Charlene Prempeh: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Charlene Prempeh is a London-based writer, curator and founder of the agency and platform A Vibe Called Tech, whose 2023 book «Now You See Me» recovered a century of Black designers working across fashion, graphics, architecture and product design. This mix traces the figures she excavated, the London scene she operates inside, and the archival and institutional projects moving alongside her.

The Kynda mix for Charlene Prempeh

• Key Influence · Ann Lowe: American Couturier by Elizabeth Way (2023). Ann Lowe, the Black couturier who made Jacqueline Bouvier's 1953 wedding dress and was credited only as 'a coloured woman dressmaker', is a central recovered figure in Prempeh's argument that Black designers were present throughout modern design history but stripped of authorship. Elizabeth Way's exhibition catalogue, from the Winterthur show, assembles the garment evidence that makes the erasure legible rather than anecdotal.
• Influencia Obscura · Poster for Negro in Art Week by Charles Dawson (1927). Dawson, a Chicago commercial artist and one of the first Black students at the Art Institute, produced advertising, pageant graphics and the 1933 'ABCs of Great Negroes' linocuts while running a studio in an industry that largely refused him. His Negro in Art Week poster is a rare surviving piece of Black graphic authorship from the 1920s, the sort of pre-war evidence design histories routinely skipped.
• Local Roots · Launderette by Yinka Ilori (2019). Ilori, London-born of Nigerian parentage, built a practice on Yoruba parable and the chromatic logic of south London shopfronts, turning a Bethnal Green laundrette into a saturated installation. He belongs to the same contemporary London cohort Prempeh writes about and platforms — designers whose diasporic reference points are treated as formal method rather than biography, working across furniture, graphics and public space.
• Beyond the Medium · Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman (2019). Hartman's method — 'critical fabulation', reading against the grain of records that registered Black women only as problems — gave a generation of cultural writers a way to work with archives built to exclude their subjects. Prempeh's design history faces the identical obstacle: catalogues, patents and credits that name the firm and not the maker, requiring interpretation rather than simple retrieval.
• Peer · In the Black Fantastic by Ekow Eshun (2022). Eshun, former ICA director and a London writer-curator, assembled eleven artists at the Hayward around speculation, myth and the refusal of documentary realism, with a book extending the argument. He and Prempeh occupy the same British orbit: writers who moved into curation to build the exhibitions and publications that institutions were not producing about Black visual culture.
• From the Canon · Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design by Charlene Prempeh (2023). Prempeh's book moves across fashion, architecture and graphic design to assemble a century of Black practitioners — Ann Lowe, Charles Harrison, Patrick Kelly, Emory Douglas among them — and argues that their absence from design history is a documentation failure rather than an absence of work. It is the clearest statement of her method: recovery, cross-disciplinary breadth, and refusal of the single-medium survey.
• Key Collaborator · SR_A: Samuel Ross by Samuel Ross (2018). Ross moved from A-Cold-Wall* fashion into industrial design and sculpture through his SR_A studio, working with Hublot, Oakley and Beats while insisting on British working-class and diasporic reference. He belongs to the contemporary cohort Prempeh's platform and journalism have championed — figures who refuse the fashion/product/art partition that her own cross-disciplinary writing also rejects.
• Legacy · Where Are the Black Designers? by Mitzi Okou (2020). Okou's conference and ongoing organisation turned a question about graphic design's demographics into durable infrastructure — talks, mentorship, hiring pressure. It runs parallel to Prempeh's project from the activist side: where the book establishes that a century of Black designers existed, this works on the pipeline that determines whether the next century is documented any better.

What influenced Charlene Prempeh

• Handbook of Tyranny by Theo Deutinger (2018). Handbook of Tyranny (Theo Deutinger) — culture for Charlene Prempeh (wikidata.org)
• The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Paul Gilroy) — culture for Charlene Prempeh (wikidata.org)
• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman (2019). Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (Saidiya Hartman) — culture for Charlene Prempeh (wikidata.org)
• Ann Lowe: American Couturier by Elizabeth Way (2023). Ann Lowe: American Couturier (Elizabeth Way) — titan for Charlene Prempeh
• Gregory Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology housing drawings by Georgia Louise Harris Brown (1950). Gregory Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology housing drawings (Georgia Louise Harris Brown) — ghost for Charlene Prempeh
• Poster for Negro in Art Week by Charles Dawson (1927). Poster for Negro in Art Week (Charles Dawson) — ghost for Charlene Prempeh
• A Life's Design: The Life and Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison by Charles Harrison (2005). A Life's Design: The Life and Work of Industrial Designer Charles Harrison (Charles Harrison) — titan for Charlene Prempeh
• Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas by Emory Douglas (2007). Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (Emory Douglas) — titan for Charlene Prempeh

Peers and kindred spirits

• Stine Goya by Stine Goya. Prempeh’s agency lists Stine Goya among the brands it has worked with. “Since its establishment in 2018, A Vibe Called Tech has worked with brands including, Stine Goya, Faber, Frieze and institutions like Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, and V&A East” (A Vibe Called Tech)
• White Cube by White Cube. Prempeh’s agency lists White Cube among the institutions it has worked with. “Since its establishment in 2018, A Vibe Called Tech has worked with brands including, Stine Goya, Faber, Frieze and institutions like Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, and V&A East” (A Vibe Called Tech)
• This Is What I Know About Art by Kimberly Drew (2020). This Is What I Know About Art (Kimberly Drew) — peer for Charlene Prempeh (openlibrary.org)
• In the Black Fantastic by Ekow Eshun (2022). In the Black Fantastic (Ekow Eshun) — peer for Charlene Prempeh (wikidata.org)
• Duro Olowu: Seeing by Duro Olowu (2020). Duro Olowu: Seeing (Duro Olowu) — collaborator for Charlene Prempeh
• Launderette by Yinka Ilori (2019). Launderette (Yinka Ilori) — geography for Charlene Prempeh
• Black Venus by Aindrea Emelife (2022). Black Venus (Aindrea Emelife) — peer for Charlene Prempeh
• SR_A: Samuel Ross by Samuel Ross (2018). SR_A: Samuel Ross (Samuel Ross) — collaborator for Charlene Prempeh
• Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm by Grace Wales Bonner (2024). Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm (Grace Wales Bonner) — geography for Charlene Prempeh
• Lewis Dalton Gilbert by Lewis Dalton Gilbert. Prempeh’s agency identifies Gilbert as its creative director.
• Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design by Amelie Klein (2015). Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design (Amelie Klein) — collaborator for Charlene Prempeh
• Ozwald Boateng: A Man's Story by Varon Bonicos (2012). Ozwald Boateng: A Man's Story (Varon Bonicos) — geography for Charlene Prempeh

Who Charlene Prempeh influenced

• Crafted Kinship by Malene Barnett (2024). Crafted Kinship (Malene Barnett) — legacy for Charlene Prempeh
• Where Are the Black Designers? by Mitzi Okou (2020). Where Are the Black Designers? (Mitzi Okou) — legacy for Charlene Prempeh