A FASHION RESOURCE IS SUE No.1
S/ S 2019
CUT + SEW
©
2019
S/S 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CUT + SEW: An Introduction
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Peter Saville on branding a fashion house
06
Sashiko Stitching
08
“I could have died”: An Interview with Everard Best
10
1017 ALYX 9SM: FALL 2019 MENSWEAR
12
“Rick Owens wants us all to cheer the f*ck up”
14
King Kerby: Inside the World of Pyer Moss
IS SUE No.1 S/ S 2019
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IS SUE No.1 S/ S 2019
DISCOVER. LEARN. CREATE. INSPIRE. WELCOME TO: Cut and Sew is a online fashion resource created with the purpose to inform, inspire, and innovate. Bringing production information, designer history, and news into a single platform for all, Cut and Sew is changing the way people learn about fashion. For years the fahsion industry was exclusive and difficult for the masses to explore. Cut and Sew aims to make information and resources atainable for anyone and less daunting for those that are new. Cut and Sew aims to change that.
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Peter Saville: How to rebrand a fashion label BY: ADAM WRAY
JANURARY 21, 2019
Art director and graphic designer Peter Saville talks to Vogue Business about the process of redrawing the logos of internationally famous brands – and how fetish and the Badminton Horse Trials inspired his Burberry sans serif.
©JAMIE STOKER
The Peter Saville-designed Burberry logo is part of a strategy to realign the British label on the international stage. “The company recognised the need to further its credentials within global fashion,” says Saville. “With respect to Christopher Bailey, it was a British story.” Saville looked to a rubber-and-leatherwear couturier for inspiration for the sans serif design. “It’s just on a knife edge between the Badminton Horse Trials and fetish.” The current obsession for typographical art, as seen at Virgil Abloh’s Off-White, is entrenched in the new democracy of fashion. “If we go back just 20 years, there was still a hierarchy that said what fashion was. Now it’s part of the everyday and there are entirely populist icons,” says Saville.
In late 2018, a graphic charting the evolution of luxury typefaces went mildly viral. They demonstrated a growing homogeneity in visual culture, as brands from across the spectrum – from Rimowa to Balenciaga to Diane von Furstenberg – anchored their identities to bold new sans serif logotypes. One of the latest legacy labels to move in this direction is Burberry, under the guidance of esteemed English designer and cultural conduit Peter Saville.
Saville is uniquely qualified to shed light on this trend. His early work for Factory Records demonstrated the symbolic weight a typeface can carry and influenced successive generations of designers. (Virgil Abloh, who refers to Saville as a mentor, has established the use of Helvetica as an essential element of his work.) In the decades since, Saville has led a number of major luxury houses through rebrands. Before last autumn’s work for Burberry, he oversaw the development of a new identity for Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein. Here, he details his process.
©JAMIE STOKER
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When a label like a Burberry asks you to lead a rebrand, what’s the first thing that goes through your mind? What needed to be done at Calvin Klein was very different to what needed to be done at Burberry. Raf Simons’s role was to come in and refocus the company, but the company is called Calvin Klein, and Raf Simons is not Calvin Klein. Therefore, the Calvin Klein identity needed to be reorientated so we could understand Calvin Klein as an entity rather than a person. For it to go from subject to object, and to give Raf a way to identify with the brand rather than uncomfortably sitting in the chair of Calvin Klein himself.
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In early August, four months after Riccardo Tisci was announced as the creative director of Burberry, Saville’s new identity for the house arrived via a cheeky campaign built around screen captures of an email exchange between Tisci and Saville. In December, Balmain revealed an undeniably similar rebrand of its own. It is clear that these sorts of heavy sans serifs are now in vogue — but why?
“Typefaces are obviously the essential quotient within graphic identities,” Saville says. “But their reading is subject to socio-cultural change. The Helvetica story of the last 25 years is a simple example of that.” This comment is clarifying — why wouldn’t we expect to see trends in type the way we do in colour, cut and proportion?
