Kerby Jean-Raymond c/o Jerry Lorenzo.
Photographer: Ricardo Rivera
Stylist: Enrique Menendez, Jade Chung
In just five years, Kerby Jean-Raymond’s Pyer Moss has become a focal point of New York Fashion Week. Jean-Raymond first caught widespread industry attention when he opened his Spring/Summer 2016 runway show with a documentary on the black community and police brutality, responding to the surge in publicized cases at the time. Since then, Jean-Raymond has consistently placed activism at the center of his messaging.
The brand has quickly become a platform for inciting dialogue within the industry, setting the bar for fashion’s role in advocacy. As other brands continue to adopt a social conscious, Pyer Moss remains the most potent. Jean-Raymonds’ runways and campaigns themselves have become home to black leaders, featuring a range of talents from rappers Sheck Wes and Vic Mensa to artist Derrick Adams and political activist Angela Rye.
The brands’ most recent Fall/Winter 2018 campaign, “American, Also,” goes on a roadside tour of America, highlighting the contributions of African-Americans and other minority groups in American culture who have been overlooked. The campaign features the Cowgirls of Color in Baltimore, Precious Blood Ministries in Chicago, and Nadia Lopez of Mott Hall Bridges Academy in New York among others.
For our October digital cover, we spotlight Pyer Moss and models Yrsa Daley-Ward, Yves Mathieu, Jordun Love and Ruby Campbell. Below, Jean-Raymond speaks to Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenzo on his favorite rappers, empathy, belief, religion and the origin of Pyer Moss.
JERRY: To kick it off, who are your top five current rappers?
KERBY: Yeah. Alright. So, if I had to give a top five it would be Drake, for sure. Drake would be my number one. People make fun of me all the time. I'm like, "Why? He's awesome.” He's gifted in a way that I don't think anyone else is gifted right now. I also gotta go with with Jay-Z. If I had to choose one of my favorite rapper’s right now it’s Gunna. That's my guy. He actually was in my show. And if I'm gonna give you a last one, I know he's not technically a rapper, but he can rap. Frank Ocean. And if I had an honorary mention it will be my little brothers, Sheck Wes and A$AP Ferg, and Vic Mensa. I think they're dope right now. They're not top five yet, but they're gonna be there.
J: Dope. I kinda feel like we're similar in some ways. That we're kind of in this thing but not really of it and our focus is what our gifts and talents are and I believe that you understand that. Could you talk about understanding your proposition to fashion and how you stay within your gifts?
K: For me I've always been aware of trends and getting away from them. I remember reading this article on Pharrell in 2003 where he was like, ”I don't follow trends, I escape them." And I kind of made that the ethos of everything that I did because at the time I was very impressionable and I was scared to do anything new because I didn't want to be ridiculed and I didn't want to have to explain myself. So, I've created by being purposeful.
J: What I love about what you do is watching you stick to your convictions and then watching the fruits of your convictions which may be a Reebok thing or a certain celebrity wearing your clothes. Could could talk a little bit about the Reebok collaboration and how that came about?
K: Of all the deals that were being offered at the time, Reebok was the only one that was willing to give me creative control. That was super important to me that I'm going to remain true to my aesthetic and whatever other house I go to, if I become creative director or something or if it's a footwear company like Reebok, they're going to look like me, I'm not going to look like them.
When Reebok found out about me I was already in the process of doing another deal and a contract was written up and everything. So I flew out to Boston, talked about it and the whole thing took about nine months so after I had turned down the other deal which was guaranteed money, I was sitting there waiting nine months to hear back. At the same time my former partners were like tripping and they were suing me. I hit rock bottom and that check hit at the last possible moment that it could hit. I was ready to be evicted. Fast forward a few weeks later I bought my company back from them with that money.
J: Do you have other partners now with backing or just 100% all you?
K: 100% all me. The output is different now. When I had partners not only were they forcing me to be on the calendar, but then you have the debt, that feeling of owing money. And even if my work is subpar right now, even if I'm not motivated, even if I'm not creative at this point, I have a complete creative block, I have to come up with something, force something out. And the collections were looking like that.
J: Yeah, Amen dude. Can you talk a little bit about this last campaign and how you highlighted people of different walks?
K: The campaign really is my other love and one day soon I'm going to direct a film and this was my second documentary that I've done. The first one I did was around Black Lives Matter and we played it at the Spring/Summer 2016 show and that really went viral.
The campaign was an answer to the nature of today's politics and media rhetoric around race. I think race is such a primitive conversation and I think one, race is a social construct, there's nothing scientific about race. The fact that people choose to divide themselves over the color of their skin is the most stupid inane thing to me and since we're playing this game I want to debunk the truths around race as surreally as I can. The concept of the campaign was "American Also" and it's really again to combat the wide seen rhetoric that exists around immigrants and black people in Chicago.
I just wanted to talk to people who were just working to change the narrative. Every conversation started with, "Do you feel American?" And we kind of just let people riff off of that and it was beautiful, it was really interesting to see that so many people did or didn't feel American. One thing that I will say is, some people said, ”Yes” and some people said, "no." And the people that said "yes," they didn't blindly feel patriotic. They feel American, but they don't feel patriotic.
