The art of style - Inside the fashion world of stylist Kadeem Rodgers

A crisp, autumnal afternoon finds Kadeem Rodgers in a New York state of mind.

The priority on the ascendant Jamaican stylist’s agenda today is a high-fashion exploration of the city’s boroughs.

After two subway transfers from Manhattan, he’s smack dab at the Brooklyn Museum to take in acclaimed Dutch haute couturier Iris Van Herpen’s exhibition.

As he strolls meditatively through the museum’s Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, which houses the 140-piece installation subtitled ‘Sculpting The Senses’, Rodgers, an on-call personal shopper for track legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and stylist for reggae star Sevana, stops to ruminate on the finer details of a Van Herpen creation he immediately recognises.

The crimson plissé gown on a mannequin before him was made for A-list actress Anne Hathaway’s pop star character for the psychological drama, Mother Mary, which was released in April.

“I appreciate Iris’s mind and value the production end of fashion design,” the stylist muses, as he leans in to fully absorb the fabric’s structural cut.

He’s impressed, of course, with the craftsmanship of the celebrated couturier’s work as he gingerly moves onto the next installation.

“The Capricorn in me is keen on the blueprint of things. The finished product is great, but seeing how it sprouted from a seed of thought into fabrics, movement, and dedication to visual design is absolutely incredible to see in person,” the Sagittarius notes of the exhibition.

Rodgers’ abiding appreciation for visual art did not solely rest with his Van Herpen Brooklyn Museum date.

The creative made time on his Big Apple schedule a week earlier for the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) exhibition ‘Architects of Liberation: Modernism in West Africa’.

“It was an illuminating journey. The evolution of architecture on the continent is gorg and testament to black excellence,” he surmised of the MoMA exhibition of drawings, models and archival images that span Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon.

Style is Rodgers’ bread and butter.

It has earned him a growing clientele and a body of work in fashion editorials in global imprints. Dazed, The Face, System Magazine and MARFA have all featured his sharp wardrobe styling in their pages.

In New York, he has earned his stripes as a style assistant to fashion editor and stylist Marika-Ella Ames on Diotima’s ready-to-wear presentations at New York Fashion Week.

Rodgers has been on Team Ames for overseas-generated photoshoots too, lensed here on the island.

Back in July, he was part of her Gotham crew styling the tour visuals for rap megastar Jay-Z’s sold-out, three-night run at Yankee Stadium celebrating the 30th anniversary of his landmark album, Reasonable Doubt.

“I love that all of the pieces Kadeem styles with feel like they have a story. Kadeem has a great eye for finding special and unique things,” Ames raves.

In-demand production manager Carleene Samuels is among The Rock’s movers and shakers who sing Rodgers’ praises as well.

Having called on him on several occasions to do personal shopping for her Grammy Award-winning singer client Koffee, Samuels thinks back on their initial encounter.

“I was impressed the first time I met Kadeem. Photographer Luca Khouri introduced him to me as the stylist for a RIMOWA campaign we were shooting, peak pandemic in 2020,” Samuels says of recruiting Rodgers on the shoot team for the German luxury luggage brand.

“It was our first meeting, first project, and you can imagine the challenges and barriers navigating the pandemic. We were shooting resortwear and I was impressed with his pull. There were obstacles everywhere, from logistics to pieces available from local designers, but he pulled through with some quirky, unexpected pieces. At times, I looked at him puzzled, wondering how he’d pull it off, but he made it work,” lauds Samuels.

Now in full bloom as a stylist, it was not the career Rodgers envisioned as a full-fledged career back in York Castle High School.

“The interest in fashion was not dominant then,” he discloses, following his Brooklyn Museum outing over cappuccino sips at the Little Zelda coffee shop in Crown Heights for a Sunday Lifestyle sit-down.

“In the tenth grade, I found myself needing to make a decision about a professional path. I decided on law based on the subjects that I was excelling at. English literature and language, history, social studies, human and social biology and religious education.”

A then-adolescent Rodgers had spent three years at Kingston College before relocating from Kingston to Ocho Rios to live with his farmer-turned-car salesman father, Dave Rodgers.

He would shuttle between the north coast town and Cockburn Gardens in the capital city, co-parented by his pharmacy technician mother, Angela Secard.

After leaving high school at 16, he pursued pre-university studies for a year, followed by a pre-law diploma at The University of the West Indies, Mona.

Angling towards law school, he enrolled at the Caribbean Legal Institute at 19 for a degree programme.

