About Us
Stacy Stewart Smith was a Fashion Moods Chicago Style designer under the watchful eye of Ebony Fashion Fair designer ClaRissa Brown for many years. He attended the Sa-Mer Sewing Center on Chicago's South Side on a Todd White Scholarship, where he learned couture finishing techniques from Evelyn Brown, then President of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers, Inc. (NAFAD). Stacy's high-fashion designs were featured in boutiques, on national runways via Hamilton Vogue Esquire Models and Softsheen Products, and custom-made for over a thousand more in the Chicago area during the early to mid-1980s. Stacy was also a featured fashion designer on the CBS news magazine "Someone You Should Know," where he was interviewed by Harry Porterfield. Stacy Couture was founded in 1977 when the designer was just a preteen.
In the late 1980s, Stacy relocated to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Shortly thereafter, he worked in the New York garment center as a domestic designer (Made in America), creating fashions for various companies and generating jobs and millions of dollars in revenue for the US national economy. In the 1990s, the apparel center began shifting toward imports, in part due to NAFTA, international trade agreements, and the introduction of global communications and the Internet. As a result, Stacy found himself in need of new training and enrolled as a pupil at Canali Design Group, where he learned to use Adobe graphic design software.
Stacy put the knowledge from this educational experience to good use, adding his own fashion presentation skills, and landed a job as Professor of Fashion Design at the Wood-Tobe Coburn School (a Bradford College) in 1997. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors from the School of Visual Arts, Stacy also added a refined ability to draw and paint in oil on canvas. At SVA, Stacy was awarded the Stacey Cavrelle Memorial Traveling Fellowship and the Rhodes Family Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts. Stacy Stewart Smith has many collectors of his artworks and was represented by Gallery Guichard of Chicago.
In 2008, Stacy was recruited as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, while continuing to work as a freelance designer locally. He continues to teach at FIT to this very day. Stacy Stewart Smith also holds a Bachelor of Theology degree from Manhattan Bible Institute of New York.
In the early millennial years, Stacy was approached by Fairchild Books (then a division of Conde Nast but now under Bloomsbury Publishing) to author and illustrate CAD for Fashion Design and Merchandising. The digital fashion design textbook, which features step-by-step tutorials, is still in print and is used in the curriculum at fashion schools and colleges internationally. It focuses on teaching both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to create beautiful digital 3D fashion design illustrations.
There is so much more to say about Stacy Stewart Smith, but the real focus of Stacy Menswear Couture is to return to his first love: creating high-fashion apparel. He began this journey early in life and still has the talent and tenacity for it. Having successfully designed for a variety of markets, including women's and children's, Stacy decided to focus on providing men of exceptional taste with his latest bespoke creations.
Stacy Couture offers custom-made couture-quality clothing for those who demand the finest luxury apparel but are tired of paying top dollar for brands that have cut the construction and quality from their lines. Welcome to our couture experience.