Burberry is a manufacturer. It has, historically, one core product: the raincoat. It’s one of those situations where the brand name comes to represent the object. The beginning of the job is understanding the subject matter. You need to know what the scenario is and you need to have an opinion. I’ve had an opinion about Burberry since 1988 when I came across some export stock in a sale in London one day. It was really obvious that somebody needed to bring the raincoat into the
fashion spectrum. It was an opportunity waiting to happen, and Burberry was the obvious label to do it. So when it did get around to it, it had the world market at its disposal, which created an enormous windfall of income into the company. By its very nature, a proper raincoat is not a seasonal purchase. So you’ve got this problem of a company that’s expanded rapidly with a type of product that is definitely going to falter. It’s like the inflation of the universe, and suddenly it stalls.
So where does it go now? How does it maintain momentum? It must maintain growth, which is one of the great corporate handicaps of our times. So before Burberry even phoned, I had some opinions about what was going on. It was quite clear when I heard that Riccardo Tisci was going there that the company recognised the need to further its credentials within global fashion. With respect to Christopher Bailey, it was a British story. It made sense when there was a phone call saying Riccardo wants to change the logo – of course he does. Obviously it was interesting to do because it is such a part of British contemporary culture. It’s part of the fabric of the nation. I went to see Riccardo in a room full of Burberry brand history – they had everything out of the archive for him to look at. And he said one critically important thing which was, “Peter, finding the right logo to put inside a trench coat is not really a problem is it? But the same logo in a chiffon blouse? That’s the problem.” All of the assumptions that I had about the Burberry scenario were absolutely distilled in that one statement. Thomas Burberry, 150 years ago, did not have the problem of a chiffon blouse. How do you find a signature that bridges those two extremes? I came back with a very clear idea about the coordinates of the target. We quickly determined the four or five ways you could go with Burberry. Starting with a subtle evolution of the existing logo – which is always an option because it fends off any notions of insecurity –
taking what Fabien Baron had done in 1998 and just toughening it up a bit. It was on the edge of one of the quirkier readings of Britishness, so let’s take it fully into that idiosyncratic look. Then there’s the formal establishment approach – we might call it the Buckingham Palace look – or the utilitarian establishment look such as the Home Office or maybe the National Trust. But there’s the chiffon blouse, and that’s where an element of kink had to come in. I referenced John Sutcliffe, who was a fetish couturier in the ‘60s in London, making leather and rubber wear. He had a magazine called AtomAge. It was basically English ladies in headscarves and rubber coats. It’s just on a knife edge between the Badminton Horse Trials and fetish. Riccardo immediately orientated towards it and the utilitarian. And the Burberry letters were a gift. You’ve got two Bs, you’ve got three Rs. They’re all very similar in proportion. They just fall into place. So once we’d actually found the typographic form, resolving it into a unified whole was quite straightforward. Once you have established where you’re going, the next consideration is the lawyers. Because what has to be ultimately arrived at is a letterform you can actually trademark. It has to part company from its origins as a typeface and become a unique form in its own right . It is the lawyers who sign off on that when they can say, “Okay, we can register that.”
How about the monogram? With the monogram, it seemed desirable to me to encompass a past, present, future feeling by redrawing the letter that could be redrawn, which was the T. It was redrawn in a sansserif, streamlined way and interwoven with an archival B. And of course, it’s actually that monogram and its diagonal colourfield pattern that has ended up being the face of the current campaign. That’s the pattern wrapping towers in Shanghai, taxi cabs and store fronts.
The Thomas Burberry Monogram ©Burberry
I thought the unveiling of the new logo, the way it was accompanied by screen caps of emails between you and Riccardo, was super funny and contemporary.
And they want to know how much it cost. There’s a lot of exaggeration there for dramatic effect. I read some reports of what the Calvin Klein identity cost that were 10 times the fact. But implementation with any brand identity is expensive. Just putting a new Burberry logo outside every building is a big expense. With Calvin Klein, we created a new typeface called Klein, which it then had to have installed across its systems. We had to create 70 fully operation fonts. Bespoke fonts for multiple users is a time-consuming and special job. It’s not cheap doing that. From my point of view, you can look at it and it can seem expensive, or you can look at it and think, “Wow, that’s reasonable.” Particularly when you can transform an otherwise regular product by putting a logo on it.
Read the full article on cutandsew.com The Thomas Burberry Monogram projected onto Global Harbor in Shanghai ©Burberry
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It was interesting to me that the public awareness of graphic design in general and typography in particular has so transformed over the last 40 years that you could actually make a work of typographic design the subject of a campaign. It is remarkable that people are that interested in fashion identity and want the inside track. It’s interesting that you could make that kind of communication a public issue.
