Los Angeles designer Pierre Davis made her debut in New York this week, becoming the first openly transgender creator to present a collection at Fashion Week, further shaking up an event that had already featured trans models.
The powerful Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), which says it represents more than 500 creators and has made diversity its battle cry, announced last month that Davis’s No Sesso brand would be “making NYFW history” at the event, which opened with a parade of whimsical garments.
Davis told CFDA that she hopes the brand “will inspire people to be more community-minded and to realise not everything is just about aesthetics or commerce. It’s also about humanity.”
She added it is important “that people of all intersectional identities are given a fighting chance regardless of their identity. The playing field isn’t level in the world, and it is even more difficult in fashion.”
While she embraces her identity as a trans woman in the design field, Davis doesn’t want it to be a gimmick, and said it’s important for people to see the creations and for them to be recognised.
“I just want to show the work,” she said of the agender brand No Sesso, which was launched in 2015 and — according to CFDA – counts fans including R&B artists Kelela and Erykah Badu.
“I am just humble and happy that I got to show at Fashion Week,” Davis said.
For her Chapter 2 collection — she calls them “chapters” rather than seasons — Davis came up with the idea of a wardrobe that blends the sartorial codes associated with the two sexes.
Plain black vests became skirts, cocktail dresses were transformed, and worn with self-assurance by models whose diversity — male or female, slender or plus-size — reflected Fashion Week’s growing efforts to look beyond the conventional razor-thin body type.
The wardrobe mixed the formalism of work attire with sportswear, producing a jogging jacket with epaulettes, for example.
LA brand
Davis emphasises that the label is “very much an LA brand,” adding: “We’re super-fun and easy to be around.”
“The show is inspired by business wear and evoking the spirit of the Glamazon regardless of gender,” Davis said. It’s about making things happen even “when there seems to be no way.”
For several years, trans models have regularly appeared at New York Fashion Week.