La Fête de
Maximilian
Davis

Davis soared into the public eye this year as his SS21 show launched digitally, mid-pandemic, at Fashion East. He was raised in a predominantly white community in Manchester, England, and fashion was the life raft that saved Maximilian. “My school [had a lot] of white people,” he explains. “We were the first Black family in [my] school. And I think that had a lasting effect on what I felt comfortable with…I had a lot of questions that weren’t being asked.” At home, Davis was raised by his mother, who was a model in the 70s, and his father, who had briefly studied fashion design. Davis’s grandmother taught him to use a sewing machine when he was six.

It wasn’t until he moved to London in 2013 that Davis began to find a multitude of answers for looming questions about what it meant to find community and live in one’s own skin. “I met Mischa [Notcutt, who] created a space for PDA and that was like the first time that I saw so many people dressing however they wanted when they wanted and felt safe and no one even cared if they were gay.” PDA, the party where we’d likely crossed paths in a pre-pandemic universe, had been one of a handful of safe havens for queer people of color across London. It was a place for ecstatic dance and daring style. At PDA, Davis, like many others, felt invited to step out of narrow definitions of what it means to be young, gifted, and Black. “I remember the first time that people were wearing skinny jeans...and all of the straight guys would come up to me and call me batty boy and all that shit, you know.” PDA was a space where batty boys could kiss and be kissed, behold and be held.

The SS21 collection, which was started pre-pandemic in the designer’s bedroom, was titled “J'Ouvert,” a nod to the first morning of Trinidadian Carnival and his family’s own connection to the island of Trinidad and Tobago. (Davis’s father’s family is from Jamaica and his mother’s family is from Trinidad.) Carnival, which is held annually across the Caribbean, is traditionally celebrated on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. In the time before Emancipation, enslaved and indentured islanders were not permitted to celebrate Carnival. In response to this restriction, enslaved people in Trinidad would celebrate Canboulay, a festival that gave birth to the global phenomenon of calypso music. After Emancipation in 1834, the festival evolved into an outlet for formerly indentured laborers and freed slaves to reclaim their opportunity to revel and celebrate the harvest season. On the surface, Carnival is a robust and vibrant ceremony, but it is equally a pertinent reminder that freedom was not always available. Carnival is an opportunity to play, or fête, but also an opportunity to reflect on how far Black people have come in the pursuit of bodily and spiritual autonomy.

It is no mystery that the rich and radical tradition of Carnival has served as inspiration to Caribbean creatives across the globe. A student of both fashion’s traditions and his own Caribbean lineage, Davis aims to show a more complicated lens on the histories that go understudied and without invitation for nuance. “There are so many different parts of the UK that people don’t know. I think it's about using that platform to show the different parts of Black culture.”

As Davis worked on the earliest pieces of his collection, the world quickly shifted due to the COVID-19 health crisis. After crafting his first six designs, Davis applied to Fashion East, and once-accepted, joined the swath of once-emerging talents nurtured by the programming scheme, including Jonathan Anderson, Martine Rose, Simone Rocha, and Marques'Almeida. “This whole process, this whole grant thing’s just been so unexpected,” Davis explains, “Obviously I have goals I want to achieve, but I just take every day and every week as it comes. I just kind of live in the moment.”

As we spoke, the studio was full of an energetic flurry of people off-screen working on a secret project for the following Sunday’s British Academy Film Awards—one of London’s premiere red carpet events. New to the game, but poised for the opportunity, Davis was hard at work preparing a show-stopping look for actress Michaela Coel. Coel went on to take home the BAFTA awards for Best Lead Actress, Best Writer, Best Director, and Best Miniseries for her show ‎_I May Destroy You_‎. Coel, who primarily works with stylist Nell Kalonji, is known to exclusively wear garments she or her mother have made for red carpet appearances. In a rare moment, it’s clear that Coel made the exactly right choice, because like her, Davis pulls from what he knows best: his roots.

Davis dressed Coel in a striking black gown, which featured front and back cutouts. The dress was drafted in Davis’s home studio, before he applied to Fashion East. In an interview with Vogue, Davis shared, “[In this collection,] I was looking at a lot of shells from the Caribbean. My parents also owned a taxi company in Trinidad, and looking at the highways we used to drive along, that was the reason for the long strip on the back [of the dress.]” Though a fresh face on the scene, Davis joins a stunning creative class in London including, but not limited to: fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, editor and stylist Ib Kamara, and fashion photographer Rafael Pavarroti. Due to both his community and his visibility, Davis seems very mature for a designer who has only shown his first collection. “A lot of new designers that approach me and ask me for advice, my first thought is just like, why are you coming to me? I’ve just started.”

Many stories about Davis center on his self-proclaimed desire to share visions of Black Luxury, but as the idea of Black Luxury is co-opted and made perverse, it’s all the more urgent that we take pause and spend time with each of Davis’ wares. Not only does he craft beautifully made garments, he pays special attention to radical traditions borrowing in equal parts from Balenciaga and Belafonte. “You know, it’s like there’s so many [conversations about Black Luxury] that have been pushed aside,” says Davis. “I just want to keep talking about them because...this is what we are about as Black people and let’s just say that we can do it too, you know.” Davis’s attempts to reinvent and reconfigure do not orient exclusively toward visions of white glamour, instead they open the cold case of the Black past. They find elegance in the seemingly ordinary and each attempt is better than the last. If we’re being honest, we know that grandeur doesn’t begin in a department store—it must begin at home. Luxury, and by extension, self-respect, are far more nurture than nature. And, while he’s only getting started, I know I’m not alone in saying I can’t wait for the journey Davis will take us all along for years to come.

Kimberly Drew is an art curator and author who co-edited the collection Black Futures.