Traditional Sashiko stitching ©Tatter
SASHIKO STITCHING A simple stitch explained
Sashiko stitching is an art form that evolved from a simple need. Sashiko means “little stabs,” or “little piercings” and is a folk textile method traditionally featuring white stitches on an indigo background.sashiko Sashiko began in the North during the Edo period (1603-1868) and moved south along traditional trade routes. The plain running stitch of thick cotton thread makes striking geometric designs on the fabric, and allowed working people to have warm, decorative clothing that was within the confines of the law.
As chilled as it makes us to even imagine, 17th century Northern Japanese farmers somehow worked outside in clothing woven just from hemp or linen, fabric that offered just barely enough protection from the fierce winter cold. Industrial fabric production didn’t come to Japan until the late 19th century and then, it was too expensive for most people to afford. Cotton doesn’t grow in northern climes. Even if the farmers and fishermen’s families of Northern Japan could afford to use silk, it was illegal for citizens of those classes to wear it, as it was also forbidden for them to use bright colors or vibrant patterns. With fabric so dear and rare, each piece was carefully saved. Mending pieces of hemp fabric, traditionally dyed with indigo, allowed wives and daughters to stitch warmer pieces of clothing, adding layers from old scraps and cleverly incorporating a quilting style of piece-work that made for a more durable, more thermal, and ultimately — more beautiful items of clothing. As the centuries progressed and cotton became more available, it was swapped for hemp and sashiko styles became more artistic and purposeful, with an aim beyond merely keeping the wearer warm.
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Strengthening and adding bulk to fabric, quality sashiko stitchery eventually became a measure of suitability for young women hoping to marry, as sashiko-stitched kimonos were part of a traditional dowry. Heavily padded sashiko garments were used by 18th century firefighters who would first soak their clothing with water, adding as much as 70 pounds to their frames, before combating fires. sashiko Today, sashiko stitchery adds a gorgeous note to handmade textiles and remains a beautiful way to mend such indigo as blue jeans or other clothes that deserve to be mended and amended, their beauty retained and appended.
Traditional Sashiko stitching denim repair
“I Could’ve Died”: Meet the Virgil Abloh Protege Turning His Demons Into Inspiration BY: LIA McGARRIGLE
FEBRUARY 5, 2019
Everard Best has been working in streetwear since he was a teenager. Before he was collaborating with Virgil Abloh and Heron Preston, the designer worked on his first label Lease on Life Society, which he launched while still at high school. But Best wasn’t dropping the standard graphic tees and hoodies that make up the bulk of most streetwear startups’ output. Highsnobiety ©Bryan Luna
Instead, he made entire collections — customized denim, color-blocked jackets, and elevated basics — which sold out immediately and placed him firmly among the ones to watch in the streetwear world. But as Best was starting to make a name for himself, his personal life was foundering.
“I was living this fake rock star lifestyle,” the 25-year-old designer remembers. “I was going back and forth from LA every couple months and just partying and doing all types of crazy things. The amount of substances that we were abusing and so on, I was going down a path that I could’ve really died.” This eventually started to have an impact on his designs. “I was so focused on being this socialite and being out all the time that I didn’t focus in on designing,” he admits. “I would just make clothes and be like, ‘You know what? They’ll do well, or people will cop them because I’m lit.’ But that wasn’t the case at all. People can see right through that.” Eventually, Best realized he needed to get sober, for his health and his work. “I really changed the way I was living, the way I was doing, and just focused on myself really — and then that’s what started the new brand,” he says. “With Lease on Life Society, I got to a point in my life where a lot of the stuff I was doing for the brand was trial and error. It really didn’t have a clear direction. It was just me just trying to be a designer.”
Best realized that he wanted to focus on the artistic aspect of his work rather than “just making something I thought was cool.” And that’s how current label Ev Bravado was born. The brand first made headlines with its “Make Amerikkka Suck Again” collection, released just before the election of Donald Trump. The brand’s style is ostentatious, with eye-catching slogans outlined in rhinestones, something that pops up in collaborations with Heron Preston and Joey Bada$$.
