We almost forgot Erykah Badu was a certified fashion icon. The singer was the face of Tom Ford’s White Patchouli fragrance and Givenchy’s SS14 campaign. The “Phone Down” singer also kicked off the 2015 New York Fashion Week festivities with an hour-long concert.
This year, Ms. Badu will be on the catwalk…figuratively speaking. She’ll be styling the show for designer Kerby Jean-Raymond and his Pyer Moss’ label.
“(Kerby and I) were a match made in fashion heaven,” says Badu, “We share an eye for truth through art. Though risky at times, he stands in his truth. And the strength of that truth lies in the belief of his vision. I’m inspired by the bold statements he makes in this, sometimes, fickle industry.”
Raymond and Badu’s collaboration will bring the #BlackLivesMatter movement to the runway. In 2015, the designer’s show included a video segment of the killings of Eric Garner and Walter Scott. The piece also included Nicole Bell (the widow of Sean Bell, who was killed by the police in 2008) and Wanda Johnson (the mother of Oscar Grant III, who was killed in 2008)
Models then proceeded to walk down the runway in bloody shoes marked with Eric Garner’s last words “I can’t breathe.”
This season, Raymond plans to continue to be combine fashion and social activism by depicting images of the “Black Experience”. Checkout a statement from the brand about the upcoming show via Dazed Digital:
“In the 1950s, anthropologist George Bateson coined the term ‘Double Bind’; which he found to be a common occurrence in the childhoods of adults patients diagnosed as schizophrenic.The black experience in America is the ultimate double bind; a place where natural born citizens live an immigrant experience in the only land they’ve known as home.”
“A place where black culture is praised, commodified, and appropriated, while black people are criticized, vilified, and hunted for sport. A certain functional schizophrenia has to exist to cope with the dissonance of having a black man in the White House while a black body lies for four hours in the streets of Ferguson.”
We definitely think this show is going to leave a lot of people talking!
RELATED STORIES:
UPDATE: Iggy Azalea Claps Back At Erykah Badu In The Classiest Way Possible
Sunday Soul: What’s Your Favorite Song From Erykah Badu’s New Mixtape?
Slay The Runway: Erykah Badu Is Bringing “The Black Experience” To New York Fashion Week was originally published on hellobeautiful.com
