Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator and curator who works across the academy, arts and fashion industries. She holds a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri, a Master of Arts in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design and a Master of Arts in Black Studies from Northwestern University, where she is also currently pursuing her PhD in Black Studies. She has lectured at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis, where she created new courses on fashion and race. She has written for Hyperallergic, Cultured and Teen Vogue, and has participated in speaking engagements with the Council of the Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), Google, Museum of the African Diaspora - San Francisco, and Studio Museum in Harlem, among several other arts and cultural institutions. In her writing and public speaking capacity, she has interviewed formidable fashion professionals and artists such as the late André Leon Talley, Amy Sherald and Mickalene Thomas. Rikki is currently an editorial board member for Bloomsbury Fashion Publishing and a recipient of the Presidential Fellowship at Northwestern University, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, and a Chicago Critic's Table Fellowship from the University of Chicago's Arts + Public Life. She is the founder and editor of the Fashion and Race Syllabus and Black Fashion Archive.

"I am thrilled to be accepted as a Visiting Fellow for Modern Ancient Brown Foundation's Core Fellowship Program! With its location in Detroit, this residency is quite special given my upbringing and current residence in the Midwest – a historic site for Black cultural production that continues to birth and nurture talent young and old. During my fellowship, I am excited to continue my work on a book project titled Notes on Black Fashioning, which explores the intersections of Black life, performance and getting dressed. I am looking forward to the many ways this project will be informed by the archives, locations and creative communities in the city."