Virgil Abloh, for one, is a fan. He chose Best for a panel titled “The Next Generation of Design” and has even called him “the young version of me.” For OFF-WHITE’s SS19 show, the duo
Best’s garments follow a maximalist “more is more” school of design, but the excess isn’t random. He thinks through every tear, rhinestone, and word that adorns his clothes. “Everything is really message-based, and part of the design process is figuring out how we’re going to put this message forward,” Best explains. Slogans are central to his work and often come from a personal place. A case in point is “do you think I’m crazy,” which is something Best finds himself asking his fiancée Téla D’Amore while working together on creative projects. The phrase “NEXTLVLHIGH,” meanwhile, came to him when he got sober. “‘NEXTLVLHIGH’ isn’t something that’s about drugs,” he explains. “It’s about finding happiness in yourself.”
“IT’S ABOUT FINDING HAPPINESS IN YOURSELF.”
Read the full article on cutandsew.com
Highsnobiety ©Bryan Luna
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In terms of design cues, Best’s work is most recognizable for the meticulously distressed and customized denim that straddles the line between punk and hip-hop aesthetics. The designer has the process down to a fine art, sometimes taking days to distress each pair. “The denim is a very intimate thing because I do each sample by hand,” he explains. “The process is a pain but the outcome is always beautiful.”
collaborated on three pairs of denim featuring Best’s artfully placed rips and signature embroidery. “He’s very hands-on with everything, so that’s one thing I was really impressed with,” Best says of the experience of working with a designer he describes as his mentor. “As many projects as he has, he pays attention to every detail of what’s going on.”
1017 ALYX 9SM: FALL 2019 MENSWEAR BY: NICK RAMSEN JANUARY 20, 2019
VOGUE ©Alessandro Lucioni
Today, at a pop-up store in Paris’s Third Arrondissement, 1017 Alyx 9SM’s Matthew Williams released a photography book, lensed by Daniel Shea and art directed by a firm named OK-RM, called Ex Nihilo. (This was also the name of Williams’s Fall collection, which included both women’s and menswear.) “Ex Nihilo is a Latin term that means ‘out of nothing,’ ” said the designer. “In it, we photographed all the things that go into the brand: We shot the ore that we use to make our buckles; we shot the factories we work at; we photographed Los Angeles, that kind of spawned out of the desert.” It prompted an interesting dimensionality to consider; Williams thinks about the entire sustainable ecosystem—the things, the places, the people— that power the quite powerful Alyx. He creates from the cumulative mood resulting from that environment.
Williams was also not afraid to admit that Fall’s shapes were “similar” to those of the past—if it’s working, it doesn’t need much nurturing, he seemed to suggest. Thus, he took his leggy, layered, oversize-on-top, and skinnythrough-the-ankle silhouettes and focused on fabrication—like reclaimed and spun fishing wire in trousers, or intricate camouflaged pony hair on coats. Silky black puffer jackets were also strong and glinted with the sort of sensitive snarl that can be loosely used to describe the Alyx aesthetic. Lastly: Williams introduced his first women’s handbags here. The best was a boxy, XL-size pseudo-briefcase, carried by Kaia Gerber in look one. Out of nothing, much materialized.
VOGUE ©Alessandro Lucioni
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See the whole collection on cutandsew.com
BY: STEVE SALTER JANUARY 31, 2019 i-D ©Flo Kohl
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Rick Owens wants us all to cheer the f*ck up” As his second collaboration with Birkenstock drops, the Prince of Darkness discusses why we all need to lighten up and how wellness, sex and glamour can help.
“I’ve been moving towards glam,” Rick Owens explains at the launch of his second collaboration with Birkenstock, “it could be down to a begrudging optimism because I’ve been dour about cultural and natural decline. It’s time to cheer the fuck up!” While forcing the frow to choke on coloured smoke plumes as he sent out his parade of otherworldly sculptural sportswear before asking his all-powerful women, dressed in survival-wear, to put a torch to the world for spring/summer 19, his recent shows have been anger-fuelled acts of creative resistance in response to the sociopolitical shitstorm that we’re living through today. Now, with the world on fire, the California-born, Paris-based, forever independent design force has turned to the optimism found in glamour and comfort. Fresh from honouring the glamrock glory of lust and vice in the story of Larry
LeGaspi -- the visionary mind behind the iconic looks of Labelle, Kiss, Grace Jones and Divine -- Owens has added architectural glamour to the ultimate comfort footwear, Birkenstock sandals. From Marc Jacobs’s iconic (and recently reissued) 1992 grunge collection for Perry Ellis to Phoebe Philo’s “Furkenstocks” for Céline spring/summer 13, fashion has flirted time and time again with the Görlitz-made sandals, but in Rick Owens they’ve found the ideal creative partner to push both its archive and new styles forward. “Owens is one of the most relevant and last independent designers,” Oliver Reichert, CEO of Birkenstock, explains. “His take has transformed iconic Birkenstock styles and there are many more common traits our brands unite than most would have thought at first.”
