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Wednesday afternoon’s Aliétte runway show at Spring Studios in New York City might have only been designer Jason Rembert’s second time showing at New York Fashion Week, but he’s already well established in the fashion world. He has styled the likes of Erykah Badu and Ezra Miller (in that iconic black Moncler 1 Pierpaolo Piccioli puffer coat, no less). But it was his work with Issa Rae that bore direct influence on the show earlier this week. Rae’s record label, Raedio (an imprint of Atlantic Records), put together the high-energy soundtrack that complemented the show’s vibrant color palette, interweaving Ruff Ryders, Eve, and Rico Nasty, to name just a few.
Music is always a part of Rae’s creative decisions. With her show Insecure, she says that she thinks a lot about how musical selections will inform the emotion of a scene, even when she’s still in the early stages of the writing process. It was Rae, then, who initially approached Rembert with the idea to collaborate on the soundtrack. “This is the kind of stuff that we want to continue to do down the line, to curate an audio experience,” Rae says of Raedio’s future projects. “He sent sketches to the team, and immediately they sensed a bit of playfulness—double Dutch was actually an inspiration—and we wanted to select tracks that reflected that exuberance and that street vibe.”
It was a no-brainer for Rembert, who says that he’s always trusted Rae’s taste in music: “It was heaven-sent. Every time that we’re in a fitting, Issa’s always playing the dopest songs. I always ask her, ‘Who is this?’ She just knows so much about music, so when we decided to partner between Raedio and myself, I was just like, of course. I’d be honored.”
Rembert sent Rae and her Raedio team sketches early on to help guide their selection process. While he describes his fall 2020 collection as his sexiest yet, he emphasizes that there was also a rawness to the canary-yellow cutout dresses and asymmetrical gowns that she showed. “For me, I wanted to show my culture,” Rembert says. “That was really important for me as well.” He says he felt that was mirrored in the musical curation as well, especially through the inclusion of Eve (with the Ruff Ryders on “What Ya Want”) as the closing track. “She was iconic to me in the early 2000s, so it just felt very organic for me. It all felt good to my upbringing.”
Rembert’s musical references with this collection extended beyond just the runway soundtrack. “It’s so crazy that Raedio did the music because overall the collection was inspired by musicians and how, even when the world is on one trend, they’re able to have their own identity,” Rembert says, mentioning Cher and Diana Ross as inspirations for the collection. “Those are probably the only two people whose closet I would love to just go through, because I know they have the craziest archives.”
