On September 10, 2015, Kerby Jean-Raymond, the designer of the then-little-known two-year-old brand Pyer Moss, opened his runway show at the Altman Building on 18th Street with a 12-minute film titled This Is an Intervention. It featured graphic cell-phone and body-cam footage of police brutality against Black men, including shootings, and interviews with relatives of those killed.
Invited to sit in the front row were Oscar Grant's mother, Sean Bell's fiancée, and Eric Garner's daughter, while some fashion people had been told to literally take a back seat-in the second or third row. When the show began, the models wore white Doc Martens, some covered in fake blood and others inscribed with Garner's last words, I CAN'T BREATHE; neck cuffs that evoked choke holds; straps; and uneven, torn-looking, disheveled clothing, as if the models had been tossed around by someone, perhaps the cops. Artist Gregory Siff spray-painted the garments with BREATHE, BREATHE, BREATHE during the show. The film ended with: FOR MORE INFORMATION AND INSIGHT, OPEN YOUR EYES.
It shocked the fashion world, which is better known for producing, and selling, superficial fantasies of perfection and privilege than for engaging in political commentary. For Jean-Raymond, who had started Pyer Moss in 2013, it had been a risk he felt compelled to take. Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 as well, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, and the ubiquity of camera phones had made videos of deadly interactions with the police available for everyone to see. When the news came out, thanks to an interview he did with the Washington Post's senior critic-at-large Robin Givhan, that Jean-Raymond was making the film a part of his show, his first venue canceled. Several fashion insiders refused to attend when they were demoted from the front row, and many of his potential buyers were not pleased. But the show made Jean-Raymond a star.
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