In his first two year after college, he had 20 different jobs. First as a designer of patterns and later at a company that made blouses. “Blacks were the largely invisible members of the back-room staff in fashion houses during the 1960s,” he wrote in his memoir, and Mr. Haggins was not the back-room sort. “Getting hired and fired,” he added, “came easily to me.”
On East 54th Street, he began frequenting the nightclub Arthur run by Sybil Burton (ex-wife of Richard Burton), which was awash with celebrities. He started dressing Myrna, an old high school friend who was his date every evening, in designs of his own. It became a series.
In 1966, when he had 12 pieces, he cold-called editors at fashion magazines and at Women’s Wear Daily, which was the first publication to cover him. The editor who came to see him told her colleagues, he recalled, that she had just discovered “a tall, ebony young man with the most inspirational fashions.”
Mr. Haggins’s romantic partners were mostly men, but not always. In 1970, Haggins and model June Murphy met and got married. He turned the fashion show he held in Tudor City on a terrace, showcasing resort wear and spring styles, into a wedding that September.
A model in a wedding dress used to be the fashion standard to conclude a fashion show. Mr. Haggins gave his bride purple prints with a trailing scarf with a painted butterfly. They exchanged their vows while wearing the colorful accessory. Marriage lasted only one year and half. His own words reveal that he had been unfaithful for a long time, which led to a bitter divorce. Their marriage “was a very special time in my life,” he told The Times in 2017, “and I wish it had lasted.”
His jersey and chiffon confections were often in flight. At a show at F.I.T., his alma mater, in 1979, when he and other Black designers were being honored, one of his dresses flew up and over a model’s head, drawing a standing ovation from the audience. When Ms. Williams, the former journalist, married in 1980, Mr. Haggins designed the bridesmaids’ gowns: tea-length chiffon in shades of pink that were slit to the waist. The wedding was held one blustery evening at the Wave Hill public garden in the Bronx, and during the processional a gust lifted the bridesmaids’ skirts like so many sails. The minister, Ms. Williams recalled, declared, “Thank you Jesus!”
Carolyn Grant is the only surviving sister of Mr. Haggins.
Mr. Haggins made grand gestures. During the blackout of 1965, he walked from his apartment to a nearby steakhouse carrying a candelabra he’d pinched from the Plaza Hotel, tapers ablaze, and ordered a steak, medium-rare.