| Presenting Jae Jarrell |
friends who knew here well, back in the day, can readily glean from the deep recesses of memory. With bolts of fabric stacked on huge tables in the WJ Studio and gallery, Jae could be seen in full steam, religiously mass producing garments that would later be sold in shops in the Woodlawn neighborhood and at Tadpole Togs, the children's specialty shop that she opened on East 71st Street. The big cutting table would always be full of sleeves, collars, and other parts of garments that had been cut out and waiting for assembly. Nearby was the young assistant from the neighborhood who was undergoing training in garment construction. For a designer like Jae, staking out new ground while trying to stay above the fray with respect to fads, and surviving as a fashion artist in a highly competitive, capricious field seemed like a daunting challenge. She had been well into her career for years before working to get AFRICOBRA off the ground, having catered to a niche market of clients not satisfied with off the rack design, but who instead wanted clothing that had a timeless, classical look. Whether it was designing clothing and selling them by mail order, and later making and selling her cheesecakes and handmade toys, the consummate entrepreneur, Jae Jarrell has the enduring creative spirit that propelled her to shout a hearty “count me in" when she cast her lot with the four other founders of the AFRICOBRA. In the formative days of the AFRICOBRA when we looked around at the moods, styles, atitudes, and revolutionary sentiments expressed by many participants in that politically and culturally transformational period, Jae readily tapped into the reservoir of ideas flowing throughout the community and brought them to bear on the garments that she created. Her Urban Suit, for example, captured the random flashes of spray painted art and poetry on brick and mortar that served as pallets for inner city guerilla artists. Her woman’s tweed ensemble “Revolutionary Suit, appliqued with a faux bandolier, or “bullet belt,” made of a strip of suede leather with colorfully painted “coolade” wooden bullets, subtly simulated the then universal symbol of cultural revolution, yet it had the timelessness which she has always felt was an important quality in her work. Upon seeing the garment at the AFRICOBRA pavilion in PUSH's Black Expo in 1970, the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone, excitedly exclaimed “I’ve been looking for something like that.” Shortly after the suit premiered at the Studio Museum in Harlem "bullet Belts became a fad of sorts as a number of women used them as a fashion accessory. |
| Jae models " Brothers Surrounding Sis " Two Piece Suit in Cabretta Suede Hand Painted by Jae in Acrylic 1970 for Africobra I |