The debut collaboration reimagined one of the brand’s most recognisable sandals, the Arizona, in fuzzy grey calf-hair and fringed straps. For the follow-up, the classic Arizona and Rotterdam silhouettes have elongated straps in different metallics and colourblocked colourways, while the Rotterhiker boot includes a metal buckle on the upper strap for easy fastening, an elongated tongue and a translucent rubber sole. In the grungy glam hands of Owens, the familiar becomes the otherworldly.
“It can’t just be a product collaboration, there are too many around,” Oliver notes. “There has to be a real newness, a context of how to experience and visualise the product has to materialise.” To celebrate the first product drop, the second collaboration launched with black cork-covered pop-ups in Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai. “For me, it’s about wellbeing, living a healthy lifestyle,” Owens explains. “Birkenstocks conjure up thoughts of sun-worshipping Germans, with this healthy attitude towards sex. There’s a sensuality to wellness that’s overlooked. It’s this mix of sex and health that I like. “What’s sexier than big, white, strong teeth?”
“I’VE BEEN DOUR ABOUT CULTURAL AND NATURAL DECLINE. IT’S TIME TO CHEER THE F*CK UP!”
Rick Owens x Birkenstock spring/summer 19. Image courtesy of Birkenstock
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“I’m not interested in just decorating the sandals, it had to more than applying sequins and studs,” Owens explains. “Here, I wanted to do something architectural, so we lengthened the straps and you wouldn’t believe the discussions we had to make it happen. They’re all about safety. It’s their values and I respect them for it, that’s what drew me to work with them in the first place.” His cult might be made of shape-shifting, transcendental daydreamers that lurk in the darkest corners of our imaginations, but Owens is the first to
remind us that he’s a Californian hippy at heart. “We make sense together,” he explains. “The barefoot sandal thing, that’s my jam. Also, the countercultural element too, Birkenstock has a 60s nostalgia too. Initially, the collaboration might’ve come as a shock but it made sense to the people that know.”
King Kerby: Inside the World of Pyer Moss BY: RACHEL TASHJIAN FEBRUARY 5, 2019
©CFDA
Two years ago, Kerby Jean-Raymond almost gave up. One CFDA/‘Vogue’ Fashion Fund win later, he all but runs New York fashion. Portrait by Chase Hall.
On September 8, 2018, Pyer Moss took over the fashion world. People flocked—in the rain!— to Weeksville Heritage Center, one of the 19th century’s first free black communities, in Crown Heights, which is a long way from even the more far-flung shows in New York’s increasingly decentralized Fashion Week. When particularly strong looks came down the run-way—a FUBU gown, a dress that rendered a painting by artist Derrick Adams in 200,000 Swarovski crystals, a boxy T-shirt that read, “Stop calling 911 on the culture”—people actually clapped and shouted approval. The rapper Sheck Wes walked in the show in a pale pink tuxedo. A choir stood in front of a row of houses and, in white robes, sang gospel arrangements of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “Be Real Black for Me” and Fast Life Yungstaz’s “Swag Surfin’.” The audience gave the show, and Pyer Moss designer Kerby Jean-Raymond, a standing ovation. For this magazine’s website, I wrote that “Pyer Moss Deserves All Your Attention, Love, Money, and Brainpower.” The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Cathy Horyn all wrote glowing reviews. This seemed like the biggest moment yet in Jean-Raymond’s series of bursts onto the global
fashion scene over the past year: Last winter, he entered a partnership with Reebok. A few months later, he bought back his business from his partners, making it one of the few blackowned luxury fashion businesses in America; and in July, he was named a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist. In August, he posted a photo of himself meeting with Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Virginia Smith wearing a T-shirt that read, “If you are just learning about Pyer Moss we forgive you.” Less than two months after his blockbuster show, he won the CVFF award, and with it, $400,000. Once again, fashion outlets the world over rushed to praise the designer: “Fashion finally crowns a new prince who’s determined to make the industry more relevant,” wrote Robin Givhan. He hasn’t always been seen that way. JeanRaymond launched Pyer Moss in 2013, and his impulse to foreground politics and social engagement has defined his vision since the beginning. (The brand is named for his mother, Vania Moss-Pierre.) In September 2015, the brand staged its runway show as a Black Lives Matter protest, screening an original film about police brutality during the presentation.
