Join us in the FIT Library on the 6th floor of the Goodman Center at FIT for our first Archives Salon of the semester!
Fashion illustrator Bil Donovan will be in conversation with FIT Professor and illustrator Lamont A. O'Neal.
Lamont O’Neal was born in Brooklyn, New York. He began drawing as a child, inspired by comic books and fashion magazines. After attending the High School of Art & Design, he won a scholarship to Parsons School of Design. At Parsons he studied both fashion design and fashion illustration, and both those disciplines continue to influence
his style.
In his forty-year-plus career, O’Neal has been published in nearly every aspect of the fashion world, including the magazines Cosmopolitan, New York, GQ, Playboy, and Essence. His list of fashion designer clients includes Oscar de la Renta, David Chu Nautica), American Eagle and Polo Ralph Lauren. He also frequently contributed covers for Vogue Butterick. His credits include portraiture, children’s books and illustrations. A small sample includes Revlon, Random House, Estee Lauder, William Morrow Publishing, Nordstrom, Simon and Schuster.
His published works include Illustrated Men: Drawing and Rendering the Male Fashion Figure. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 2013. And Andre: Andre Leon Talley – A Fabulously Fashionable Fairy Tale. Henry Holt and Company. 2025 A Coretta Scott King Book Award Illustrator Honor. O’Neal’s work has been included in the Society of Illustrators in New York multiple times. He lives and draws in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
Bil Donovan is America’s leading contemporary fashion illustrator with an international following. Donovan utilizes an innate sense of selectivity to communicate the essence of glamour, luxury and style in his work. His creative language is entirely unique while at the same time being rooted in the finest traditions of fine art painting. His economy of line, predominantly in watercolor, flows across the page creating natural movement and strength whilst perfectly capturing the beauty of the fashion he is illustrating.
Donovan’s instantly recognizable illustrative style has led to an enviable list of clients that include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vogue, The New York Times, Harper Collins, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Bergdorf Goodman, St. Regis Hotels, L’Occitane, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Of note is a large-scale painting in the signature Christian Dior suite at the St. Regis Hotel, New York.
From 2009 to 2025, Donovan has held the esteemed title of Artist-in-Residence for Christian Dior Beauty, a position that underlined his standing as a master of fashion illustration that perfectly reflected the elegance and history of
the House of Dior.
Donovan is the author of Advanced Fashion Illustration Lifestyle Illustration, and has taught in New York, for more than 20 years at his alma maters: the Fashion Institute of Technology, The Art Students League, Parsons School of Art & Design and currently at the School of Visual Arts New York.
