Here’s How Celebrity Stylist Jason Rembert’s Debut Fashion Collection Came to Life
Aliette
The moment I met Jason Rembert, I wanted to hug him. He’s soft-spoken, sweet, almost shy—not my typical image of a major celebrity stylist. Rembert has been deep in the grind of the fashion industry for years, first as an intern at magazines like W and Elle, and more recently dressing the likes of Issa Rae, Jennifer Hudson, Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane, Zayn Malik, and Ezra Miller; the list goes on. In recent years, he started asking himself what’s next. Enter Aliétte.
At a fitting and casting two days before launching his fashion line, he sat down with me to talk about the project.
“It’s the middle name that my two-year-old daughter, Harper, and my mom share,” Rembert explains of his label’s moniker. He’s calling the first collection “Madinia,” which means “Isle of Flowers” and references the tropical flowers and landscapes of Martinique, where his mother’s family hails from. His mother passed away eight years ago, and Aliétte honors her legacy. “Being raised by a single mother, I really understand the strength of a woman,” he says. “And having a daughter, I’m sensitive toward many things that women have to face that men don’t.” Rembert’s respect for women runs deep. Days before we met, a group of congresswomen (the largest in history, in fact) wore suffragette white to the State of the Union address in a moving, hopeful display of solidarity. Rembert was watching. “What women have right now is an amazing force,” he said. “You have the wits and the strengths to move us in different and better directions. I want my daughter, and my 10-year-old stepson for that matter, to look at women who are shaking things up and be just as inspired by them as I am.”
As models filed into the studio space, Rembert shook hands and introduced himself to each of them. In styling mode, he adjusted the double-clasp belt on an embroidered corset top and pinned the waist of a painterly print dress made in collaboration with the artist Georgia Gardner Grey. Rembert asked a model how she felt in her look before he inspected the hand-pleating and honeycomb lace of her strapless tea-length dress. Then, in a flash, he switched to designer mode, walking me over to a tiny room where a pair of seamstresses were hard at work on two spectacular gowns. One secured tiny red crystals to thin slits on a red leather bodice, and the other draped black chiffon over a beaded corset, the end result of which would be similar to the dress Rembert designed for Rae at the Critics’ Choice Awards. “I think we should add a bodysuit inside,” he told the seamstress. “She needs to be comfortable.”
Aliétte started as an eveningwear brand, but through the design process Rembert felt like he wanted to do more for his clientele. So he expanded it to include outerwear and separates, all of which hit a sweet spot somewhere between the red carpet and everyday life. At one point, he went looking in his phone for a photo of a dress that was still being worked on. “I sent it to my girlfriend,” he said. “I have to send her everything, and I always get her feedback.” Rembert scrolled through a slew of images, shots of in-process trousers, jackets, a structured blazer, a faux-fur hooded cape, and a bustier, all before landing on the dress he wanted to show me, a black chiffon gown with a deep V neckline and pleated flutter sleeves that looked gorgeous even on a dress form with safety pins around the neckline. “I wanted this badly for a while,” he said. “I wanted something of my own, something I could have some form of emotional attachment to and, I wanted to be vulnerable to it all.”
Rembert eventually wound up with 19 looks for his Aliétte presentation (19, he noted, is significant for him as it’s the age that his mom had him and his grandmother had his mom). The mini-show was held in a sunny room atop the Standard Hotel in the East Village, and he was playing three roles: stylist, designer, and star-on-the-rise. The space was crowded with some heavy-hitting editors and buyers, but mostly it was his nearest and dearest. His grandmother was seated near the elevator with a proud look on her face. Later on, his little girl, Harper, made a cameo. Winnie Harlow, a longtime friend and client, modeled. It was a tender moment at a time when the New York fashion industry, confronting the rise of e-commerce and the decline of retail, is in the midst of a major readjustment.
Leaving the presentation, I gave Rembert a giant squeeze. He smiled at me and told me that he’d cried the moment he walked in and saw his grandmother. “It’s a dream come true,” he said.