When Givhan reported his plans, his venue pulled out days before and a buyer in Europe dropped his line. The following February, Antwaun Sargent wrote a glimmering profile of Jean-Raymond for VICE (GARAGE’s parent company) celebrating these exact qualities. Sargent reported that the show “cost [JeanRaymond] $63,000 to produce, and it lost his label more than $120,000 in business when retailers pulled their orders because they saw his message as bad for their bottom line.”
The simple answer is both—but, of course, it’s more complicated than that. In November, I sat down with Jean-Raymond in his studio in the Fashion District. He is one of the few young designers who actually work out of what is historically considered the industry’s hub. The brand’s office is sleek and modest: a cozy showroom in the front, with a larger space for a few shared desks in the back. In his own small office are a desk, two chairs, and a bookshelf with a few bottles of champagne. (One was gifted by the Public School designers: “That’s what I need next, my own champagne!” he joked.) Nothing about the office said, “secret billionaire underwriting the whole line,” or, “domineering visionary creating an 800-squarefoot hell,” both of which are common vibes of other young designers’ offices. It was tasteful, cool, and calm. “Have you changed?” I asked him. “Has your business changed? Has the fashion industry changed?” “I mean, you just answered it, really,” he said. “Like, nothing has changed for us. I’ve always been the same way. Granted, yes, on the inside, I have 100 percent ownership of my company
“Before 2018, I didn’t have a silhouette, I was kind of just keeping up with the times. Now, I’m not designing for just anybody. I’m designing a vision, and people have been slowly falling into that vision.”
Jean-Raymond’s values define the brand more than its silhouettes. Pyer Moss’ website says 20 percent of the proceeds from sales of this tee are donated to The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Photo by Maria Valentino, courtesy of Pyer Moss.
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But Jean-Raymond only grew more ambitious. The following September, in 2016, he showed a collection that connected the institutionalized racism and oppression that led to the deaths, that summer, of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile with the institutionalized greed of the privileged white few. He screen-printed an image of Bernie Madoff’s arrest on a pinstripe suit, illustrating how inseparable, really, the uniform of American business is from prisoners’ stripes. There was a satin bomber with “Please Speak Only To My Attorney” in slick cursive on the front. At each of these shows, he has had a choir and clothing with messaging that made you take a step back and think. Putting politics on the runway is something designers have stumbled awkwardly to do for decades, but for Jean-Raymond, it’s an instinct, in the same way that other designers
adopt signature silhouettes. So has the fashion industry changed, or has Kerby Jean-Raymond?
now—it’s probably the only thing that’s different.” He also experiments more with silhouettes, he added. “It’s my money, and I can do with it whatever I please.” In general, Jean-Raymond said, “The only thing that’s really changed is that everybody else is catching up—you know, the industry that once shunned me for being too vocal, and editors that said, ‘Oh, you’re too negative. We can’t cover you. You’re always talking about bad topics. You’re so negative.’” Now, he notes, press and buyers are looking seriously at black designers, “And they’re running across me: ‘Oh, shit, this was the guy.’ You know, ‘That’s him.’” Who is the guy? He is 32 years old. He grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn and now lives in Williamsburg. He’s friends with everyone from Sheck Wes to Noah founder Brendon Babenzien to Brother Vellies designer Aurora James. He journals: “I don’t physically write anymore because my hand was broken about three years ago,” though he writes something in his iPhone notes every day. “Literally, a note for the day would be, ‘Stop calling 911 on the culture,’ which ends up on a T-shirt, or, ‘We forgive you for not knowing what Pyer Moss is.’ Like, those are things that were in my notes.” His notes are not all material for Pyer Moss, he says: “Yesterday I wrote, ‘You haven’t seen your mother’s grave.’ That’s something that’s truth for me. I never saw my mother’s grave.” She died when he was 7 years old, and he was raised by his father and various relatives and friends.
