00:00Hey y'all, I'm Eddie Jarrell Jones with an X on the end, and we are backstage at the
00:08Chromat Spring Summer 2020 New York Fashion Week runway show. Now this is their 10th anniversary,
00:14it's a big thing. The craziness backstage New York Fashion Week, for Chromat at least,
00:20it is so hectic. This is like the biggest, it's their 10 year anniversary. I mean people have
00:25double looks, there are more makeup and hair people than have ever been here before.
00:29Stick with me, we're going on a long quick journey to the runway.
00:34So I'm a part of the legendary house of Cum de Garçon, and I walk Butch Queen and Drags runway,
00:38meaning in the daytime you're a Butch Queen or a boy, and then at night or at the ball you get up
00:44in drags and you pump the runway. I'm most excited about just the diversity of the show. I think
00:49that's something that makes Chromat really unique and really special. Becca, the head designer,
00:54has always put an emphasis on including a variety of people, different body types,
00:59different skin colors. I'm looking forward to the looks, the outfits. I just think it's such
01:04a beautiful thing to witness. It's really breaking away from the traditional idea of beauty, and I
01:10just love that. This is my third season walking Chromat. I started the first year I moved to New York.
01:15It was my first time that I felt seen and respected in like high fashion industry, like you don't really
01:23get many times where you're not used as a gimmick. Whether it's like, oh we just want you to come
01:27do this, we want you to come do that. No, they really make sure that you feel that you are included.
01:32And what I really love about it is they support all body types and sizes, so they really highlight
01:36what it is to be human. Growing up, I always knew I was the girl in the picture. I was a latchkey kid,
01:44only child. My mom was a single working mother. Shout out to all the single working black mothers out there.
01:50Love you down. Y'all are over the goddesses of the universe. But I would be pumping around in her
01:55heels when she wasn't home. I would come home, then I would turn on the tv, turn on the music videos,
02:00and I would just prance around the house in her heels. That's the reason I love runway and heels now.
02:04And that's when I knew that I was going against the binary. I knew that it was quote unquote
02:10wrong in the black community. And in my experience, as I got older and I started to learn more and see
02:14more and see a bunch of different kind of people, I took that time to focus on myself and like to figure out
02:19the things that make me happy regardless of what other people think. Who are you? Who do you want
02:23to be? And it really opened up my eyes to see that you can really be who you were born to be. You don't
02:28have to be what people tell you you should be. It means so much to me representing my community and
02:33especially my non-binary fems of color because it's so hard for people to get us to take us seriously.
02:38And all we're doing is our job. That's it. So to be able to be here in a space with so many different
02:45colors, shapes, sizes and identities is really dope because I love my girls. I found a family
02:53that I can lean on out here that loves me, accepts me, breeds me, like raises me. That's when I just
03:01decided to go ahead and identify as non-binary fem because I was just like, I can do whatever I want
03:06in this world and nobody can stop me because I don't like what I see over there. I don't like what I see
03:11over here. So why would I do it? Why would I just follow in someone's footsteps just because they
03:16said that this is the tea? No.
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