It’s the end of an era for Pyer Moss.
Designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s clothing label (pronounced “pierre-moss”) was launched in 2013 and for the last 10 years he has used the brand as a vehicle to celebrate Black culture through a combination of storytelling, music, activism, and social commentary. So it was fully within the label’s boundary-challenging history to honor its milestone birthday this week with a “lootie.”
It was the first Pyer Moss event since Jean-Raymond’s couture show “WAT U IZ” at African American entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker’s estate in July 2021 and an article in The Cut early this year raised questions about the future of the company.
Tickets began at $100 for a one-minute spree and $300 for a five-minute one. The rules were simple: Don’t be greedy, take only what fits, and be respectful. Despite the sale’s announcement video asking if “you’ve ever wanted to be a criminal,” this was a loot with some couth.
Staged at Industry City on Thursday and Friday in Brooklyn, New York, “looters” had their pick of the Pyer Moss archive, including exclusives that never made it to production. Participants checked in at the ground level and were let upstairs according to their timed entry tickets.
Just before the 3 p.m. start on Thursday, Jean-Raymond walked out of the elevator onto the ground floor where he gave shoppers a choice: There was a shipment on the way that was expected to arrive between 3 and 6 p.m. They could come back in the morning and be given priority or proceed upstairs.
Jean-Raymond posed for a photo with a mother and son who came from North Carolina for the event before heading back upstairs. They decided to come back the next day. Those who chose to stay dropped their belongings, including their phones and any clothing they wanted to remove to make way for anticipated new pieces. To keep the items, they had to be able to wear them out.
Once upstairs, shoppers were ushered into a conference room (the event was staged in Essence magazine’s office space) where there were boxes of Domino’s pizza, chicken wings, and bottled water. At one point, a man popped his head into the conference room to say that a shipment had been delivered with runway pieces, more hoodies, and a few handbags, and it would take a few minutes to get everything set up. It was worth the wait.
The items were laid out like a timeline of Jean-Raymond and Pyer Moss’ growth, almost like a retrospective. The first row of T-shirts were the first iteration of Pyer Moss products, the next few rows were from the Reebok by Pyer Moss collections. Runway pieces were on the left-hand side, a rack of joggers were on the right. A rack toward the back featured the updated version of the “They Have Names” shirt Jean-Raymond created for Colin Kaepernick’s GQ Man of the Year spread in 2017 when he requested his stylist dress him only in creations made by Black designers.
Jean-Raymond originally made the shirt in 2015, part of a collection he debuted during a New York Fashion Week show focused on Black Lives Matter, including a film on police brutality. He ended up pulling the shirt from production, saying at the time that he didn’t want to be “another peg in the wheel of white corporate culture essentially owning and commodifying activism.”
While the room’s merchandise was being reset for the last group of the day, Jean-Raymond talked with the “looters,” expressing gratitude for them coming. He said this was a moment to do something for the community and it wasn’t about the money.
The heart of Pyer Moss, the brand, has always centered on celebrating community. Jean-Raymond urged participants not to be greedy and not take anything that didn’t fit. He didn’t want anyone to look crazy, he told the room. He said people were on the floor eager to help if someone needed styling advice.
Jean-Raymond’s 7-month-old goldendoodle puppy, Tumble Weed, roamed the room of waiting looters wearing a diaper. Jean-Raymond got her when he stopped smoking weed.
As a thank you for the group’s patience with the restocking, the Pyer Moss team added one minute to the five-minute loot. Before the group set out, Jean-Raymond led the group of about 35 people in a prayer.
Actress and singer Andra Day, 38, (The United States vs. Billie Holiday) flew into New York to shop the sale. She said she was hoping to snag the Collection 3 two-piece suit shown at the Kings Theatre show in September 2019.
“Kerby, to me, speaks to culture,” said Day after her six-minute loot. “Even the message behind what he’s doing with the loot-out. It’s like taking narratives and changing them into something good and positive. When you’ve been portrayed in a certain light, for him to take that and make it into a fashion moment.”
Day said it was exciting to see a lot of people, particularly college students, get the chance to own expensive runway pieces. “Half the time I wanted to grab stuff, the other half I wanted to help other people get stuff,” she said.
Manhattan College student Tamryn Thornton-Fillyaw, 22, decided to attend the sale after she and a friend saw the posts on social media. She said that she made sure to have a strategy in place, asking those in an earlier group what would be the best course of action. “They said, ‘Listen: grab the stuff and then spend the time putting it on after.’ It was fun and I made out pretty well.”
University of Virginia student Chloe Edwards, 20, attended the loot-out to support the brand and interact with it one-on-one.
Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo
“Any interaction I’ve had with the brand Pyer Moss has honestly been a positive one for me. I had the opportunity to go to the couture show at Madam C.J. Walker’s estate. It was in my neighborhood, and it was the first I’d ever heard about the brand and then I started looking into it and what they represent, their missions, their goals, and it just really resonated with me.”
And she thought it was really cool that Jean-Raymond interacted with shoppers. “The whole environment was just awesome,” she said. “I love how great everyone’s energy was and it wasn’t like a chaotic, negative experience at all. Everyone was really respectful. I think the fact that we had that time to sit with each other without our phones or technology, be in each other’s energy and presence beforehand, Kerby’s prayer, I think it meant a lot and it’s definitely an experience I won’t forget.”
Nick Motley, 22, also was surprised how the loot-out went. “I got, like, six pieces, which is more than I would have had I just gone to the site and spent money,” he said. “It felt good. I wasn’t expecting any of that today. That felt awesome and I feel like I actually have a better understanding of the brand than I did, which wasn’t something I was necessarily coming here for, but I’m happy that was a big part of it and that’s how they were centering today.”
Jean-Raymond’s strength has always been in building community, a space to celebrate Blackness. For instance, supporters were often invited to his fashion shows along with industry professionals.
“I want to be remembered for uniting people through all of these different mediums,” Jean-Raymond said in 2019. “I think if you look at Pyer Moss, it’s really just a communication tool. You don’t really see it until you’re at our show or pop-ups, and then you’re like, damn. I say it to my team all the time, how do you create a safe space for all these people who felt ostracized from fashion for such a long time.”
This sale was a way for Pyer Moss to put out the old and make room to usher in the new. The “looters,” who posed for photos after their timed shopping was up, are part of a bigger rollout for the brand, Jean-Raymond said, one that he is keeping under wraps for now.
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