Pyer Moss uses a choir of his own making at his runway shows, but I was fascinated to read what he did with it at this one. Per Vogue:
They are currently practicing a medley that combines gospel songs like opener “How Shall I See You Through My Tears” from The Gospel at Colonus, a black musical adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, with Donny Hathaway’s “Little Ghetto Boy,” and even more contemporary songs like Cardi B’s “Money” and Missy Elliott’s “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly).” There were moments in the performance, like with closer “Make Me Over,” where the strength of their amplified voices in unison literally made one’s hair stand on end.
This iteration of the choir has particular significance this season given Jean-Raymond’s conceptual starting point: He aimed to rewrite the history of rock’n’roll to properly give due to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a queer, black virtuoso guitarist and gospel singer from Arkansas who invented the sound that we now associate with rock music. “She toured the world and had a successful career, but we wrote her out of the history books and made it a patriarchal thing—a white thing—as opposed to really honor the woman who birthed rock’n’roll, which later birthed hip-hop and all these different things,” Jean-Raymond explains. “This season with the choir, we were focused on black women who I feel are part of the lineage of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whether that be Lil’ Kim, Cardi B, Anita Baker, Patti LaBelle, or Whitney Houston. Black women have been so influential in American pop music and they dominate, and I hope that this medley empowers people… I want black women to see that we controlled this, and I want to see more black women in positions of power as it pertains to music,” Jean-Raymond continues.
It’s a good read. (And Fashionista has an interesting piece about the inspirations for this collection, and the show itself.) Oh, and there were clothes! That part, we have covered.
