Metal Magazine Highlights Pyer Moss' Kerby Jean-Raymond's 'Wat U Iz' FW 2021 Couture Show
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Models Adeng Nyamam, Raven Wallace and Symone Lu bring grace the pages of Metal Magazine, styled by Romina Herrera Malatesta in the buzziest couture fashions of the fall 2021 season. NYC photographer Andy Jackson [IG] captures the trio wearing much-discussed highlights from Pyer Moss founder Kerby Jean-Raymond’s Fall 21 Couture Collection./ Hair by Akihisa Yamaguchi; makeup by Ayaka Nihei
Jean-Raymond became the first Black American designer invited to show Haute Couture during Paris Couture Week last July. After a 48-hour delay due to torrential weather associated with Hurricane Elsa’s arrival in the Northeast, Jean-Raymond stepped into the history of couture spotlight at Villa Lewaro in Irvington, New York.
The Fédération de la Haute Couture extended their calendar so that Pyer Moss could still be listed on the couture calendar and have Kerby Jean-Raymond be the first Black American designer to show for couture.
The 34-room, 20,000-square-foot mansion was the intellectual gathering place for leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. Even more relevant to the couture conversation Villa Lewaro was home to Madam C.J. Walker, the country’s first African-American woman millionaire, a renowned businesswoman and philanthropist.
Curbed wrote about the residence: “Named after her daughter (LElia WAlker RObinson), Walker’s “Dream of Dreams” home was designed by the first licensed black architect in the state of New York, Vertner Tandy. Madam Walker was the first person of color to own property in the area around Lyndhurst. Her townhouse in Manhattan on 136th Street, also designed by Tandy, was built "without regard to cost but with considerable regard for good taste," according to a 1917 Literary Digest interview, which estimated her annual income at $250,000 a year (roughly $4.7 million in today’s dollars).”
Villa Lewaro is now home to New Voices Foundation, devoted to cultivating entrepreneurship among women of color.
When Kerby Jean-Raymond unleashed the first ever Black American designer at Paris Haute Couture Week, titled “Wat U Iz”, looks were deceiving. The camp-mood on the runway could have easily been envisioned by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele.
In Jean-Raymond’s case, the show served as a black history lesson, with the couture clothes highlighting 25 inventions pioneered by Black people. High Snobiety outlined every invention in the show.
