Pyer Moss

Pyer Moss was founded in 2013 in Brooklyn by Kerby Jean-Raymond, the Haitian-American designer who would go on to become one of the most-discussed creative voices in contemporary American fashion. The brand's premise from the first collection was explicitly political: use the runway and the product to engage with race, with the Black American experience, and with the historical narratives traditional fashion houses don't address. The Pyer Moss collections that defined the brand's voice came in 2015-2018: 'They Have Names' (2015, on police violence against Black Americans), the Erykah Badu-directed campaign, the 2019 'American, Also' show set at the Weeksville Heritage Center (one of America's oldest free Black communities), and the 2021 couture collection in Villa Lewaro (Madam C.J. Walker's Hudson Valley estate) — the first couture show by a Black American designer in Paris. Pyer Moss is independent and held by Jean-Raymond. The brand operates from Brooklyn. Jean-Raymond was named Reebok's global creative director in 2020 (a role he eventually exited), and Pyer Moss has since slowed its seasonal output to focus on activist project work alongside selective product releases. Few designers in the past decade have used the structures of fashion — the runway show, the editorial campaign, the magazine cover — as such direct vehicles for political conversation while still producing a serious, formally rigorous body of work.