The Pyer Moss Fall 2021 couture collection ruffled feathers as it closed out Haute Couture Week a few days ago, and no, it wasn’t because it was delayed 24 hours due to monsoon-like conditions. Ready to see what has people clutching their pearls?
First of all, the show wasn’t presented in Paris per couture norm – it took place, of all places, in New Jersey. You didn’t see that one coming, did you?
Secondly, this was not a show that concerned itself with flou. It embraced the literal, even the campy. Campy in couture?
Quel dommage.
Quel dommage, quel fromage say I! To the first point: Kerby Jean-Raymond, the brand’s founder and creative director, didn’t exactly stage the show on Jersey Shore – the location is especially relevent. The event, which included a rousing speech by Black Panther leader Elaine Brown, took place at the historic Villa Lewaro – the former home of Madame C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in the United States. Walker was also – not inconsequentially – a Black American.
On the second point, which conveniently contextualizes point 1, this show concerned itself neither with flou nor with the opinions of white people (yours truly included).
And this last point, friends, is a large part of why so many in the peanut gallery (scilicet: Vogue’s IG comments section), are clutching their little pearls, even if they can’t (or won’t) admit it.
Pop Art and Mirrors
Jean-Raymond embraced the artistic license afforded to couturiers to create sculptural pieces of pop art. Each look payed tribute to the contributions of Black inventors and indulged in not a little nostalgia for his childhood in Flatbush: a traffic light and gas mask dress (both invented by Cleveland’s Garrett Morgan), a gold paillette dress with padlock hat (padlocks having been invented by W.A. Martin), and cellphone dress modeled after his father’s old mobile, to name a few.
Some say that these pieces, as The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman put it, lack “the subtlety and finesse normally associated with couture.” Now, I am a huge fan of Friedman, and her review was for the most part positive, but I need to say that she’s missed the point here. The lack of subtlety is ON PURPOSE. Lack of subtlety has been used as a tool in couture before, even to popular appeal, and even – dare I say it – with finesse (Guo Pei, Schiaparelli, or Viktor and Rolf, anyone?).
Jean-Raymond is screaming from the rooftops, not so much for the fashion elite to notice him (he’s already achieved that), but to hold up a mirror for other Black Americans to see themselves in, one that before last week did not exist in couture.
Let me say that again: before last week, no Black designer had ever shown as an officially-designated member of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Jean-Raymond ran with the politically-attuned roots of couture in a way that was as personal as it is progressive. While he is more than capable of producing the expected glam gown (there are a few in the collection), the hot-roller mantilla, the stoplight dress, and sculptural peanut butter jar pieces are really what do the heavy lifting to “reverse the ratio of Black people’s contribution to the culture to refuel the Black imagination,” as quoted in The New York Times. He’s not doing this for the white-dominated establishment. He’s doing this for the Black experience and that, especially in 2021, is something to be celebrated. Something that we need to make space for.
Pyer Moss Fall 2021 Couture: Bigger Than Flou
While the Black experience is obviously not a monolith, Jean-Raymond is introducing a voice, a perspective, that couture sorely needs. I say “sorely needs” because, as a fervent lover of the art form, I want it to be better than it is. To have more breadth, to speak more truth, to be more human, even if it doesn’t always represent my personal experience as a white person, as a lusolatina, as a nerd, as a cis-het, as a cheese-lover, as however I identify myself. I think that’s why so many people (mainly non-Black people) found this collection hard to understand, because they had a hard time finding reference points within themselves. To them, I say: it’s not always about you, hon. This collection is bigger than the white gaze, bigger than the chatter around which celebrity is going to wear what look on the red carpet (although I pray that someone does dip into this collection), bigger than flou.
You know what I’m going to say: fashion -and couture above all – is art, and as art, it is innately political, innately existential, innately powerful. My biggest hope is that the Pyer Moss Fall 2021 couture show isn’t a one-off, that it isn’t the only Black voice in this space for long.
See the whole collection here!
love,
Stig
Sources: Photos via Vogue Runway from Pyer Moss; info via The New York Times and Vogue Runway.
