Neville Wisdom paced up and down Broadway Island on Saturday, greeting guests assembled for his fashion show with hugs as they found their seats. "The London" by Young Thug was blasting through the speakers, children danced on the runway and no one appeared to be in any rush to start the show.
Wisdom, who grew up in a small rural town in Jamaica, has been designing and selling clothing in New Haven since 2008. His clothing line is designed, manufactured and sold all in a single long room at the Neville Wisdom Fashion Design Studio in New Haven. Wisdom said that the studio holds around three fashion shows per year, although this weekend’s show was the first following a hiatus over the pandemic.
“We’re a community-based business, we thrive on the environment and being sustainable, we make dresses based on the available materials and we make everything in our shop,” Wisdom told the audience at the event.
Wisdom was in no hurry, and the first model appeared on the runway over 40 minutes after the 5 p.m. start time. In black pumps, a leather handbag and a purple iridescent jacket and matching shorts, she circled the brick traffic island. Thirty more models followed suit.
Wisdom’s studio is part of The Shops at Yale, a collection of over 65 stores owned by Yale University Properties. Local stores like Wisdom’s conduct business on the strip alongside national chains such as Urban Outfitters, L.L. Bean, J. Crew and Lululemon.
Arden Santana, an attendee at the show, reflected on what the studio’s presence in downtown New Haven means to her.
“I think people of color and men of color are underrepresented in the fashion industry, so the fact that he’s able to own his shop means he’s someone to celebrate,” she said. “You just don’t see us represented in areas like this.”
Wisdom said that his mother introduced him to sewing during his childhood in Jamaica.
When he came to the U.S., Wisdom took up designing, incorporating the method of draping that his mother used.
“He’s been a superstar in our family,” Wisdom’s nephew Joseph Green said.
Wisdom said that he worked with Yale to locate the fashion show on Broadway Island, which the University owns. He explained that Yale has provided him with affordable rent, amenable landlords and a large physical space, which allowed him to establish the store where it stands downtown.
Two Yale students, Christopher de Santis ’25 and Yeji Kim ’25, volunteered at the show. They helped to direct models through street traffic and onto the runway. De Santis, a former production and design editor at the News, said that he saw working on the show as an opportunity to explore his interest in fashion history. Kim, a former staff reporter at the News, said she signed on to learn more about sewing and design.
Many of the pieces on the runway on Saturday were designed by Dwayne Moore, who has worked as Wisdom’s apprentice since 2016.
“This show was about Dwayne really taking the lead,” Wisdom said, wearing an outfit Moore designed.
Moore said that when he was 19, his school shut down, and he came to Wisdom for a job. He told the News he remembers arriving at the studio’s previous Orange Street location at 6 a.m. and sitting on the curb for hours until the shop opened, eager to show his interest in helping out.
He said he has been teaching himself to sew ever since he met Wisdom ten years ago and now considers the shop a family.
“I was just embraced in that way,” Moore said. “There’s no separation between home life and work life.”
Moore, wearing a sweater displaying the words “extremely grateful” in block print, said that he wanted to push his creative ability by using only fabrics the shop already had in the pieces he created for Saturday’s show. His tooth jewelry flashing as he grinned widely, Moore spoke about the thrill of putting the show together with only a month and a half of planning.
After the show, Wisdom and Moore invited guests back to the store to shop and sip prosecco. They lingered around the shop, and almost no one left without a hug.
Neville Wisdom Fashion Design Studio is located at 27 Broadway.