Born in St. Paul, Humanize My Hoodie takes fashion activism to New York Fashion Week

What started as an experiment in a Hamline University class has turned into something much, much bigger. It began with a Facebook post in September 2017, when Hamline criminal justice professor Jason Sole pledged to teach all of his courses in a hoodie to challenge the “threat perception of Black men in hoodies.” He ended the post with the hashtag that would become the hallmark of a worldwide campaign: #HumanizeMyHoodie.

When Sole’s longtime friend, designer Andre Wright, saw the Facebook post, he reached out. “Jason wanted to do it just in the classroom. … I thought, man, we could take that and it could be global,” Wright said. Two weeks later, Wright decided to trademark Humanize My Hoodie.

Since the two became collaborators, Humanize My Hoodie has blossomed into a global movement, garnering shoutouts from singer John Legend, rappers J. Cole and 50 Cent, and worn by famous models. This weekend, the brand had its first show at New York Fashion Week.

Sole, based in St. Paul, and Wright, who lives in Iowa City, have been friends since they were 16. After years of friendship, being collaborators felt organic, said Wright.

Wright, a self-taught designer who got his start making screen-printed T-shirts in college, has worked with runway shows in the Midwest for years. But making his designing debut at NYFW was a special landmark in his career, he said. He first became involved with NYFW when he was the production manager for a friend’s show in 2017. He was introduced to PEEKAPOSE’s “Infinite Exposure,” a group based in the Bronx that organizes fashion shows.

Humanize My Hoodie’s show Saturday featured designs that diverged from past launches of their merchandise. The runway space, in a large art studio in Chelsea, had 100 seats and extra room for standing observers, said Juan Carlos Guevara, founder of PEEKAPOSE.

“Andre has a specific vision, a specific timeline and a specific message. It was just a matter of him conveying that to us,” said Dira Ve, a producer with PEEKAPOSE.

Wright, who is responsible for all 30 designs in the collection, dove into the show’s theme, “Past, Present and Future.” Working out of a studio space in Iowa City, he handpicked fabrics and embellished each item of clothing ahead of the fashion show. The 30 looks were divided into three groups, 10 garments in each, representing the past, present and future of the hoodie.

“It’s very constructed … it’s very organized in that sense. There’s a lot of variety, a lot of color, a lot of activism, a lot of black excellence, a lot of controversy,” Wright said. “I’ve taken 15-caliber bullet shells and 9-millimeter bullet shells and found a way to put those on the hoodies to talk about gun violence.”

The show was set to be an intersection of fashion and activism. Humanize My Hoodie’s message challenges anyone with a bias against a black man in a hoodie, said Sole, who is also the former president of the Minneapolis NAACP and worked For St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter for a year as the first director of St. Paul’s Community-First Public Safety Initiative. Both Sole and Wright often reference Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen who was fatally shot in 2012. “Trayvon was killed and his hoodie was a focal point,” Sole said. “Colorism is real. Racism is real. All of these things are real. We want people to be able to actually say, ‘A hoodie is just an article of clothing. Why are we labeling people criminals because of what they have on?’ ”

The show also functioned as a retrospective of sorts. “The hoodie’s been around for like 3,000 years, believe it or not,” said Wright, adding that throughout history, the hoodie has had its place. Ancient Greeks and Romans wore hooded robes; in the 1960s and 1970s, hoodies became popular on college campuses; and in the 1980s, hip-hop adopted the hoodie, he said.

In the fashion show audience, Sole expected a lot of East Coast activists and organizers for Eric Garner, another unarmed black man shot in Staten Island in 2014.

“We just hope that one day we don’t have to put these hoodies on our bodies,” Sole said. “We’re not trying to be saying ‘Humanize My Hoodie’ 10 years from now because we hope people get the message.”