Kerby Jean-Raymond, the 33 year-old founder of Pyer Moss and artistic director of Reebok Studies_, has gradually established himself as a guiding light in the American fashion industry. When the coronavirus pandemic locked down New York City in mid-March, Pyer Moss leapt into action, setting aside $10,000 to source PPE, as well as turning its office into a donation centre, and creating a $100,000 fund to help small, community-focused creative businesses that are minority- or women-owned survive. Worn by celebrities such as Lena Waithe, Issa Rae, Awkwafina and Tessa Thompson, it blends fashion with activism and social commentary. Its latest trainer drop, ‘Experiment 4’, benefits the Innocence Project, an organisation working to reverse wrongful convictions.
But as well as setting itself apart from peers by making clothes that actually tell stories, foregrounding the Black icons whose contributions to pop culture have been ignored, forgotten or appropriated, Pyer Moss is producing the most exciting events at New York Fashion Week, pushing the boundaries of what a ‘show’ means and running with the idea of the immersive experience open to members of the public as well as press. His SS20 show, according to Vogue, cost $400,000 to stage at Flatbush’s Kings Theatre and featured the voices of his choir, the Pyer Moss Tabernacle Drip Choir Drench In The Blood. Backstage, Jean-Raymond told Vogue about his inspiration, Sister Rosetta Tharpe: ‘I think relatively few people know that the sound of rock and roll was invented by a queer Black woman in a church. I wanted to explore what that aesthetic might have looked like if her story would have been told.’
Pyer Moss was one of the first brands to announce plans for New York Fashion Week in September, moving away from the traditional, and often exclusive, ‘show’ format to instead stage a drive-in premiere for his film American, Also. Telling the story behind his SS20 show at Kings Theatre, the film will pop up at screenings across America, and discuss the Black experience.
In Jean-Raymond’s words, ‘It’s ok to talk about pets, it’s ok to talk about veganism, it’s ok to talk about water and famines and things like that. But talk about Black people and it’s like, oh, you’re a pariah.' The designer has criticised the CFDA’s statement about systemic racism within the fashion industry and its proposed initiatives, and only agreed to a recent interview with Highsnobiety__ to talk about defunding the police.
Pyer Moss was founded in 2013, but Jean-Raymond has been working in the fashion industry since his teenage years. According to an interview with T Magazine, he worked at a trainer shop called Ragga Muffin before starting an unpaid internship, at the tender age of 14, with the womenswear designer Kay Unger. He told the interviewer that running errands, whether to warehouses or designers’ studios, would usually result in security sending him around the back because of his race. ‘I know all the freight entrances in New York from 35th Street to 41st Street. Every single building, from Ninth Avenue all the way over to Sixth.’
Encounters like these might be why Pyer Moss’s SS20 show was designed to accommodate kids who wouldn’t usually be allowed into such events. ‘There’s going to be a lot of kids in there [where] it’s their first fashion show, their first time being allowed into a space that’s typically elilist and very secluded,’ Jean-Raymond says in the American, Also trailer. Looking at pictures of the clothes and the choir, it will probably be their most memorable for a while.