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Detroit threads are woven through media coverage of new fashions from designer Tracy Reese, a 1982 Cass Tech graduate.
She cites her hometown as the main inspiration for fall dresses, jackets and menswear introduced Sunday during New York Fashion Week. Before models displayed her styles at the new Roxy Hotel in Lower Manhattan's Tribeca area, Reese presented a nine-minute film titled "A Detroit Love Song," with original music by Detroit jazz violinist Regina Carter.
These are among styles Tracy Reese introduced Sunday. (Instagram photo)
"The short film seamlessly explored the city’s rich history, as well as its present-day vibrancy," writes Haley Phelan of Vogue magazine, who quotes Reese on her hometown:
"Detroit is changing right before my eyes — it’s very exciting.
“Detroit kind of gets a bad rap. People don’t realize the cultural richness, the richness of the people, and how passionate and hardy they are.”
The designer, who turned 52 last Friday, also pays tribute to her birthplace in comments quoted by Leanne Italie of Associated Press:
"It's a city that is so rich in culture. It has such amazing people who have stuck with that town through thick and thin.
"We're sort of at an interesting juncture where the city is changing a lot and there is a lot of new interest and a lot of new blood. People are moving to Detroit because they know they can be a part of creating something amazing."
Italie describes the film directed by Ali Nassar, which isn't available online yet:
"A Detroit Love Song" follows a stunning young woman as she shows off the new clothes from Reese in far-flung spots, from the front steps of a modest wood house to the legendary Red's Jazz Shoe Shine Parlor, where our ingénue takes a high seat for a special shine on her black lace-up ankle boots.
Our muse roams in leg garters attached to her high socks and presses her hand against the glass of a taxi as she cruises Detroit. Reese honors her late mother, who was a dancer, with a scene in a dance studio, where she spent lots of time growing up. . . .
Her clothes, too, pay tribute to her hometown.
Like Detroit, a cultural melting pot with many layers adding depth, she used intricate beading, embroidery and crochet lace to bring her dresses and other looks alive. To mimic Detroit's strong manufacturing roots (Reese's late father worked for one of the car companies), she added masculine suiting in herringbone and plaid. . . . To honor Detroit's rebirth, Reese worked in earthy colors of peat, moss and pond blue.
Washington Post fashion editor Robin Givhan, a Detroit success story herself, characterizes the film as "a moody meditation on Detroit’s glory days of Motown, Mustangs and Thunderbirds. It does not shy away from the present day reality of empty lots and decaying buildings. But it also celebrates the beauty of the Fox Theatre, the grandeur of the Fisher Theatre and the resilience of its neighborhoods."
Givhan, who's seven months younger than Reese and also graduated from high school in 1982 (as valedictorian at Renaissance), worked at the Free Press for seven years and is 2006 became the first fashion writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Tracy Reese: "Detroit is changing right before my eyes. It’s very exciting."
In Monday's Post, she says Reese's new collection is "a love song for her hometown: its gilded past, its rough-edged present and the optimism for its future."
Givhan quotes the designer's handout notes:
“In the past few years, Detroit has definitely become the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes. I wanted to revisit the city of my childhood and also capture the excitement of the current scene.”
After Cass, Reese earned a fast-track degree in 1984 from Parsons School of Design in Manhattan and worked for three years as a design assistant. She ran her first company for two years, worked for Perry Ellis and others, and founded Tracy Reese Meridian in 1995.
The Tracy Reese flagship store opened in 2006 in New York. Her clothes and home decor designs also are sold at Bloomingdale's, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie, Modcloth, and Nordstrom. She opened a hometown pop-up shop last October inside Detroit Is the New Black, a T-shirt boutque on East Forest in Midtown.
Celebrity clients include Ledisi, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sarah Jessica Parker and Michelle Obama, who wore a custom-made dress for a 2012 DNC Convention speech.
Reese speaks about how her roots influence her work in this 2015 video:
