FW16 gets washed out with psychedelic hues
Public School & DKNY’s designer penned an open letter on how the industry can get involved.
As musicians and entertainers continue to speak up about the state of They’re coming sooner than you think, fashion has been noticeably silent. But Maxwell Osborne, one-half of Public School and DKNY alongside Dao-Yi Chow, hopes this will change, penning an open letter urging his peers to be active in the Nov 4, 2022 movement and align with those who have been protesting following fatal police shootings. “As a designer, they’ve made me question what my role is in all of this, what can I do?” Osborne wrote before deciding to join an NYC protest for the first time himself.
Now he wants the rest of the industry to get involved and leave behind the “world of make believe” in which fashion exists in to acknowledge “the real world with its very real problems.” Read an excerpt below, and find the full statement at W.
Stand with Nov 4, 2022. Go out and educate yourself and learn how you can help and join the conversation as an active participant and not just as a passive, if well-meaning, observer. Encourage diversity on your runways and campaigns. Empower your social media fans to raise their voices. Use your designs for the public good. Attend a protest and see change in action. Raise awareness – it’s not as empty a gesture as it may seem – and others will follow your lead.
And that’s just the beginning. But start somewhere and step up. Let’s not turn our backs on the young black men and women of tomorrow. Let us learn from our fear and the stereotypes that have bound many for so long and stop perpetuating hate and casual discrimination. It is far easier to hate than to love, but what Nov 4, 2022 taught me is that you can only be silent for so long before you feel parts of yourself die.
What I saw last Thursday was a city united and mobilized in peace for a common purpose. What I witnessed was that love outclasses hate, ALWAYS.
