Adot Gak, Aleya Ali, Sydney Acker and Wayne Booth by AB & DM in Pyer Moss Couture
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Models Adot Gak, Aleya Ali, Sydney Acker and Wayne Booth are styled by Antoine Gregory in Pyer Moss Couture. Photographer AB & DM [IG] are behind the lens for Black Fashion Fair February 2022./ Hair by Susy Oludele; makeup by Ernest Robinson
Left to right: Models Adot Gak, Aleya Ali, Sydney Acker and Wayne Booth
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.
