A$AP Rocky’s ‘American Sabotage,’ Carrie Mae Weems, and the Meaning of Black Fashion and Art

In June, rapper A$AP Rocky took the fashion world by storm in a collaboration with Carrie Mae Weems for the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta. In addition to creating a Father's Day ad titled “Portraits of Fatherhood” with his two sons RZA and Riot, A$AP Rocky announced that he would become an official brand ambassador for the fashion label.

The photoshoot and accompanying short film were made in a collaboration with Weems, a legendary Black photographer known for her “Kitchen Table Series.” Five days after the ad’s release, A$AP Rocky debuted a clothing collection for his creative agency, AWGE, in a show titled “American Sabotage” at Paris Fashion Week.

The inspiration for this ad — Carrie Mae Weems’s “Kitchen Table Series” — is a staple in the Black art world. A collection of 20 photographs and 14 text panels, the series was produced in her own home and follows the story of how Weems, representing Black women at the time, explored race and gender within the domestic space. Weems’s groundbreaking collection beautifully conveys a story about what it meant to be a Black woman in America.

There is no doubt that A$AP Rocky’s ad and short film, which portray a story of him embracing fatherhood, are similarly beautiful. However, beauty is not where the problem lies; the commodification of art — especially Black art — for the sake of corporate entities is. The logo in the middle of the photograph instrumentalizes what once was a popular image so the brand can advertise its clothes, distracting from the photograph’s assertion of the nuances of Black womanhood. In many ways, something that could have served as an art piece with political and cultural meaning has been reduced to a fashion advertisement for a corporate entity.

A$AP Rocky’s replication and reinterpretation of the “Kitchen Table Series” for Bottega Veneta doesn’t evoke the groundbreaking message he had hoped. Instead, the ad is ultimately in service of Bottega Veneta, more appropriation than art that honors Carrie Mae Weems’s legacy or A$AP Rocky’s desire to reclaim or highlight “Black Fatherhood.”

The ad’s beautiful artistry becomes entangled with the corporatization and commodification of Black art. A collaboration with a fashion brand like Wales Bonner, Martine Rose, or Thebe Magugu — all of which are Black designer brands that deliberately place value and emphasis on appreciating Black art — would have better served this concept.

A lack of political and artistic development also permeated A$AP Rocky’s show, “American Sabotage,” at the Hôtel de Maisons in Paris on June 21. The show’s theme was “GRIM,” or “ghetto expressionism,” which A$AP Rocky defined as a combination of both “German Expressionism and ghetto futurism,” according to GQ.

In the show, A$AP Rocky tackled issues like mass incarceration, immigration, and poverty without taking a specific political stance. Subsequently, his message was all flash and no substance. The designs portrayed a combination of vapid political statements and repetitive clothes reminiscent of late 1990s and early 2000s Maison Martin Margiela and the Raf Simons Fall/Winter 2001 collection titled “Riot! Riot! Riot!” — especially with his use of deconstructed and distressed clothes, baggy looks, and printed political statements.

The show started off with a model walking out in a suit, tie, and hat draped with an American flag — following the theme of two of his album covers, which also included imagery of the American flag. This design was followed with another suit studded with pins that parodied old American war pins, like an American Red Cross pin with “American Sabotage” stamped on it.

The show then transitioned to streetwear-style clothing designs with large screen-printed shirts, bomber jackets, hoodies, balaclavas, oversized t-shirts, and sagging jeans, some of which featured bulletproof vests. Some items stated “American Sabotage,” “Political Satire,” and “Don’t Be Dumb.” Despite these designs, the show lacked a clear political telos.

One of the debuted pieces even had “NYPD” printed on it. The shirt’s political statement comes across as tone deaf, as the NYPD brutally swept college campuses in New York after encampments were set up just a couple of months before the show. What does placing “NYPD” as a symbol on clothing really do in the context of “American Sabotage”?

Until this show, A$AP Rocky had typically been someone who stayed out of politics. In a 2015 interview feature with Time Out, he had said, “I did not sign up to be no political activist.”

“I’m in the studio, I’m in fashion houses, I’m in these bitches’ drawers. I’m not doing anything outside of that. That’s my life,” he said.

A$AP Rocky has long been a staple in high fashion culture, but his new ventures with Bottega Veneta and AWGE demonstrate that not every celebrity needs a fashion brand to make political statements. The overall meaning of “American Sabotage” and “Political Satire” is missing in A$AP Rocky’s designs, as he tells us “Don’t Be Dumb” without any specific political context.

A$AP Rocky’s new shift into making political statements would work if they had substance, but considering his past comments on politics and recent design choices, it seems that the meaning and politics of Black art and fashion has gotten lost in the weeds.

—Staff writer Christian A. Gines can be reached at christian.gines@thecrimson.com.