Fusion of fashion and focus on mental health: Antwain Donte Hill
By Mitchell Sasser | WeINSPIRE Reporter
His height, lean body type, and beautiful smile.
Those are the three qualities that initially attracted fashion specialist Stephanie Cain to a young 7-year-old Antwain Donte Hill.
Hill was never much into sports as a kid, but found himself drawn to fashion. At age 7, while in a store with his mom, Cain asked whether he modeled when she noticed those three distinct features.
Hill remembers going to the first training session with his mother, having no idea what he was about to get himself into. Hill was the youngest person in the class, and remembers clumsily walking down the runway for the first time and smiling.
The instructor, Stephanie Cain, yelled at Hill to “take pride in what you do” and “you’ve got to do it from your heart.”
That message resonated with the 7-year-old Hill.
This led to Hill taking professional modeling classes under the mentorship of Cain and doing shows for her. After countless shows with designers asking him to do another, Hill was eventually asked to start training the models.
Hill said that during his transition from modeling to producing shows, he was “petrified.” Hill produced his first show in eleventh grade with models he knew from outside of school, but noted that his first four or five shows were flops with only 11 to 12 people in the audience - most of them being his family. But Hill chose to persevere because of how much fashion meant to him.
“That was when I realized fashion was my life,” Hill said. “It was everything to me.”
Hill is the founder and chief artistic director of the Stampede School of Modeling. “My job is to draw what I want to see, then everyone else in my team just colors within the lines,” Hill said. He both runs the show and ensures everything is set for classes in the Atlanta and Washington, D.C. locations. Stampede School of Modeling holds an annual fashion show and Hill creates the theme, directs the choreography, and selects the models and designers.
Focus on Mental Health
In November 2017, Hill lost a close friend. He went through a deep depression, and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. While navigating this trauma, he attempted suicide twice. Hill also has Stage 2 Multiple Myeloma bone cancer. Hill said that he deals with depression “8 days a week,” but refuses to let his illnesses define him.
“I don’t go outside and say, ‘hey my name is depression, hey, my name is multiple myeloma - this is me,” Hill said. “I wake up – and my suitcases are empty. I don’t take any extra baggage with me. I am not my disease.”
Once he understood these challenges and illnesses, Hill knew that fashion would be able to help himself (and therefore others) through the darkest hours. “How can I be a voice, how do I help others,” was the question that came to mind, setting him up to use his love of and passion for fashion to promote mental health awareness and encourage others to be their authentic selves.
Stampede held their 2019 fashion show Asylum: The Suicide Revenge in D.C. to bring awareness to mental health and suicide prevention. They were able to raise over $10,000 with money going toward Black, Gifted and Whole Foundation, Sanity Box, and a Disease Called Hope Foundation.
Hill with a group of models.
Photo courtesy of Antwain Donte Hill
“Last year, raising those funds was a wow-factor for me because it let us know as a team we can change the community just by going out and being themselves,” Hill said. “It was overwhelming.”
“To hear a student, a model, say that, ‘hey, you saved me from suicide thoughts, or you saved me from the act of suicide itself,’ it’s refreshing to hear,” Hill said. “It allows me to change lives without being boggled down in a classroom and following the whole politics of school.”
Hill is also the founder and spokesman of A Disease called Hope Foundation. It specializes in helping support children and families who are suffering with HIV/AIDS, Cancer, and other terminally ill diseases.
“I just want to diagnose one human being with hope, one minute at a time.”
Stampede’s upcoming show, Asylum 2020 vision #unfiltered was scheduled for April 2020. Unfortunately, it was cancelled due to the spread of COVID-19 and is already rescheduled for September. Its theme is about social media and people using filters to change their appearance if they feel they don’t fit in. The message is to “exercise your right to be beautiful just the way you are.”
Hill said that he is staying positive, and his message is for people not to get upset over things that they can’t control.
“This [COVID-19] virus is like anything else - Press, shake, push,” Hill said. “You’ve got to press your way through, you shake off all of the negativity that’s around you, and you push through adversity. This is just something else that stands in our way. This is the same thing as someone telling you can’t graduate on time, or your business isn’t going to be successful, or whatever the case may be – you just push past it. We as a human race will get past this by centering God in front of it.”
Hill was recognized as a 2020 WeINSPIRE Ambassador.