While he earnestly attempted to digest legal books, in between he was glued to E!’s Fashion Police, Style Network’s Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane and a host of VH1’s reality show programming on television.

“By the end of the second year, after we sat the exams at Marescaux Road, I felt I was wasting my time when I got my results back. They weren’t awful; they were just good enough and I felt like I needed to be excelling, so I decided I wasn’t going to do this anymore,” he recounts.

His choice was not music to his parents’ ears.

“I told my father and I don’t think he’s ever recovered from that,” the younger Rodgers shares.

Repositioning his life arc, he dipped his toes into media. It culminated with his stint as a lifestyle reporter at the now-defunct LOOP.

“Styling was still on the back burner, but media was a way of making sustainable income. I did it solely for the income initially, but months after and because of the nature of the job, I was asked to produce shoots and editorials and I liked it. People loved it and I thought it made sense. I thought maybe I could have a career out of this and that’s where it started,” he reveals.

Those early days of his now decade-plus stylist life saw Rodgers working with Kerry-Ann Clarke at her retail outlet KerryManWomanHome.

“I was styling the store, like merchandising and also styling editorials that she would publish in her newsletter. I was her personal stylist briefly. She was actually my first personal styling client,” he fondly recalls.

Shortly thereafter, Rodgers’ peer, Jordan Anderson, now a fashion journalist based in Milan, introduced him to photographer Amber Pinkerton.

The photographer and stylist went on to form a years-long creative partnership after collaborating on a fashion editorial in 2018 “about the domestication of the Jamaican man”.

“It was my first internationally published work ever and the ‘a-ha moment’ that made me think this is worthwhile. I wasn’t paid and yet I didn’t care,” Rodgers remembers.

He treasures the synergistic bond built with Pinkerton.

“That was the start of Amber’s career and the start of mine. We moved on to do so much work together. With Amber, I learned to be patient and think on my feet more. I honed my skills in becoming a producer because it was just the two of us and I feel like she being the photographer, she needs a clear mind. She was also funding a lot of the projects until I was able to support in that way, so I wanted to take some of the pressure off her,” he divulges.

Pinkerton tells Sunday Lifestyle that their working relationship “has evolved beautifully and organically. I would share my creative goals and vision with him — sometimes sketching [potential] photographs, other times letting things unfold intuitively. I’ve always welcomed his own eye through the clothing and materials he felt were right for the story. That’s the beauty of allowing collaboration to flow. [But] the real beauty is the familiarity and trust you build — the art of understanding how your collaborator thinks. That’s what creates a true partnership. I know I can trust him creatively.”

Also entrusted with Rodgers’ fashion smarts is his personal shopping client, sprint legend Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

He first met ‘The Pocket Rocket’ in 2023 when Rodgers was asked by Pinkerton to style her for a cover editorial feature for the international sports and culture magazine CircleZeroEight.

“I remember I was here in New York and I was assisting at Diotima when Amber called me for it. I blindly said, ‘Of course, yes!’”

Three years later, he admits, “I was excited because it was Shelly, but I was nervous as hell because, at the time, she would have been the most known subject I would have worked with.”

Rodgers recounted that he and Pinkerton agreed on how they wanted their star model presented to the camera.

“We wanted to soften her up a bit; that was part of the goal because she is an athlete. That was the brief and then I started working on the clothes based on what was presented for that international fashion season,” he remembers.

Fresh-from-the-runway pieces from Gucci, Ferragamo, Diotima and Erdem were among the shortlisted selections.

“We clicked on that CircleZeroEight editorial. It just worked,” he said of the easy dynamic that he and Shelly share.

“We are a lot alike. We both grew up in the ghetto. She’s a Capricorn and December-born. It’s my birth month and I’m a Sag on the cusp of Capricorn. A lot of our personality traits are similar. Shelly is fast on the track but deeply deliberate and slower in making decisions, which is something I am as well. No rushed final decisions,” Rodgers explains.

Name-checking Trinidadian creative consultant Amanda Murray, the late American socialite Edith Bouvier Beale and Jamaican fashion icon Grace Jones as his top-three style icons, Rodgers breaks down what style embodies for him.

“Style is like air to me, a wisp here, a lingering there. It’s the ability to take up space and be present while also being self-aware. Style is never trying to prove a point but always on point,” he surmises.

Always seeking inspiration, he has pencilled in a Friday visit to the Guggenheim Museum to see American photographic conceptual artist Taryn Simon’s buzzy ‘Father Country I Do Love You’ exhibition.

There’s a spark of motivation to be found even on art gallery walls for this stylist, after all.

lifestyle@gleanerjm.com