GOOD
Green Champion
Joanna Deshay
Advocate for ASU’s first diversity, equity and inclusion in fashion class BY MAJA PEIRCE
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“It was something I was so driven and passionate about,” Joanna Deshay says about breaking into the world of fashion. “I had to do it. It was gnawing at me. So I left corporate America and I haven’t looked back since.” Deshay grew up in West Africa with a Russian mother and Nigerian father who were both engineers. Because of cultural values, her family viewed fashion not as a career option, but as something that was just for fun, so Deshay knew that designing clothes was going to be a hard sell to her parents. When she reached her late 30s, she finally made the jump, leaving her 9-5 job of 15 years to start the Black Russian Label. In 2009, Deshay entered Phoenix Fashion Week’s Emerging Designer Competition and became one of its first winners. The positive feedback she received gave her the validation that she needed to go back to school again. This time, she would be working towards her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Fashion Design from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. “It got to the point where I was telling my kids, who were 3 and 4 years old at the time, ‘Hey, you’ve got to do what you love,’ but I wasn’t doing what I love. I felt like such a hypocrite,” says Deshay. “It was the scariest and bravest thing I had ever done… No one I really know leaves a six-figure job to make no money.” Working 50 hours a week and coming home every night to sew was exhausting for Deshay, but she needed to work as much as she could to afford her classes. She traveled back and forth to San Francisco to let professors see her garments,
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designs and patterns. She made her final leap of faith into the world of fashion after graduating in 2013. It was then that Deshay created the Black Russian Label, choosing the name to honor her Nigerian and Russian roots. Her collections reflect the collective experience of being biracial, including an amalgamation of different patterns, colors and silhouettes. When she first got started, she found herself constantly cutting fabrics, sewing them together, designing outfits, grafting patterns, marketing, promoting and managing vendors. All the money she made was poured back into her brand. “In my mind, worlds were always supposed to collide like that in this very harmonious way,” Deshay says. “It really affected the way I see fashion. I really see it [as something] for all. Part of what makes fashion unique and beautiful is getting to really represent your genuine and authentic self.” Deshay mentored several individual designers and taught classes at the Art Institute in Phoenix for five years. When it closed in 2018, she became an adjunct professor at ASU. Since then, she has taught a wide variety of classes there, including courses on merchandising, manufacturing, fashion technology, intro to fashion, fashion entrepreneurship and capstone projects.
