Review: JAY JAXON: Fashion Designer, Le Couturier, Costumer
Queens Public Library, New York, August 1 - August 31, 2019
"Quiet as it’s kept [1], before there was Robyn Rihanna Fenty for FENTY in 2019, Virgil Abloh for Louis Vuitton in 2018, Olivier Rousteing for Balmain in 2011, Ozwald Boateng for Givenchy in 2003, Chambre Syndicale member Patrick Kelly accepted in 1988, there was Jay Jaxon for Jean-Louis Scherrer in 1969. [2]"
Depending on who carries the message, history is often told from one single point of view. This is certainly the case with fashion history, which has often prioritized Western history and, in the process, has forgotten to mention significant contributions made to the field by those who do not fit into that narrative. Fashion scholar Rachel Fenderson encountered this when researching the history of designer Jay Jaxon, the first American to become the head designer of a Parisian Haute Couture house in the 1960s, and whose career has been overlooked by the mainstream media both within his own era and since. While studying for her masters in Fashion Studies at Parsons Paris, Fenderson made it her duty to tell the story of Jay Jaxon correctly, and extensively, making the Queens native designer the subject of her thesis. After completing her degree, her thesis developed into a series of projects that have brought the history of Jay Jaxon not only back to academic circle discussions, but also to public knowledge.
The first of those projects is the exhibition JAY JAXON: Fashion Designer, Le Couturier, Costumer | 40 Years of Fashion Design Brilliance at the Queens Public Library in New York, a show with academic and representative significance for the community. For one month (August 1st to August 31st, 2019), the library venue was enriched with a graphic exhibition telling the designer’s story and displaying several articles from Jay Jaxon’s portfolio and his personal collection of items.
Mounted in the main venue of the Queens Public Library, the exhibition was conveniently located on the right side of the floor, next to the space where events and conferences are held. There, Fenderson displayed 26 panels with information about Jay Jaxon, telling a linear story from his younger years and the moment he realized he had potential as a fashion designer, to the moment he went to Paris and became a couturier, to the era in which he returned to the United States to re-establish his brand and continue to work as a costume creator for television. The graphic displays, all designed by Fenderson, contain an ample selection of photographs as well as accompanying pieces of text explaining each of the sections in language that was fairly simple and appropriate for an exhibition that took place in a library, often visited by non-academics and people interested in general culture.
That general culture is one of the reasons Fenderson decided to approach the library to display her research in the first place, as she considers Jaxon an “important part of fashion history, American history and French history.” Despite being the first American couturier, Jaxon’s history (moreover, his existence) is unknown to many, a reality that Fenderson came to realize during the early stages of her research, in which she looked at over 50 articles from different newspapers and magazines, both from France and the United States. “I was looking at American Vogue, and they reviewed the French Collections, and they did not once talk about Jay Jaxon in their review. And I thought well, so that’s interesting, because you talk about the other French Designers. ‘Wouldn’t you want to talk about an American person? Who is creating for a French House?’... And then also with French Vogue when I went through it, I would see reviews of the collections, and I noticed that the review of Jean-Louis Scherrer’s collection…was either, one of two things happened, it was mentioned briefly — but it was never mentioned that it was Jay Jaxon for Jean-Louis Scherrer, and or it just, it wasn’t there period. To me that was something noticeable, that both French and American Vogue did not document Jay Jaxon creating for Jean-Louis Scherrer.”
“Press reviews form the basis of an important theme in the exhibition: racism in the fashion industry. ”
Across the timeline, the exhibition makes important remarks about the work of Jay Jaxon for houses such as Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, and Jean-Louis Scherrer, with which he presented both Haute Couture and prêt-à-porter collections, the former named 4 Plays on Springtime in 8 Acts and 63 Pageants, a collection that was reviewed and praised for its creativity and the self-explanatory nature of the presentation. Press reviews form the basis of an important theme in the exhibition: racism in the fashion industry.
While covering Jaxon’s work, the French press would often refer to him as “the first black couturier,” and emphasized his race as part of the content they were creating. “The fashion industry, the people who work in it, the gatekeepers, the people who control the narrative, how history is told… the people who are making decisions, I think they continue to perpetuate the cycle of racism by calling designers who are of color either by their race or their ethnicity,” commented Fenderson, explaining that mainstream institutions labeling practitioners by their ethnicity is part of the problem we should all be aware of: “If Vogue were to call Jay Jaxon a ‘black designer,’ part of the reason that is problematic is that we never see Vogue call Marc Jacobs or Ralph Lauren ‘white designers.’”
JAY JAXON, presented thorough research on an overlooked American designer, with clear language and a layout that was comfortable and logical to follow. The exhibition is also enhanced by the close connection that Fenderson was able to establish with Jaxon’s longtime life partner, Lloyd Hardy, and the access she was granted to his portfolio and objects from his personal collection, some of which were displayed in a glass vitrine (including a vest designed by Jaxon and some of the tags for the brands he designed). The insights into Jaxon’s life include his resume and a reproduction of a letter Hubert de Givenchy wrote to Jaxon. Fenderson succeeded in her goal of reconstructing the story of the designer as well as starting a conversation about the difficulties that racialized fashion designers have to overcome, even to this day, in order to be recognized, often being boxed into an ethnicity that overshadows their talents and accomplishments.
The project, although a clear indication of in-depth research, faced the challenge of being allocated in a reduced space, which left visitors with lingering curiosity for more details about the life and work of Jay Jaxon. The limitations of the exhibition were also evident with respect to the resources displayed, since it was only built on images and very few material objects. In the spirit of giving a much closer look and feel to Jaxon’s work, actual garments would have not only enriched the information but the layout in general. However, considering that this exhibition consisted of the effort of one scholar who contacted a public institution to present her work, one can only admire her sense of responsibility for the reconstruction of fashion history.
The timeline for the presentation of this first exhibition was short, but there is certainly more to tell about the life of Jay Jaxon, a fact about which Fenderson is aware. Next year, she plans to present a different take on the life of the designer in a larger exhibition at the Queens Historical Society. Her work is certainly meaningful to a community that values representation but also wishes to celebrate its creative talents, and it is important to an industry that needs to engage with practitioners and actors from all spheres to reshape a global and more inclusive narrative of its history.
Notes
[1] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (New York: Holt McDougal, 1970)
[2] Fenderson, Rachel A., “JAY JAXON: Fashion Designer, Le Couturier, Costumer | 40 Years of Fashion Design Brilliance.” Jamaica, NY: Queens Public Library, 2019.
