GW Black Heritage Celebration Launched with Keynote from Dionna Dorsey

The D.C.-based designer talked about using lifestyle branding to help make societal change.

February 2, 2022

Dionna Dorsey

Designer Dionna Dorsey (center) talks with students Kiera Sona (l) and Funcia Jean-Louis. (William Atkins/GW Today)

By B.L. Wilson

When the fashion industry in New York City went into a slump a decade ago, Dionna Dorsey found herself out of job and turned toward home, the District of Columbia, where the few positions she was offered were a step too far backward financially.

“I realized I wasn’t going to get hired, so I hired myself,” she said. “That’s how I started Dorsey Designs.”

She put her passion for design into serving activist organizations that needed help with branding, design and developing a creative strategy, which led to the founding of her own company, District of Clothing, a lifestyle brand.

A creative entrepreneur, Ms. Dorsey was the keynote speaker launching George Washington University’s Black Heritage Celebration 2022. The theme for this year, Homecoming—Been Black, is an acknowledgement of the impact COVID-19 has had on the Black community, said Multicultural Service Center Director Michael Tapscott.

Naasim Haamid, a graduate student and adviser to the GW Black Student Union, introduced  President Mark S. Wrighton who spoke of the bomb threats that have been received by historically black colleges and universities around the country, including several in the D.C. and Baltimore areas.

“I’m very distressed that these threats cause so much disruption and angst and potential harm in the Black community. This is one reason why we must work together,” Wrighton said.  “It’s necessary for us to disrupt systemic racism and address social inequities and injustices.

“This Black Heritage Celebration is a very important George Washington University tradition,” Wrighton said, “a meaningful way to celebrate the past and maybe more importantly to recognize present contributions of the Black community and contemplate our work together as we look ahead.”

Kiera Sona and Funcia Jean-Louis, both juniors at GW, are co-chairs of the Black Heritage Celebration. Sona introduced Dorsey as an entrepreneur of lifestyle brands whose apparel and accessory items are “worn by changemakers making change,” and began the conversation by asking where she got the courage to start Dionna Designs and District of Clothing.

Dorsey credited her faith and members of her family who told her that “no means next opportunity.”

“You just have to keep pivoting until you can get to where you need to be, understanding that life is filled with challenges, and you can’t allow challenges to stop you,” Dorsey said.

She spoke of her grandfather who had no more than a sixth-grade education and yet owned two companies that made it possible for him to put seven children through college and graduate school And she mentioned her grandmothers who are “the epitome of what it means to be a Black woman, full of strength, faith and progression and nurturing, and have always used what is within them to keep moving forward.”

“[They are] very much a part of who I am and who we are as a culture,” she said.

District of Clothing offers a line of apparel and items from sweatshirts to hats, hoodies, masks and mugs that are imprinted with the missions and messages that Dorsey supports, such as Trust Black Women, Change Maker and Dreamer Doer.

“My hope and my goal is that the apparel can be used as a tool for the people who are wearing them, who are the real change makers who are doing the real work,” she said. “I just hope that we can create community and allow people to have conversations.”

She views changemakers as people with empathy, who use whatever is within them and reject the sidelines to do something about the injustices they see. Some brands were developed in collaboration with Planned Parenthood, Stand with Black Women and Sister SCOTUS that has worked to garner support for appointing a Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States.

At a time when she was planning for her brand, she was hit, like many, by the pandemic. Client requests dropped 25% the first week of the COVID-19 shutdown and 50% the second week. On days when she felt exhausted and depressed, she said people checked on through social media. With the killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, suddenly the world was on the march, mobilized and protesting and they were wearing District of Clothing.

“There’s nothing like watching the news, seeing people, photos and clippings of people wearing District of Clothing who were out really making changes in the world,” she said.

She said she is speaking from a position of privilege, especially with so many having been lost during the pandemic, but that has also “invigorated [her] to keep going and to keep dreaming and doing.”

As for the Black Heritage Celebration theme she said, “Been Black is really about connecting with yourself and the sacrifices of others that came before you and recognizing that you need to do everything with passion and purpose.”