Jean-Raymond loves cars. Even before he blew up this year, he had an Audi R8, which he’s since sold. He has a bold social media presence for a brand, particularly among fashion companies, whose digital voices can be bizarrely anodyne. In early November, the brand tweeted a message: “To all the writers newly covering Pyer Moss, thank you and welcome. Please refrain from calling us a streetwear company. It’s lazy and singular, we are more, you are more.” (When I asked Jean-Raymond who runs the Twitter account, he replied, “I do.”) That candidness is part of what makes him special as a designer; his views and his company’s values are what define the brand more than its silhouettes. Once we got our pleasantries out of the way, we almost immediately began discussing ethical consumerism—particularly, streetwear darling Supreme, in which The Carlyle Group reportedly acquired a 50 percent stake in 2017, valuing the company at more than $1 billion. He recalled a few recent realizations he’d had in speaking with Babenzien. “Supreme is owned by The Carlyle Group, right? Carlyle Group invests in planes and shit that bomb Yemen. So you buy your Supreme tee, you’re making Carlyle Group rich.” He continued: The Carlyle Group is “gonna flip [Supreme]. They’re looking for a 10-time return on it. They’re gonna keep pushing it out there. You’re finding that Supreme’s a lot easier to get—there aren’t lines outside of their stores as
A portrait by the artist Derrick Adams was rendered in 200,000 Swarovski crystals by Kerby JeanRaymond for Pyer Moss’ spring 2019 collection. Photo by Maria Valentino, courtesy of Pyer Moss.
A cummerbund complements the FUBU pieces. Photograph via Getty Images.
much as there used to be, and they’re flooding the market with the stuff. You’re consuming the shit.”
In October, Pyer Moss—which is to say, JeanRaymond—got in a spat on Twitter with a woman who sniffed at the $125 price tag of its “Stop calling 911 on the culture” tee. She tweeted a
“Internally, we call those $125 tees ‘cheap tees’ because that’s the cheapest shit that we have in our collection, besides Reebok,” Jean-Raymond said. “For me to make a shirt $125 and still pay somebody a fair wage, the shirt has to be expensive. Honestly, it should be $325, but because I know my market, and I want it to be a volume driver, we were able to cut out the middle man, sell it directly through our e-commerce site, and do it for $125. “We know everybody who sews everything, you know what I mean? This is not ‘send shit off to India and just wait a few days and it’ll come back.’ Meanwhile, somebody’s chained to a fucking machine to make this shit happen for you. People talk about sustainability—nobody’s giving you sustainability for under a hundred bucks. It’s not possible. Somebody along the way is gonna get fucked.” Read the full article on cutandsew.com
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Too many people, he said, simply don’t know— or don’t think about—where their clothing comes from. “It’s not only fucking violating laws around sweatshop rules, but it’s also funding terrorism—domestic terrorism.” (For a primer on this hypocrisy, see former Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act. In one episode of his Netflix series, Minhaj charts The Carlyle Group’s 23 percent stake in the aerospace company Wesco Aircraft, which helps build a fighter jet used by the Saudi military to bomb Yemen.) Jean-Raymond isn’t the only designer thinking about sustainability and responsible consumerism and buying less and buying better, of course. But the difference between Jean-Raymond’s ideology and, say, Everlane, is that Everlane’s business model is sustainability. The method of consumerism becomes the bragging right—it becomes the appeal. Pyer Moss has that kind of draw—one of his Reebok pieces is a $700 faux fur coat that Future recently wore—and its sustainability comes from a desire to operate ethically (similar to a brand like Marine Serre, which creates thousand-dollar dresses out of deadstock scarves).
series of questions: “Does the money go to a cause or something??? Why so much for tees?... Who benefits besides you, honestly? Like, the real producers of the culture can’t afford it.” The brand replied with its own questions: “Do you read articles or headlines? Do you know context or rhetoric? What do you [do] to support causes and charities? Are you the customer for a luxury brand?” (The website states in the T-shirt’s product description that 20 percent of the proceeds are donated to The Innocence Project.) Another tweeter asked if Pyer Moss was a white-owned business. Jean-Raymond replied, “Hilarious.”
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