Hollywood had never met anyone like Law Roach. To them, he talked funny; always using hand gestures to accentuate his “Chi-kahh-go” accent. He didn’t speak proper English, pronouncing “here” as “hea” and “to” as “tuh.” And, simply put, he wasn’t one of them; a good ole boy or gal with money and lineage.
That was in the early 2010s, back when the South Side native wasn’t supposed to outdo them at their own game. Today, he’s got luxe designers knocking at his door, having already retired from his multimillion-dollar business as a fashion icon with credentials including a global stylist enterprise and dressing celebs such as Zendaya, Céline Dion, Hunter Schafer of HBO’s “Euphoria” fame and Megan Thee Stallion. Now with the release of his new book, he exemplifies the power of being Black and from Chicago: the hustle is in him. Nothing’s ever been handed to Black people from this city. Yet, Roach is a walking embodiment of kicking a leg out into the elevator just as the door was closing. He’ll never let anybody or anything shut him out.
“I told someone the other day, everybody who works for me, from now on, I want them to be from Chicago,” Roach told The TRiiBE during media interviews at the Punch House on Sept. 29.
“It’s almost like you can take somebody from Chicago and put them anywhere, and not only will they survive, but they’ll thrive,” Roach continued. “When I meet somebody from Chicago, I’m like, ‘you from Chicago,’ even if you don’t catch the accent or whatever. It’s something about us that’s just so strong.”
Earlier, Roach kicked off his book tour with a lively discussion upstairs in Thalia Hall. Hosted by the Chicago Humanities Festival and moderated by ABC-7 anchor Val Warner, Roach gave us some teasers from his new book, How to Build a Fashion Icon: Notes on Confidence from the World’s Only Image Architect, set for an Oct. 1 release date. The talk also featured multi-hyphenate creative Kristen Noel Crawley, owner of KNC School of Beauty.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Roach said while the audience gave a standing ovation as he walked onstage. “When I was planning out the tour with my publisher, Abrams, and it was like, ‘well, what should be the first stop?’ I said Chicago has to be the first stop. I gotta come home and be with my people. And I wore my good hair.”
The discussion gave girls talk with good girlfriends. Roach dished on the Chicago hustle that turned him and Zendaya into a fashionable item. Like the time they went to New York Fashion Week in 2014 without any invites, but Zendaya stole everyone’s attention with a blue and yellow Muiniko coat that went viral.
“Literally, we got out the car and one person took a picture, and that one became two, and two became four, and four became 12. Before you know it, this whole mob was surrounding her taking pictures,” Roach recalled. “She’s like, ‘they don’t even know who I am.’ I said, they don’t have to know who you are. You’re beautiful and you have something that they see in you. The next day, that picture was on the cover of WWD and that really kind of changed the trajectory of our careers.”
There are also the early days when Roach would intentionally put Zendaya in dresses other celebrities had worn, because when he would show up to showrooms, the designers would say they didn’t have anything for her. Plus, “I knew that she will wear it better. Stop me if I’m lying,” he added. That put Zendaya on the weeklies radar, often winning the “who wore it best” contests.
“That’s Chicago hustle, right?” Roach said to a rousing round of affirmative applause. “And so when that starts to happen, people start paying attention and the designers start calling us. I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t ever work for anyone to tell me the right way to do things. So I took everything I learned from growing up on the streets in Chicago and I just applied that to the situation I was in.”
The hustle peaked when Roach was running the global business.
“I don’t think people knew exactly how big my business was, but I had a global business that was 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I had four assistants in LA, two in New York, one in London, one in Paris,” Road said.
His career had gotten so big, he explained, that the only was to get bigger was to add more work and more clients to his plate.
“I had became the contributing editor for British Vogue, and you know the year before, I had did 36 magazine covers. I had all the A-list stars, music, Hollywood and sports. I had done everything,” Roach said. “They never thought I would become who I became. They never thought that I would pass them on the list. They never thought that I would be the celebrity stylist, right? And all those things was just a byproduct of the hard work.”
A Harlan High School alum, Roach was raised by a single mother. During the talk, he hinted at some of his traumatic childhood experiences of going to bed hungry and not listening to music because his mother only listened to music when she was depressed. “I’m working through it. I’m therapeuting myself,” he said.
A bright spot for him was Sundays at church with his grandmother, which served as his introduction to fashion. “You used to get your school clothes, you get your church clothes and then you get your play clothes,” he said. “Just growing up that way, it kind of instilled in me that there was something important about fashion, and I think that’s what really sparked my interest to get into the industry.”
In 2009, Roach and his friend Siobhan Strong, whom he met as a student at Chicago State University, opened a vintage clothing store in Pilsen, off 18th and Halsted, called Deliciously Vintage. That’s where he became the image architect (a phrase that he’s since trademarked), telling customers they “need this belt” or to “try this shoe.” In 2011, he started pulling vintage looks for Zendaya, and he fully moved to LA in 2014.
“Chicago is not an industry town like that, right?” Roach said. “I had this woman that came into my life, but I call her my godmother, and she said, ‘you’re never going to win the game if you’re not in the stadium. It was an ah-ha moment. Two weeks later, I just moved to LA and I just gave it my best shot.”
The audience, many of whom were dressed to the nines reflecting their adoration for Roach, soaked up all the advice. During a Q&A, one audience member asked if it’s best to leave Chicago to become a bigger brand. Roach said it depends on the type of stylist you want to be, because he had four or five billionaires as clients in Chicago.
“But if you want to be the type of stylist that’s going to have clients at the Oscars and the Golden Globes and the Grammys and all that, you’re not going to be able to do that from here,” he added.
Currently, Roach is defining what retirement means for him. Of course he’s still working with Zendaya, but walking away from “the politics of Hollywood” has given him a chance to find real happiness and joy. That life decision led him to the current book, thoughts of writing a memoir, and the recent acquisition of the School of Style, an online educational program that teaches basics of the fashion industry. Roach said the first course offered will be how to become an image architect. The course will launch on Oct. 9.
“Once you’re certified, you automatically move into this pipeline where you can get signed by an agency and you can actually start working,” Roach said. “With School of Style, what we doing is that we’re shrinking the gap from you dreaming and you actually realizing your dreams.”
At this point in Roach’s career, it’s about paying it forward. At Punch House after the event, Roach signed books and took photos with local celebs such as actor Corey D. Williams, BLK & BRWN Market founder Christine Griffith, Fashion Geek owner Alonzo Jackson and his fellow Ghetto Runways Podcast host Dane, and Surround Sound of Fashion founder Nathan Gilbert.
With the inaugural Chicago Fashion Week coming up on Oct. 9, Roach is thinking about how he can help grow Chicago’s fashion ecosystem.
“I just wish that big corporations and the fashion industry would pay more attention because it’s a lot of talent here, right? If we just figure out a way to cultivate and nurture that talent,” Roach said, referencing the work the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) does in this area. “We have to figure it out, and I would love to be a part of that think tank that helps to figure that out.”
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