On Saturday, Sept. 12, the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall became a runway. For the second year in a row, KidSuper founder and Brooklyn Arts Ambassador Colm Dillane joined Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to present The People’s Runway.
The premise of the show was simple: Give local designers a runway, production support, mentorship and money, and see what happens when they are given the conditions to make work at scale.
Unlike many Fashion Week presentations, the event was free and open to the public. There was no invitation required to see the collections and no need to understand the social codes of the fashion industry to take part.
More than 300 designers applied for this year’s program and only five were selected: Kuai Li, Lamin Rey Jaiteh, Laurel Tiange Fang, Mose Aina and Roderick Reyes. Thousands of spectators gathered around Borough Hall as models moved down the outdoor catwalk.
Each designer received a $5,000 grant from Reynoso, matched by Converse and Cash App, bringing the total to $15,000 per designer. They also received mentorship from Dillane and other fashion industry leaders, and full-service production including styling, hair and makeup, runway lighting and sound, photography and other resources that can often be inaccessible to emerging designers.
That distinction matters. Fashion is often described as an industry built on talent, but talent alone rarely determines who gets seen.
"About a year and a half ago, he [Reynoso] came to the KidSuper building, and I kept saying to him, 'I never understand where grants go,'" said Dillane. "Every person that I know that gets a grant is already a rich business that seems to already know how to scheme the system."
Dillane said that he asked Reynoso about becoming a conduit of government funding for young creatives, and that he was offered the role of ambassador of art for Brooklyn.
Brooklyn's creative identity has long been shaped by artists working outside established institutions. But creative spirit does not pay for fabric, models, studio space or production crews. If Brooklyn is going to continue to call itself a creative capital, its institutions have to do more than celebrate the artists who emerge from the borough. They have to help create the conditions in which those artists can build sustainable practices and remain part of the city’s cultural life.
Wyclef Jean performed for a star-studded crowd before bringing out Lauryn Hill, whose surprise appearance sent an already energized audience into a frenzy. Hill performed songs like “No Woman, No Cry” and the 1996 Fugees hit “Ready or Not.” Hill celebrated 30 years since the release of the Fugees’ landmark 1996 album, “The Score” in a painted KidSuper coat.
Figures in the crowd ranged from Beenie Man, Lil Mama and YG Marley, to Ellie the Elephant, the Brooklyn Nets mascot.
The distinction between runway, concert and civic gathering briefly dissolved. And that collapse is exactly the point.
The People’s Runway does not attempt to make Brooklyn look like Paris, Milan or even Manhattan. It proposes something else: that Fashion Week can belong to the people who live in the city producing it, and that emerging designers do not have to wait for the fashion establishment to make room for them before they claim their place within it.
For one night, at least, Brooklyn Borough Hall was not simply the seat of borough government. It was a place where five designers were given the rarest currency in fashion: the room to be seen.
