kadeem walks the runway

From Modlin to the runway

October 22, 2021

ALUMNI

Three weeks before New York Fashion Week, Kadeem Fyffe, a 2013 grad and fashion designer, seized an opportunity he’d been dreaming of since walking the halls of the Modlin Center at the University of Richmond. He was going to show a line of clothes he designed for the prestigious fashion event, where international collections are revealed for the first time. And one of the models for his line was another Spider, Jenna Flack, also a 2013 grad.

“This was truly a dream come true,” Fyffe said. “I’ve wanted to be a famous fashion designer since I was a child, so to finally show a women’s ready-to-wear collection at NYFW, the most important week in American fashion, was a dream fulfilled and a promise kept to my younger self.”

He collaborated with LaSette, a Black-owned lingerie line in New York, to design ready-to-wear pieces within three weeks of Fashion Week.

“It was especially important to me that I collaborated with a Black designer because so often our voices are not heard in the fashion industry,” he said. “As amazing as this moment was, it is not lost on me that my path as a Black, queer, non-binary designer is not going to paved in gold, but I am determined to succeed.”

That determination was apparent even as a junior at UR, where Fyffe won a summer research grant from the School of Arts and Sciences that catapulted him to being a design assistant at Milan Fashion Week while studying abroad.

“Studying abroad in Milan was by far the single most pivotal and transformative experience of my undergraduate experience at UR,” he said. “I realized this was where I belonged and that my future in fashion was bright.”

By 2014, he had completed a design program through Parsons School of Design while working full-time. Since then, he has been featured in People and Out magazine for his work as founder and creative director at Muxe New York, a gender-free clothing label.

“In my experiences I learned that as long as I made the right connections, continued to perfect my craft, and believed in myself, I could achieve anything — including showing my collections at New York Fashion Week. And 10 years later, here we are.”

Fyffe is set to launch an eponymous label in the next year. 

“This is only the beginning,” he said. “I have so much more that I want to share with the world.”