Designer struts on to fashion’s big stage

Next February, 36-year-old Jamaica-born fashion designer Kerean Celeste Matthews will have realised her lifelong dream of making it in the Big Apple when her creations grace the runway at New York Fashion Week.

A month later, she is expected to chart new territory showing off more of her designs at Paris Fashion Week.

Matthews is set to showcase six pieces at the international fashion show in Manhattan as an emerging designer, and eight on the runway in the French capital.

The results are the fruits of years of desire and labour which began in Aberdeen, St Elizabeth, when the then two-year-old was left in the care of her grandmother, Victoria Watson Wright.

Matthews had then very young parents, one of whom, at the time, was determined to eke out a better life in the United States (US).

“I had a dream. I knew I wanted a glamorous life; something fashionable. I wanted to travel the world and I knew I was going to be in New York where everything is possible,” Matthews, who was born in Montego Bay, St James, recalled in a Gleaner interview on Wednesday.

The former flight attendant’s longing for a better life was rooted in her impoverished background of going days with little to no food and traversing the rural community barefooted.

“I never wore clothes that was bought out of a store until I was probably seven. I didn’t even know they existed. My grandmother made everything, down to my underwear. She made everything else, the beddings and curtains, and then she would go to Santa Cruz on the weekends at the market and sell,” she shared.

“We did not live well. We lived in poverty. Sometimes we didn’t have food. I had no shoes, but, for me, that didn’t matter. Those years of my life were the most love I had ever felt.”

Matthews would accompany her grandmother to the busy town and charm customers into making purchases.

For the next few years of her life with Watson Wright, Matthews learnt how to sew and do basic designs before moving back to Montego Bay to reunite with her mother at the age of 10.

There, she attended Montego Bay High School, at the end of which she enrolled in pre-university before migrating to the US to live with her father at 18.

The young adult settled in Atlanta, Georgia, but found the deep South lacking the vibrancy she craved.

That, and the issues that arose from living with a parent she knew little about, forced her to move back to Jamaica, briefly, to re-evaluate her then position.

Matthews said, while on a hiatus from her new home, she phoned a friend she had met while working at her father’s restaurant, telling her that she needed to return to the US but not to Georgia.

She eventually travelled to Florida where she remained with the friend while seeking a job as a flight attendant.

Several applications in, Matthews received a response from Chicago-based United Airlines. To her delight, she was hired and stationed in New York.

There, she would dress extravagantly and parade across the city, shopping at vintage markets and putting together unique looks through alterations. She was then invited by the owners to sell those same looks in the markets.

“I referred to myself then as a stylist. I was the stylist flight attendant. I just kept doing that and then I became a fashion blogger, travelling around, taking pictures and writing about them,” Matthews said.

Buying scores of fashion magazines, Matthews increased her knowledge of the field, studying others in the industry and how they had made their names.

She emulated them, showing up to New York Fashion Week as several did when they had started out.

Matthews kept returning to the fashion show, the final time wearing a specially designed custom piece which earned her an invite inside to capture the event.

“I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to be a designer. I’m not coming back here as a blogger,’” she said.

After acquiring fabric during a visit to Jamaica, Matthews created two dresses which included six-month-old aged flowers from her best friend’s wedding. She wore the pieces to the New York City Ballet Gala and Met Opera Young Patrons Society opening.

“Everybody loved them, and it was after that I said, ‘Okay, you can do this,’” she said.

Six months later, her grandmother and grandfather flew in for her first mini fashion show, a moment to show gratitude for her upbringing.

“After that mini show, I just kept working and that’s where we are now, being recognised for the fact that I do have an amazing skill. I’m really good at what I do and it’s just time for the world to see me,” Matthews said.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com