Independent American fashion designer B Michael was born and raised in Connecticut. He found early design inspiration in his mother’s creativity and grandmother’s keen sense of style and later studied millinery at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). After working under icons such as Oscar de la Renta, he decided to launch his namesake millinery line, and in 1999, he developed and launched his first couture collection, under the priming of fashion industry icon Eleanor Lambert.
B Michael’s collections have garnered appreciative fans, including socialites and pop-culture personalities and legends such as Cicely Tyson, Valerie Simpson, Phylicia Rashad, Cate Blanchett, Ruth Carter, Colleen Atwood, Beyonce, Halle Berry, Nancy Wilson, Susan Fales-Hill, Brandy, Lena Horne, among many others. B Michael also designed Whitney Houston’s costumes for the motion picture Sparkle and the costumes for The Joffrey Ballet’s world premier of Alexei Kremnev’s Windy Sands.
In 1998, with the support of Oscar de la Renta, B Michael was granted membership to the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). In 2016, he received the Design Visionary Award from the Lighthouse Guild, and, in 2019, became the first Black American luxury fashion designer to dress and Oscar recipient, his longtime friend and muse Cicely Tyson for her history-making red-carpet moment. For that same ceremony, B Michael also dressed costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who won her first Oscar for Best Costume Design that year, for the film Black Panther. In 2021, B Michael was honored by the National Congress of Black Women at their 37th anniversary gala, titled Through It All Still Standing.
In 2022, B Michael was a special guest on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) series Follow the Thread. He has appeared on CBS Mornings with Gayle King and Weekends with Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC, and has served as a guest lecturer and critic at FIT and other colleges and universities nationwide. He also serves on the board of Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP). In January 2024, his first book, MUSE: Cicely Tyson and Me: A Relationship Forged in Fashion (HarperCollins), was published to wide acclaim and national media attention.
In addition to his work and community/cultural activism, B Michael loves all genres of music, enjoys dancing, and is an avid collector of vintage books, artifacts, and photography.
