Jean herself found the ballroom scene in much the same way, recalling Thursday vogue nights at now-defunct clubs like Escuelita and XL as “sanctuaries for people to come and find their truths, explore, ask questions and get to know what’s happening with their minds, bodies and journeys.”
“In those spaces,” she continues, “people begin to strengthen their armor so that when they go back into the world, they’re not walking with their heads down.”
Jean grasped the power of fashion early, seeing her grandmother create bridal dresses in their native Haiti and noticing “how people’s entire lives and faces and bodies changed when they were in something that was created for them.” Through the costumes in Saturday Church, she’s been able to marry that embodied knowledge to a curatorial sensitivity she has honed while living in New York City, a place whose Black queer community she credits with influencing contemporary streetwear and runway fashions. “We are the fashion Mecca of the world and a lot of the influences, the genuine instinctual design, comes from Black queer culture, who are continuously the visual architects for the language of dress,” she says.
“It’s no surprise—I think it’s divine—that this year we were celebrating dandyism at the Met Gala,” she says. “We’re seeing the connective tissue from Africa to the ways that Black and brown bodies look at tailoring. But most importantly, we’re honoring the very culture that was born within them and how that was fused—how it’s been taken—into different contexts. We see that in streetwear fashion, obviously. We see it now in Telfar. There is a new wave of fashion, of undeniable resilience, and that, for me, is how I’ve dressed every character in this musical: They have their armor to step out into the world.”
Indeed, Telfar is healthily represented in Jean’s designs for the musical through handbags and a few other key pieces, made possible through a partnership she brokered with the local label. Jean says there’s an “earnestness and truth” to the collaboration, pointing to the label’s history of charitable giving. Her costumes mix in other brands, like Supreme, too; alongside in-jokes including a “Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor” tote. These touches stem from her engagement with the city’s youth via her work with BTL, and seeing how they resist systemic oppression.
“I see the way people show up in spite of the things that they might be going through,” Jean says. “So there’s a beautiful balance here of how people are still honoring their truth while on their journey. Each subtle detail is rooted in a very specific aspect of humanity. That specificity comes from seeing folks on the train, seeing the way they’re tying their laces, details about their footwear, even, that can become signifiers of how people put things together.”