Fashion Week Got Political In The Best Way

Innovative designs and vibrant fabrics were not the only things taking up space at dapperQ’s recent New York Fashion Week show at the Brooklyn Museum.

On Sept. 5, the annual dapperQ event, billed as NYFW’s “largest LGBTQIA+ fashion show” and known for its celebratory boisterousness and activism, marked its ninth year — and it did not fail to deliver. Powerful performances punctuating the runway show highlighted global violence and our resistance, especially anti-Blackness, the need for transgender- and queer-inclusive health care, and body positivity. Models strutted to pop songs and freedom as well as the rhythmic, resounding calls from the audience. Looks were served, but the event was also a reminder that style is inherently political.

The show started with chants supporting Palestinian liberation reverberating throughout the museum’s rotunda, which set a mood immediately. Soon after, the brand FreeMen by Mickey featured a Black queer model death-dropping on the runway to Teyana Taylor’s “WTP,” a musical nod to queer ballroom culture. The fact that all of this happened in a space that’s been accused of perpetuating colonialism injected energy into the audience that lasted until the very end. The overarching theme was palpable: Resistance is always in style.

Barely able to stay in my seat, I was gushing over reimagined versions of some of my favorite New York style staples — leather anything, varsity jackets and oversize puffers — while also super engaged with the critical dialogue taking place between the clothing, the models, the music and the audience. In addition to FreeMen by Mickey, designs were featured from Transguy Supply, Zoe Grinfeld, Keith Kelly, Austin Alegria, Hanna Hamam and Jose Gonzalez. The experience was so much more than a fashion show; it was more like a pep rally with a very clear political message.

For those unfamiliar, dapperQ is a multipronged fashion platform that aims to celebrate the glorious spectrum of queer-affirming style. Its runway show gives space to an all-queer production team, designers and models as a way of combating the lack of diversity in the mainstream fashion industry and fashion week spaces.

Buffy Sierra, an artist who hosted and served as runway coordinator for the event, described it best in her introduction to the show, calling fashion “liberation that we can put on our bodies.” When we spoke briefly later, Sierra elaborated on the political nature of fashion and the similarities between making clothing and organizing.

“Fashionized liberation is truly a team effort. It’s an engagement between a designer, a model, a hairstylist and a makeup artist — people coming together to make a show happen for a community of people who are invested,” said Sierra.

I feel like we all left the Brooklyn Museum more invested that night, beaming with a surge of renewed confidence and purpose, as well as an extensive mental catalog of amazing queer and trans designers to shop. “Every designer really stood out in their own creative way, and it was very impactful and very powerful,” said B. Hawk Snipes, a local artist who attended the event. “The message I took away from the show is to be unapologetically you, and listen, none of us are free until we’re all free. So, keep the movement going.”

Putting on an event like this, which is only one component of dapperQ’s reach, is no easy feat. It’s a labor of love for all those involved, especially dapperQ’s owner and the show’s executive producer, Anita Dolce Vita, who works as a nurse by day. “Every year, I say that I’m not going to do it again because of all the administrative work that goes behind it,” she told me. “Then when I get in here and it’s all of these beautiful things, people in our community that are showing up in their fashion, feeling good about themselves, feeling that it’s a safe space, I just want to do it again.”

I’ve always loved fashion and had a healthy curiosity about the way style evolves, but as of late I’ve grown bored and frustrated with the superficial, trend-centric focus of the industry without real language for why. But it’s become clearer to me that I am craving more intention — and that trends feel meaningless without a message.

I’ve also never truly felt that fashion week — the shows, the celebrations and the clothes being celebrated — was for someone like me. So it’s always been something I’ve engaged with as an outsider looking in. But dapperQ showed me that this doesn’t have to be the case. I can seek those who fan my fashion flame and participate in a style subculture that sees me too.

This is what we need: Fashion that pushes against Eurocentric beauty standards and gender binaries. Fashion that centers love, joy and the right of structurally marginalized people to live freely. I want to support American fashion that exists less for the sake of consumption, and more to conjure new ideas that unite us.