Curiosity Kills

@acuriousdeath on the steps of the Temple of Justice. 

This is not your typical New York Fashion Week show.

Designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s collection for the Pyer Moss label launched Thursday night with gripping and now familiar videos of police violence. The choking death of Eric Garner. The teenage girl thrown to the ground outside a Texas pool party. The running down of a suspect as lights flashed. The smashing of a car window, and then cries.

Until the day before the show, Jean-Raymond said, he wasn’t so sure he would even include the clothes.

“I was making a collection. I didn’t know I was actually gonna show it,” he said. “I was gonna kind of like hold up a mirror to the room with a video.”

He even invited some family members of victims of police brutality to sit in his show’s front row, a coveted position.

Some fashion and front-row regulars were upset and said they wouldn’t attend, Jean-Raymond said. The 28-year-old designer called it disheartening.

“I’m black, I’m a designer, I’m living in a time when this is happening,” he said. He added, “You’re 28 years old, you’re watching kids younger than you who are being killed by grown men who claim fear as an excuse.”

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