Michelle Hébert

Michelle Hébert (born January 23, 1991) is a fashion designer, multimedia artist, and educator. She specializes in evening wear, couture gowns, and bridal wear.
== Early Life ==
Hébert was born to a mixed-race family of African, European, and Asian ancestry, and grew up in a working-class household. She attended Mount San Antonio College to study fashion design.
== Career ==
Hébert knew she wanted to be a designer by the age of ten. She arrived at fashion design after illustrating wardrobes of comic characters inspired by Japanese and American artists as a child. Hébert found redrawing the clothing of her characters to be tedious but she enjoyed designing their outfits. As a high school sophomore, she was named one of the "17 Best Dressed Girls in America" by Seventeen Magazine. The award persuaded Hébert to take her career in fashion more seriously and led her to earn an A.S. in fashion design and an A.S. in fashion merchandising at Mount San Antonio College. While attending college, she launched her couture business. Initially lacking resources, Hébert crowdsourced funding.
Hébert primarily conducts her couture business through social media, which consists of custom bridal, evening wear, and other client pieces. She also teaches fashion through online learning platforms.
Her work has been worn by celebrities including Alicia Keys, Brenda Song", Dita Von Teese, Karrueche Tran, Kiana Ledé, Lili Reinhart, Niki Zefanya, Quinta Brunson, Sabrina Claudiohttps://www.instagram.com/p/CPHfChFpkcH/, Symone, SZA, Taryn Manning, Tinashe, and Kaia Gerber. Hébert's work was also featured in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's series HitRECord and in a Buzzfeed production with Eugene Lee Yang. 
In addition, Hebert appeared in Billboard Magazine, Vogue, Vogue Italia, ELLE Croatia, as well as in independent magazines. Her work was exhibited at the Los Angeles Music Center.
== Design ==
Identity, gender, and race have been consistent interests for Hébert, who identifies as multiracial and multicultural. "I see things fluidly," she wrote in Allen & Houston Magazine in 2021. "I realize I always have because I have lived between categories my whole life." Elsewhere she has described her mixed-race and working-class background as giving her an "outsider" perspective on the fashion industry. Hébert also takes pride in her relation to John Anthony Copeland Jr., who attempted to instigate a slave revolt in 1859 at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with the abolitionist John Brown. Copeland's failed efforts helped spark the American Civil War.
In 2021, Hébert designed a piece inspired by black suffragists for the singer, songwriter, and actress, Kiana Ledé. Kiana wore the piece in "Your Attention Please," a Hulu production that showcased the work of black creators. The RuPaul's Drag Race (season 13) of RuPaul's Drag Race also featured Hébert's work. The series winner, Symone, wore a piece designed by Hébert with armor created by Michael Schmidt. Recounting the piece, Symone explained, "I played with fragility and hardness, to show the strength that Black women portray."
Category:1991 births
Category:Inland Empire people
Category:American people
Category:American fashion designers
Category:Multimedia artists