Fashion Week Has Lost Its Footing, but the Show Goes on in a New Documentary by Pyer Moss

One of the hottest invites of Spring-Summer Fashion Week 2020 was Pyer Moss’ runway tribute to rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe last September in Brooklyn. Staged at the legendary King’s Theatre in designer Kerby Jean-Raymond’s native neighborhood of Flatbush, the presentation was a celebration of blackness and its indelible influence upon what America has long since claimed for its own as “rock ‘n roll”.

Needless to say, Fashion Week won’t go as planned this September—in fact, this past February’s presentations may be the last that in any way resemble the biannual cacophony of collections the industry has long been accustomed to (and some of us are okay with that). And as designers consider how—or even if—they should stage collections in an atmosphere that is now both marked by a public health crisis and an economic downturn, Pyer Moss is giving us a peek behind the curtain of one of their most acclaimed shows.

We won’t be expecting a full new collection from Pyer Moss this fall, but on Monday, the label debuted the trailer for American, Also, a film “documenting the two years leading up to the boundary-pushing Pyer Moss spectacular” with “behind-the-scenes footage from the show at the historic New York landmark,” Vogue reports. Set to debut this September during what would’ve been Fashion Week, the feature film will reportedly premiere in New York City as “a drive-in fashion happening,” out of respect for our ongoing social distancing needs, with a series of subsequent screenings around the country. “As with previous Pyer Moss events, the guestlist will be a combination of invited press and friends of the brand, with a percentage of tickets available to the public,” Vogue reports. A capsule of clothing is expected to drop in tandem with the film.

But if the moment seems right for the moment, Jean-Raymond explains that it’s in stride with Pyer Moss’ larger mission; the label was one of the first to pivot to supplying masks and supplemental funding when the outbreak first occurred.

“It’s always been our mission to show the amount of thinking and laboring that goes behind putting together a collection—we’ve been slowing down the speed of how much we produce and improving the quality of what we produce throughout the years,” Jean-Raymond told the magazine via email. “This film aims to show the love and care our entire company puts into every single moment we create and will show that we appreciate fashion as an art form and communication tool that we’ve used to embolden a community around us.”