Williams is no stranger to success, especially in Motown.

When he first started designing in Oakland in the Sixties, his sense of style, fashion and politics were shaped by the time and he was one of the first in the Bay Area to sell traditional African dashikis and African clothing.

He opened the well-known store, The Original Brothers, on the corner of 18th and San Pablo Streets in West Oakland. The store was well known because it was one of the first places which sold clothes to fit the new black pride movement and notions of `Black is beautiful.' The Original Brothers sold the clothes and across the street, a hair salon offered some of the first `naturals', hair styles free of hair straighteners.

``We walked around like we were kings and queens in the stuff Henry was making in 1968,'' said Ted White, 48, a longtime friend of Williams' family who grew up with him in Oakland. ``He was one of the first black men who had a business that I knew personally. He helped build my self-confidence and he's done the same for my children. This man was making African clothing when there was no African cloth to be found.''

During the '70s and '80s, he worked in Hollywood, with Motown singers and other stars in Los Angeles as a costume and wardrobe designer. Singer Martha Reeves is among those who have worn his clothes. She called him ``one of the finest tailors I've ever seen.''

``He can make things exactly to your imagination,'' she said from her home in Detroit. ``His clothes seem to caress my body. Once I put them on, it feels like I have a friend hugging me.''

Others who have worn his fashions include: Tina Turner; Marvyn Gaye; Sherrie Payne of the Supremes; her sister,the singer Freda Payne; the actor and former Oakland Raider Fred Williamson; Janie Bradford, who worked with Berry Gordy at Motown when it started in Detroit and is creidted with discovering the Jackson 5; and Lenny Williams of Oakland's Tower of Power.

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