, let’s not ignore what Roach says about rest

As the discourse about his retirement meandered on this week, I saw some people talk about how he should come back, with the subtext being ‘don’t let the bastards win.’ Journalist Heidi Moore was one of them, tweeting, “all of which is to say: @LUXURYLAW you should come back. Please have the faith in yourself to know you can set boundaries and fire clients/lock people out who use emotional manipulation and abuse against you. There are others who will support you and make you thrive.”

And I’m confident she said that with the best of intentions. She’s probably not even wrong! But… I think it was also an unintentionally callous misunderstanding of what Roach said: he’s tired, and he has realized that his life doesn’t look like what he wants it to. He has no friends, no relationships, no hobbies, no life, really, outside of work. He also spoke touchingly about his grief over his three-year-old nephew, who died in 2021.

“[When my nephew died,] I never felt anything like that before… It kind of made me understand that I had no other priorities than my work, because when he passed away he was 3. I had only been able to see him maybe … I saw him when he was born, I saw him on Christmas, one time, and then I saw him around our birthday. So I had only been able to see him three times in his whole life. Not being able to ever know who he would be, I was on the verge of suicide, honestly. The guilt of not being in his life enough and not really knowing him enough had put me into a really dark depression. And I had never been depressed in my life. So my brain couldn’t really understand what was happening,” Roach said. “He died a day before Thanksgiving. So I was on a retainer with a client and his manager, and I’ll never forget this — his manager said, ‘Oh yeah, but you really didn’t do anything in December.’ And I didn’t say anything, but it kind of haunts me that people don’t see me sometimes as human. And that I don’t deserve grace. So it’s been a lot of little things that’s been happening over the last couple of years that have been pushing me towards this decision of retirement. I need to learn how to give myself grace, and I need to learn how to let people know that I am human.”

There’s a lot to unpack here, right? The impulses to over-work to prove his worth, the relentless focus that leaves no time for any other human needs, the guilt—and the lack of compassion from his professional circle, who only saw what he could do and not who he was, or what he needed. These are deeply sad and traumatic realizations for anyone to have, I think, and I find it jarring to see people ignore this part of his reasoning in favour of focusing on ideas of success or productivity. And we can’t separate out race, gender and sexuality from this conversation. What does it mean when we tell racialized people, especially Black people, especially queer Black people, that their excellence and impact is more important than their happiness, health or peace?

So, I’m actually really glad to see Roach make a decision that’s right for him, because I think it shows all of us overachieving people from marginalized backgrounds that our careers can change, and so can our dreams—and in fact, sometimes they have to, for our own survival.

✨ Announcing: Making Our Own Way, a Friday Things video series ✨

I’ve been working on a big project for the past few months, and I’m super excited to (finally) tell you all about it! Last year, I received grant funding from Ontario Creates to produce a six-episode video series called Making Our Own Way. It’s all about Toronto creatives who are finding their own unique paths to professional success, and tackles questions like, how do you become successful when gatekeepers and decision-makers don’t see the value you bring—or are actively trying to keep you out? How are we supposed to keep an ‘abundance mindset’ when we know there are actual barriers to our success? What does success even mean? And… the first episode, with filmmaker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, is out now!

And Did You Hear About…

The Girls renaissance. 

This smart analysis of Miley Cyrus’ gossip-centric marketing strategy for “Flowers” (which is not dissimilar to Taylor Swift’s approach to marketing her Taylor’s Version albums). 

Guardian writer Nicole Flattery’s convincing essay on who we can blame for today’s “disposable celebrity culture”: Andy Warhol.

The oft promised, but so far non-existent, backlash to fast fashion.

Denise, heaven’s best receptionist. (Warning: this one might make you cry.)

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