Can a piece of cloth become home? Is it time to blend in or stand apart? A new fashion collection by two Dominican designers asks these and other questions, with designs that integrate oddity, humor and irony. The Museum of Common Oddities proposal, by Yamil Arbaje and Angelo Beato, from LEBLANCSTUDIOS, became a reflection on Caribbean history and cultural identity during New York Fashion Week (NYFW) this year, with its influence echoing long after.
A shirt bears the archival faces of two Dominican girls, found in the General Archive of the Nation in Santo Domingo, evoking nostalgia. A traditional Dominican chacabana is reinterpreted as an aviator jacket in nylon wool with padded sleeves and collar, a military printed shirt, and a color-blocked silk shirt. Meanwhile, a uniform shirt from the Popular and Secular Party is reimagined with a distressed cargo pocket and slits along the sleeves.
“What are garments to an immigrant? What is a suit to someone exiled?,” reads the pamphlet distributed at the entrance of the event where the collection was presented. And if you look closely, the designs convey a deeper message: fashion can be an act of resistance, a tranquility amidst rupture.
“It’s perhaps one of the most personal collections we’ve done, and it explores thinkers who were exiled in the past, during dictatorial governments, in the Dominican Republic and Latin America. They were people who dedicated themselves completely to their craft, their art, to writing, to thinking, to making fashion, to painting, and no matter what happened, they would continue doing that, even if they had to leave the country,” Arbaje explained in a virtual interview a few days prior to the event.
A Whole Concept Takes Flight
In Chinatown, six floors above the bustle of New York City, a group of influencers, fashion insiders, journalists, and friends of the designers wore unusual outfits. They wore everyday looks, but twisted: shoes that were half sneakers, half boots; shirts reduced to a fragment of metal; and bleached hair with uneven haircuts. There at The Bench, the atmosphere was set by the combination of the wooden floors, white walls, plants in every corner, exposed beams, and windows all around that bathed the space in light.
However, the New York look of the venue contrasted with the music: a mix of Latin rhythms, such as salsa and cumbia. This served as a preamble to the very collection they came to see, largely inspired by the duality experienced by the Dominican diaspora.
“We have always explored history. Latin America has a lot of influence in America and Europe as well, even if it’s not mentioned, but we enrich their cultures and give them life as well,” Beato expressed when they spoke with Remezcla.
LEBLANCSTUDIOS debuted last NYFW season on the official calendar of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and they have continued to mark their success. This time, they delved once again into a project that was not just about creating pieces, but included a full concept of staging, characters, and movement: the Museum of Common Oddities.
The designers noted that as part of their creative process, they explore and build characters as if crafting a novel or a film. This character-building even extends to the casting process, in which they make sure to select a diverse group of models. For example, this presentation included college students and even two actors who had been homeless in the past. “The people who are part of the cast represent that resilience,” Arbaje commented.
The duo insists on showing other sides of the Caribbean, not just the parts painted with joy and color. There’s another face: a cold and sober gaze, not so warm, not even so friendly. There are political problems, corruption, and lies. And this recognition of the multiplicity of experiences enriches LEBLANCSTUDIOS’s proposal.
“It’s a brand that works a lot with Dominican cultural memory, the country’s political history, and the cultural records of the Caribbean. I believe it’s a brand that has been committed to that content from the start, and it does so in a very responsible and serious way,” said Dominican artist and archivist Ernesto Rivera, 42, before entering the event.
In a political and social context that continues to oppress and marginalize Latinx communities, this representation becomes even more crucial. And their proposal is not an isolated case: it’s part of a broader movement of Latinx designers at NYFW who are using fashion as a vehicle to tell stories of heritage and resistance.
Stitches, Struggles and Stories
Within the broad and diverse world of silvers, chromes, fringes, ruffles, lace, and other trends, this particular group stands out for its approach to fashion. Their messages invoke aesthetic, political, and cultural languages, within which dressing allows for the channeling of questions related to heritage, culture, family, past, present, and future. This is how Colombian Edward Salazar, a PhD candidate in Latino and Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explained it.
“Without diminishing what other generations of designers have done in the past, I believe that in the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a kind of resurgence of Latin American fashion that is much more critical and aware of its context. It is not only interested in celebrating beauty and diversity… but in moving from celebration to recognition that this diversity is the result of struggle and resistance,” elaborated the researcher and author, who has dedicated his work to studying fashion as an archive of memory and cultural resistance.
Specific weaving, loom, and embroidery techniques seem to be taking center stage in parts of Latin fashion, connecting particularly with Indigenous communities and rural heritage. “It’s worth highlighting the Indigenous designers who will be present at this edition of New York Fashion Week. We have Indigenous designers from Peru, Ecuador, and Chicanos, and what we call Mexico,” Salazar emphasized, referring to the inaugural edition of Indigenous Fashion Week, held this season.
In this growing wave, other Latine fashion designers have also gained prominence, such as, to name a few, Mexican Patricio Campillo, who explores heritage and Charro culture, and Dominican Karla DiPuglia, who has worked on themes of Taíno memory and Afro-Caribbean culture.
“Fashion precisely, and the arts and culture in general, seek a vehicle of creation to make a political statement against, in resistance to, and in open confrontation with the hegemonic power that threatens life,” Salazar emphasized, “What design seeks, then, is not only to recognize the importance, for example, that the Latinx diaspora has in the United States, culturally, economically, politically, but also the human dignity inherent in the experience of migration in general.”
