Fine Art Collection Profile, written by David Masello for Fine Art Connoisseur
While the self-described New York Fashion Geek, Reginald Ferguson, knows that clothing styles go in and out of fashion, his taste for the artist William H. Johnson (1901–1970) never varies. Ferguson, who is New York’s best-dressed man, is also someone who helps make other men look their best, and he remembers the first time he saw the paintings and drawings of Johnson, an artist he so reveres that he calls him “Mr. Johnson.”
“I’ve known of Mr. Johnson’s works since childhood, when I first encountered them at the Studio Museum in Harlem.” So intrigued is Ferguson with Johnson’s oeuvre that he traveled to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., to see what he considers a favorite work, “Children at Ice Cream Stand.”
Ferguson grew up in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, yet he always felt the cultural pull of the uptown neighborhood of Harlem. “When I was little, Harlem was already on my mind. It is the center of African American culture, and you can’t be Black in New York and not have a relationship with Harlem and its community.” Of the many works Johnson created in his lifetime, “Children at Ice Cream Stand” continues to affect Ferguson, notably in its direct evocation of a Harlem street.
“It’s a joyful scene,” he says of this drawing, which depicts children stopping at a wheel-drawn cart for scoops of ice cream on what is likely a weekend summer afternoon. “My late grandparents were Depression-era kids, and when I look at this work, I think that any of the figures could be them. I love its ethos and how it reverberates even now. You can still find someone rolling a cart of flavored ices, ringing a bell, and having kids congregating like a Pavlovian call.” Ferguson notes, too, the details of the mother and child in the background passing a table of produce, as well as one of the boys posed with a wooden hoop, a toy of the era. “Mr. Johnson gives such a strong sense of community, of childhood, of summer.”
Since founding New York Fashion Geek in 2020, Ferguson has become a much-sought-after resource for the men who hire him to “help achieve their goals, relieve their stress, and make them feel better about dressing.” He says, “I hope to take them from fashion- confused to fashion-confident. Most of my male clients would rather have their teeth pulled than go shopping for clothes.” While Ferguson admits that Johnson’s scene doesn’t relate directly to his sense of fashion and style, he is keenly aware of the colors it employs, just as he is of the hues of the many suits and ties, shirts and trousers, shoes and accessories that fill the closets of his Brooklyn apartment.
“I grew up in an environment with my late mother and grandparents, who taught me the importance of style and fashion and looking good. My mother was cosmopolitan, erudite, cultured, and a good mother is your first teacher.” They also imparted lessons to young Ferguson on how to coordinate differing hues and patterns. “I’ve always been struck by the bold colors Mr. Johnson used in his art. There’s an angularity to the figures and other elements, not so unlike the way I appreciate the lines of clothing. I may be a jaded New Yorker, but I am never jaded about the art of Mr. Johnson.”
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Story prepared for the web by Cherie Dawn Haas, Editor of Fine Art Today
