Meet Wayne Scully | Creative Director & Co-CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Wayne Scully and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Wayne, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
When starting Puissance New York, my partner Amadou Kouyate and I sought to heed color in blackness, to embrace the intra-racial diversity yielded by our exodus and begot by our return. I wanted to develop the abstract bridge between Afrikan diasporic history and contemporary clothing. Though the world has come to embrace a maligned and dubious definition of blackness, one afield from nuance, I created Puissance New York to staunchly reject a blackness that lowly exists in a fuzzy haze defined by affinity towards the meaningless and instead, seeks to reinvigorate the revolutionary fire that burns rife in our hearts while depicting the inherent beauty of our cultures. I wanted to reinstate blackness as a global phenomenon that recognizes our strength lies in our ability to acknowledge our individuality all the while being united by our sameness. In all, Puissance New York came from a desire to bring the Pan-Afrikan identity to the forefront of clothing and media, illustrating the complexities of global Afrikan cultures and the infinite beauty in our nuanced history to piece together an overarching Pan-Afrikan story.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My artwork exists at the intersection between old and new. Puissance artistically depicts the beauty in a world marred by chaos and in a constant desire for still peace through an afro-centric lens. We effortlessly string along the metaphorical chords of the electric bass with the quick strike of the cymbals of Reggae music and the soft ping of a Trinidadian steel pan to unveil the splendor of our cultures and unify the stories of all people of the Afrikan diaspora. For example, our recent Haitian Revolution design explored the vicious and unforgiving realities that lie beneath a revolutionary fervor. A cruel reality marked by a yearning for a truth but ravaged by material consequence. As the child of a Bajan woman and a Jamaican man, I believe my artistic body represents the pursuit towards an openly diverse Afrikan society that sees the inherent genius within all cultures and histories within the Afrikan diaspora. My partner, Amadou Kouyate, and I began Puissance New York to build a world free from the rigid restraints of Eurocentricity and unfettered by the hackneyed and banal perspective the world has built around blackness. No longer do we contrive our history solely to one action, rather, we conjoin these actions to breed one overarching revolutionary spirit that burns rife in the hearts of not only black people, but anyone with a desire to spark effective change in the world. As Amadou and I scurried along the streets of Harlem, embracing every chunk of culture it had to offer, we tirelessly searched for the right materials to instill an expectation of sustainability for Puissance New York. We began with vinyl, wedding each individual panel and cropping each Gildan hoodie by hand for our first clothing piece, “The Good Die Young”. Inspired by 2Pac’s song of the same name, “The Good Die Young” was not merely a tribute to the late multifaceted genius but a quasi-metaphysical perspective intertwined with the dreadful consequences that come with living an ethical lifestyle. Growing to trust the world, you may succumb to its ills, dying in the face of altruism. Though we are often good people, we may fall to the lowly pull of a trigger. Therefore, what does it truly mean to be good in a world cajoled by unfairness, why does it reign true that the good often die young. Though not using the best materials, we would still relay a profound and vivid perspective. Soon afterwards, we explored better materials, I created more involved graphic designs and cut and sewn products, and I cultivated Puissance as a crusade against the limited perspective of blackness and reviving Pan-Afrikanism as the dominant perspective in black scholarship. I felt a distinct familiarity in Amadou’s home as he did in mine. Though his family is from Guinea and Guadeloupe and my family is from Jamaica and Barbados, we both shared an imaginative culture rich with the taste of cassava and savory sorrel.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I would say let’s go to Soldier’s Caribbean Restaurant in Brooklyn for breakfast then head to SoHo to experience the material expression of the fashion lexicon and watch in awe the communities of skate, avante-garde, modern, and classic converge in a robust cultural exchange to create anew. We could grab some tacos from Birria LES for lunch. Then, I would head to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem to relish in the history of the Afrikan identity as experienced in the United States. Afterwards, we could head to Sylvia’s for some great soul food. As we walk down the uptown streets, we will observe the shadows as once described by the Jamaican Harlem Renaissance poet, Claude McKay; but now, the Guineans, Senegalese, Nigerians, Malians, and a privy of other Afrikan countrymen cast a light on the shadows that loom in the darkness. The intersection of Harlem’s jazz and Afrobeat will now beat the drum of Harlem culture.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Firstly, I would like to give a genuine shoutout to all the creatives that inspire me to push forward and reach for the glass baton; namely, the fashion houses, SB Studios, Two Official NYC, Last of A Dying Breed, KampNine, Fast Life No Fear, Basement Boy ATL, and For Life NYC. Secondly, I would like to shout out the musical creatives from my group Supreme Predators, FXLSE, Zorey, Plus, Blue, and Anthony Harris. Thirdly, I would like to give a shoutout to my family for gifting me my Jamaican and Bajan heritage, which inspire my dedication to unveiling hidden histories of Afro-West Indian people and other communities of the Afrikan diaspora. Lastly, I would like to shoutout to all Afrocentric literature; specifically, Pan Africanism: A History by Hakim Adi and the Autobiography of Malcolm X as told by Alex Haley, and the Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey.

Website: puissancenewyork.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puissanceny/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayne-scully-jr-173aab230?trk=people-guest_people_search-card

Image Credits
Photo Credits: @tyxge // Tyler Aboagye @poooduhh