Rio Uribe, creative director of Gypsy Sport, has steadily built a name on prioritizing the voices, bodies, and experiences of marginalized communities, while showing an increasingly striking range of all of the above.
For Gypsy Sport's fall 2019 show, Uribe pushed the brand's loyal commitments to sex appeal and sportswear to cooler and edgier new dimensions. And sustainability, a constant aim in Gypsy Sport's clothes, was also on full display. For example, denim, usually utilitarian to the point of boredom, became a diversified canvas in which the bodies inhabiting them became free and unrestrained. Classic lace, tulle, and houndstooth garments, worn in sashayable layers, revealed not-subtle flashes of skin. And chainmail motifs, usually restrictive to the point of overt seriousness, empowered their wearers to be smore liberated.
Category is: free your mind and the rest will follow. Literally, rap up-and-comer Rico Nasty sparking a blunt on the runway is about as free as you can be.
Related | Rico Nasty Smoked a Joint at Gypsy Sport
Over a booming soundtrack that featured a range of ballroom jams, the 33 models — including fashion favorites like Munroe Bergdorf and Raisa Flowers from previous seasons and New York legends like Connie Girl Fleming and Kevin Aviance — served up ovahness aplenty, transforming yesterday's Soho loft-style catwalk into an undeniably sexy, in-your-face fantasy.
For this show, casting director Anthony Conti worked with Uribe to cast a more diverse range of models than ever, incorporating rising, newer talent (such as PAPER Predictions nominees Serena Tea and Jari Jones), plus-size women, and "thicc boys," all while centering trans women of color. Conti tells PAPER one major intention for the show was to combat the harmful untruth that trans women can't properly sell femme fantasy, a recent assertion very stupidly made by a (cis male) Victoria's Secret executive.
"We were especially sure to cast every kind of person we could," Conti explains. "But this was definitely our sexy, sustainable take on just every dimension of what sexy can look like. A lot of body, a lot of confidence, and freedom in all forms."
Meet the faces we will all be drawing inspiration from.
Aweng Chuol
Lead Photo by Andrew Boyle / Runway photos courtesy of Imaxtree