Undefeated

The story of Kerby Jean-Raymond, of the New York label Pyer Moss, is one of a young black man coming up in the white world of New York fashion in the early 2000s. Now, his intensely personal, politically charged collections are changing the way we think about fashion and race in America.

- M. H. Miller

The designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s studio is on the Manhattan campus of the Fashion Institute of Technology on West 27th Street, across from the school’s student centre. He’s been there for about three years but is in the process of looking for a larger office in Brooklyn, where he grew up. Jean-Raymond has outgrown the current space, and not just in a physical sense; in the time he’s been working here, his renown, as the head of his seven-year-old label, Pyer Moss, but also as a representative of the fashion industry’s future, has grown immensely. What started as a fairly humble streetwear line has expanded into an ambitious conceptual project. Jean-Raymond is the child of Haitian immigrants, and his designs — especially the way he presents them publicly — collectively offer a strikingly personal and singular narrative about his own life as a black designer in America. He’s become successful as a result of this, receiving praise from critics and counting among his clients and collaborators people like Erykah Badu, Usher, Rihanna and Michelle Obama.