The Comic Book Origins of the Real Life Fashion Icon Who Designed Mary Jane's Wedding Dress

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and eighty-eighth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for part one of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Fashion designer Willi Smith had a design appear in an issue of Katy Keane.

STATUS:

I'm Going With True

Bill Woggon was a commercial artist who worked on his older brother's comic strip for a while (his other brother was named Elmer Woggon) in the late 1930s. Woggon had an idea for a comic book, though, and he pitched it to MLJ (now known as Archie Comics) and they approved it for a tryout feature in Wilbur Comics. You see, pinup girls had become very popular in the United States during World War II and so Woggon thought it would be a good idea to do a whole comic book based on pinup girls. And so Katy Keene was born...

Katy was a pinup model whose stories typically had little in the way of plot, as the main point of the stories were for Woggon to draw her in various pinup poses (it's amusing how similar these early Katy Keene stories are to a modern Instagram model, where they just walk around striking poses all day long). Eventually, Woggon would begin having fans send in designs for outfits for Katy to wear (they would be credited if their design was used) and Katy Keene became a very popular character that lasted from the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, but it hasn't really been as successful in the decades since. However, it recently inspired a TV series on the CW starring Lucy Hale that lasted for a single season.

As you may or may not know, there was a very popular fashion designer in the 1970s and 1980s named Willi Smith. Smith launched WilliWear Limited in 1976 and it was doing over $20 million a year in sales within a decade. WilliWear was famous for featuring menswear and womenswear under the same line, a scandalous concept back in the 1970s.

Smith was a longtime comic book fan and in 1987, he appeared as himself in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (by Jim Shooter, David Michelinie, Paul Ryan and Vince Colletta), where Mary Jane Watson has to turn down a fashion shoot for Smith because of her impending wedding to Peter Parker...

The fictional Smith then surprises Mary Jane by designed a wedding gown for her to wear at her wedding. The real life Smith DID design the actual gown and a real life version of the dress was used as part of a tie-in wedding (officiated by Stan Lee, of course) at Shea Stadium that coincided with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (you really have to give Marvel credit for how well they threw this event together, since it was not something that had been planned for a really long time or anything like that. It was a relatively spur of the moment decision).

The fascinating thing is that this was not the first time that Willi Smith's designs had appeared in a comic book. You see, as I noted above, Katy Keene comics accepted designs submitted by its readers. A number of those designers went on to become actual fashion designers. However, they almost never actually got their work put into the comic. Speaking about Katy Keene to the SoHo Weekly in 1978, famed fashion designer Bettye Johnson recalled, "She was my lady, my Barbie doll. Wanting to be a dancer, I could connect with the fantasy. She was a comic book glamour girl that didn't go out to space - except for a fashion show. That blue-black hair - it's what I always wanted, and last year I almost ruined by hair trying. I sent in 3 or 4 sketches but was never published."

The most common page in Katy Keene comics where people could design outsides was for Keene's "butterfly" outfits, which were a bit more outlandish than standard designs.

Jerico Woggon is an artist who is Bill Woggon's grandson. You can see Jerico's website here and his Instagram accounts are here and here.

I asked Jerico about whether Willi actually had art appear in a Katy Keene comic book and Jerico shared the aforementioned SoHo Weekly, where Smith spoke about Katy Keene...

"For me, it was definitely Katy. She was my Vogue, total fantasy. She was white Diana Ross. She was always going to a party, even during the day. I always wondered, "Where and how DID she get those fabulous clothes.' I figured she owned her dasy clothes and borrowed for the evening. She was supposedly the working girl in the '50s, but I mean furs in California?

I remember she always had her arms outstretched from one end of the page to the other. No natural actions. This girl never went jogging or ate horrible things like health foods. She was GLAMOUROUS. She probably bathed leisurely in the morning...in champagne. Yet there was the puritanical side to her, too. I never could figure out who she was. She always got her man, but she never married him. After all, there was always another day, another costume.

I was 11 years old when I was reading Katy Keene. I used to send 100-200 sketches a month and even won a birthday fashion contest."

In his 1978 Spring line, Willi Smith did a special outfit inspired by Katy Keene...

I tend to believe Smith, but it's interesting to note that I have not actually seen the designs Smith says he got published, but I am certainly not some big Katy Keene collector, so if anyone out there can find designs in Katy Keene comics by Smith, it would be appreciated!

Smith tragically passed away before his Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 appearance saw print, as he died in April 1987 due to complications from AIDs. He was only 39 years old.

Thanks again to Jerico Woggon for the information! Be sure to check out his work!