"My work since has been to essentially bring back empathy into our lives. So it’s very much us seeming American also. It’s for people who don’t see black people as equals to take a second look."
J: Where does the conviction come from to say, "Hey. I'm gonna use my platform to bring light here"? Where does that come from personally? And is that a conviction or is that a responsibility or is it a little bit of both?
K: I had a t-shirt brand when I was 15 or 16 and then I had another one. It was always political-based t-shirts. I've always been curious about politics but I didn't become knowledgeable about race until college. College for me wasn't really an option unless I got a full scholarship. So I got a full scholarship to this program called NOAH at Hofstra University.
And in that program, in order to qualify for the scholarship you had to do this program in the summertime, designed to essentially catch you up. So I went through this program, and the teacher, instead of just giving us the regular things that we needed to catch up on, injected a lot of stuff that she personally believed in, which was a lot of African American culture.
And as I learned more and more about the accomplishments of African Americans and the stature of African Americans, of black people around the world, like how much potential we have and countering it with the narrative of what I wish would be, through media and everything, about what my own people look like, I started questioning all the things that I thought were right. And there was this time, and that stayed with me forever, you know?
J: And that carried through to your work?
K: When I started Pyer Moss in 2013 I wasn't intending to be political or carry on what I had done prior. But around 2015, Darren Wilson got acquitted. George Zimmerman got acquitted. Then Eric Garner got choked out on television and all of these images started to just be constant. And it became too much for me to ignore.
And for the show in September of 2015, I did a runway. And in place of a runway, I played a documentary. That documentary was me going to see victims of police, family members of victims of police brutality. It was essentially talking about empathy and hate and what's happening, this destruction that's happening because of the lack of empathy to people. My work since has been to essentially bring back empathy into our lives. So it's very much us seeming American also. It's for people who don't see black people as equals to take a second look.
When we talk about depression, we want to talk about mental health in a way that's not stigmatized. When we talk about black family structure, we want to talk about black people in a non-sensational way. I know you're probably tired of seeing every time that we've spoken about it seems like completely extravagant, sensational, or negative, tragic way. Like it's one extreme or another. What about the guy in the middle? What about the bus driver who just takes care of the kid and brings the kids to school and makes sure he's always on time? How come that white family structure is always thrown in our face, but the black family, the black normalcy is not thrown in our face? So that's what this specific last collection was about.
J: I think that what you're doing is important, and I don't want to misquote her, but it reminds me of Nina Simone and her speaking on the role of artists.
K: Yeah, “It’s an artist's duty to represent the times.”
J: I think you do a great job of not compromising. One of the other things I wanted to touch on was about religion and faith and foundation. Can you talk about how you stay rooted spiritually?
K: Yes. I've had a lot of ups and downs with my beliefs. My mom died when I was seven years old and I was lonely for a long, long time. I was like 12 or 13 and I started acting out, I use to get in fights a lot. I was really, really doubting religion and everything. Then I grew up catholic and I just become really lonely in a sense I didn't believe that anybody was looking out for me. I was all on my own, and then I was introduced to church again by this girl I was dating. We were like 15 or 16, she was taking me to church, and this church that I was going to was essentially a pay for play.
It was like “sow the seed and you will succeed” kind of church. I kind of got hooked into it and was kind of cult-like. I brought a friend, and the friend was like, “Yo you’re nuts. This is some shit to steal your money.” I had to step back and look at it and realize it was nuts. Then that furthered my distrust from around church and everything. Then I was reintroduced to church again in college through Hillsong and that's when I really started to feel a little bit more, cause it was like, “Come as you are.” But I will say this about Hillsong of all the positive things I could say, the one thing I will say is that they are a good bridge. They got me through the door, and then I started going to CCC and I become close with Pastor Bernard and he was in my first documentary too, and he spoke on religion in a way that didn't sound nonsensical to me. It sounded real, it sounded relatable and he spoke about it in a very academic way.
Now I've developed meditation techniques and communication with God that is stronger than it ever was been. And I can say I'm no longer agnostic and I'm no longer atheist. It took a few miracles for me to believe again. My life in the past year has been nothing short of like miracles. To the point where I don't even worry anymore, because I feel like worrying is doubting God.
J: Amen, I think it’s like that, it's like our role is to strictly believe man, you know? Last question, where'd the name Pyer Moss come from?
K: My mother's name was Vania Pierre and when she moved to America she had to get sponsored for a green card and her cousin was living here. And the agent, the immigration attorney said in order for us to expedite this you would have to have the same last name as this cousin who's sponsoring you for this green card. She had to change her last name to his which was Pyer, and Pyer Moss is a combination of her two last names. Her American last name and her Haitian last name.
Everything we make has a tie into my parents like in all of our sneakers, in experiment one, experiment two, experiment three, we all have a little dedication to my parents in the heel tab and like the initial, like everything commemorates my parents.
Left to right: Yves Mathieu, Ruby Campbell, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Jordun Love
