A Runway Revolution

Kerby Jean-raymond is injecting blackness into the fashion conversation.

T-shirts that read STOP CALLING 911 ON THE CULTURE. A beaded gown depicting a black father holding his newborn. Designer Kerby Jean-raymond’s men’s and women’s fashion label, Pyer Moss, has something to say. “My design philosophy focuses on rewriting us back into the story and normalizing blackness,” says the Haitian American Brooklyn native. Though Jeanraymond has faced backlash for his outspokenness in the past—more than one retailer (whom he won’t name) dropped his line after he produced a video addressing police brutality for a 2015 show—brands now seek his perspective. Over the past year, he launched partnerships with Reebok and Hennessy, and featured FUBU items at his runway show last September, which was held in Brooklyn’s Weeksville neighborhood—site of one of the country’s first free black communities. Do you see your CFDA award as a sign of progress for the industry? There are people in fashion who genuinely want to figure out where they fit into the broader conversation about diversity, inclusion, and equity, but there are also people who only care what this means for their bottom line, which is why I don’t take on projects that don’t have some sort of philanthropic component. Hennessy, for example, donates proceeds to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Why didn’t you participate in Fashion Week this past spring? Creating a collection two, four, eight times a year doesn’t allow you to create your best work. [I’m] adopting the model that’s been used in music, where you drop a body of work and tour it for the next year, then take time off and create the next body of work. That gives us the opportunity to do meaningful digital campaigns, activations, and bring more people into our idea. Is there a piece you’ve sent down the runway that you were particularly attached to? The opening look for my Reebok [collaboration at New York Fashion Week in February 2018], when we had [rapper] Vic Mensa come down in a white fur coat. It took Reebok nine months to sign me because the old management didn’t think I had enough Instagram followers. So I had this chip on my shoulder and said, “I’m just gonna give them a durag and a fur coat, and see what happens.” When I submitted the design, the faces in the office were like, “What the fuck is this?” But when [Mensa] turned the corner, the audience was like, “Oh, holy shit!” We got a standing ovation.