As one of the leaders of the London fashion scene, it’s fitting that Kai-Isaiah Jamal’s ES magazine cover shoot is taking place at a West London location house called “The White House”.
Having been called “the voice of their generation” by the late Louis Vuitton creative director Virgil Abloh (and immortalised in a supersize statute in the brand’s Miami shopfront), made history as the first trans non-binary model to be nominated for Model of the Year at last year’s British Fashion Awards, and served as the Institute of Contemporary Art’s first-ever poet in residence in 2020 - Jamal just exudes a presidential aura. But unlike many of the politicians representing us today, Jamal actually stands for something.
Born and bred in South London, their meteoric rise has been propelled by vision for a better future. “I really hope we get to a point where gender fluidity, androgyny, transness doesn’t have to be something that appeases what people’s premeditated thoughts are,” they tell me over FaceTime days after the shoot. “There’s no wrong or right answer. There’s no checklist. None of that exists, it should just be this person identifies this way and they dress this way and that’s it.”
It’s why Jamal enjoys working with Daniel Lee at Burberry, who Jamal credits for “actually seeing me in the way that I was talking about. I felt like he really understood that I don’t want to do you as a gimmicky version of a woman. I want you to also be able to exist as this version of a modern day woman, even if I don’t identify as one,” they explain. “I step into these garments which, don’t get me wrong, dresses and skirts can sometimes be huge triggers, but I never feel uncomfortable. And I also know that if I do feel uncomfortable I can vocalise that at any moment.”
We’re speaking days before the Burberry show where Jamal will be walking once again - but their relationship runs far deeper, having collaborated on poems, campaigns and covers. “When we shot the pre-fall campaign last month I said to Daniel, ‘Wow you make clothes for women in a way that is not like you hate women.’ Because I think there’s a lot of male designers in the industry who make clothes for their idea of what they think women want to wear or want to look like, and I’m just like, ‘You are so out of touch with what anybody wants to look like.’”
