Police brutality as fashion: NYFW's most daring show
Fashion has long been an outlet for outsiders to be heard and passionate artists to influence culture with social commentary that is both positive and, at times, reflective of a deeper, gaping wound. This year's New York Fashion Week was no exception.
Up-and-coming fashion label Pyer Moss presented a Spring 2016 collection inspired by controversial cases of police brutality, like Eric Garner and Freddie Gray, which have ignited racial tensions in the U.S. and dominated headlines.
Police brutality as fashion
From head to toe, Pyer Moss's models made a powerful statement. The show, for example, featured pair after pair of white worker boots, splattered with what looked like human blood, as the names of black men and women killed by police ran down their sides.
Police brutality as fashion
Models wore garments with deliberate rips and uneven bottoms, almost as if they had been torn and untucked during a skirmish with police.
Police brutality as fashion
Blotches of paint splatter and red dye ran down otherwise unblemished garments.
Police brutality as fashion
Models wore neck cuffs, as blatant and abrasive as a forced chokehold.
Police brutality as fashion
Locks of hair, too, appeared constrained beneath obtrusive swatches of fabric around the models' necks, as if the powers at be had little respect or regard for their well-being.
Police brutality as fashion
What's more, Kerby Jean-Raymond, the founder and head designer of Pyer Moss, produced a short film, which he played for the audience at the start of the show. He included footage from more than a dozen recent controversial situations involving the police, including Eric Garner's now infamous, "I can't breathe," and Marlan Brown being run over by a patrol car. He even interviewed Garner's daughter and the fiancé of the late Sean Bell.
Gasps echoed through the Fashion Week crowd as the 15-minute film played.
Police brutality as fashion
Neither a filmmaker nor a journalist by trade, Jean-Raymond had seriously considered scrapping the painful film and just focusing on fashion. However, an episode occurred in his own life just a few weeks before New York Fashion Week, that he felt left him with little choice but to tackle the difficult topic matter at hand with all of the tools at his disposal.
Police brutality as fashion
Nursing a broken hand in a black cast, Jean-Raymond was standing outside his apartment building when he was suddenly confronted by six police officers, some with their guns drawn. They had been in pursuit of a suspect and mistook Jean-Raymond's cast, with his index and middle fingers jutting through, for a gun.
"When you feel like it could be you," Jean-Raymond told the Washington Post, "that changes everything."
Police brutality as fashion
Jean-Raymond even commissioned prolific contemporary artist Gregory Siff to tag several of the outfits in the collection.
On the jacket seen here, Siff -- who describes his style as a fusion of the "voice of a fearless child with the wisdom of a seasoned warrior" -- has written, "BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE," a reference to the fatal chokehold that killed Eric Garner in New York City.
Police brutality as fashion
Here, contemporary artist Gregory Siff has tagged a pair of Spring 2016 Pyer Moss pants with the mirror image of the word "love."
Police brutality as fashion
This isn't the first time that 28-year-old designer Kerby Jean-Raymond has used a fashion statement to make a sociopolitical one.
Just before New York Fashion Week 2014, he created the "They Have Names" t-shirt seen here, and wore it to his Spring/Summer 2015 show at Milk Studios that September.
Police brutality as fashion
The t-shirt, which features an oversized graphic and unapologetically large text, lists the names of 13 unarmed black men who were killed at the hands of law enforcement in recent memory: Eric Garner, Kimani Grey, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Ramarley Graham, Michael Brown, Timothy Stansbury, Kenneth Chamberlain, Tamir Rice, Marlon Brown, Akai Gurley, Jonathan Ferrell, and Amadou Diallo.
The garment broke the internet... or, rather, the Pyer Moss website (four times).
They have names
The ironic part is that Jean-Raymond was hesitant to sell the shirt, due to fears of racially-based violent backlash. In fact, after creating the initial silk screen, he printed 15 onto American Apparel tees for his team, but ended up shredding them for fear of what might happen to his friends.
He simply chose to make one and wear it himself. After that, though, he was inundated with emails from people requesting their own copies. When stylist and brand consultant Shiona Turini then posted a photo on Instagram of herself in the shirt, it spread through social media like wildfire.
Police brutality as fashion
Jean-Raymond ultimately created a second version of the poignant shirt, which featured the names of 11 unarmed black women killed in similar potentially race-fueled circumstances, and opted to sell a limited number of both versions on his website to raise money for the ACLU.
Police brutality as fashion
...which brings us back to the Pyer Moss fashion show making headlines at New York Fashion Week, September 10, 2015.
Lighting and intentional shadows reinforced the poignancy of the topic matter at play.
Police brutality as fashion
Pristine ivory suits were disrupted by shocks of red and in-your-face accents. Here, the model bears a thick black rope around his shoulders, conjuring imagery of a gun holster, besmirching an otherwise very tailored jacket.
Police brutality as fashion
Backstage at the Pyer Moss Spring 2016 runway show, if boots were not ostensibly covered with blood or smeared with a black substance that looked like tar; they were tagged with loaded words and phrases like, "Life," and, "I'm saved."
Police brutality as fashion
Strips of fabric in contrasting colors appeared pressed on some of the garments like duct tape or bandaids, meant to obscure less pretty things lurking beneath the surface.