was given the confidence to pursue a career in design when he was in high school

Wilkerson, the Lafayette 148 designer who grew up in New York, was given the confidence to pursue a career in design when he was in high school. "My teachers were really a big force in my life," he recalls. "I learned draping in high school. And by my sophomore year I had a part-time job at Anne Klein." Wilkerson's teachers urged him to enroll at Parsons. Reese's teachers at Cass Technical High School in Detroit also directed her to Parsons. "I didn't consider fashion as a career until I did the Parsons summer program for high school students," she says.

Without such teachers to encourage them, many students don't see design as a viable career. And neither do their parents. "They look at fashion as a career path that is out of their vocabulary," says Gunn, who now works as chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne. "In urban magnet schools, lots of students are the first in their family to go to college," he adds. "Their parents want them to have a traditional college experience." The scarcity of high-profile African-American designers may only heighten prospective students' fear of stepping into a world that seems foreign, daunting and lacking in friendly Black faces.

But there is some promise in the story of Veronica Miller. As a high school student, the Pittsburgh native was steered toward engineering, which her family thought would be lucrative, or journalism, in part because her father had built a career in broadcasting. Her mother was a banker. "I had very supportive parents, but they didn't know how secure a career in a creative field would be," Miller says. " The stereotype of the struggling artist? Their attitude was: We struggled so you wouldn't have to."

So Miller majored in broadcasting at Howard University. She spent about six years working at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. But at 27, she began reassessing her career path, asking herself, Is this what makes me happy? She resigned from NPR and enrolled in the design program at Drexel University with the goal of owning her own company.

Star power: 5. Music producer Pharrell Williams is behind the upscale streetwear label Billionaire Boys Club. 6. Fashion mogul Kimora Lee Simmons raised her personal brand's profile with a top-rated reality show. 7. Sean Combs was nominated four times before winning a CFDA award in 2004 for Menswear Designer of the Year. 8. When she isn't making music, Beyoncé and her mother, Tina Knowles, helm the ready-to-wear line House of Deréon.

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