Meet Daveed Baptiste.
Daveed Baptiste is an interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates fashion, textiles, and photography. He draws his inspiration from his migration from Port au-Prince, Haiti to Miami, Florida. Through collaborative projects like, Haiti To Hood and Ti Maché, Baptiste investigates the notion of race, gender and class within the Haitian community and the larger Caribbean diaspora. He was awarded a year-long apprenticeship with Converse, where he co-designed the Black Joy Collection, and a new colorway/material design for the Energy basketball team.
Baptiste earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York. His work have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and American Vogue. He has participated in exhibitions at New York University and the Aperture Foundation. Baptiste recently unveiled his first solo exhibition at the Museum Of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts.
SS 2024
Refocusing on Haitian-American life through the lens of ceremonious spaces, Ti Maché is ode to Caribbean culture via a new collection of eight menswear looks, as well as a short film and photography made in collaboration with Black Queer collective, MASISI.
This body of work explores the legacy of streetwear by using denim as a leading material. The act of bleaching denim is both as an ode to American identity but is also a symbol of cultural erasure, to create a new cultural dialogue within each look.The collection is Photographed in the heart of LittleHaiti in Miami, Florida, which is home to the largest Haitian population in the United States, the presentation also seeks to contextualize the experience of rapid gentrification and displacement of this cultural community.