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Fashion by Prajje, Style by Grandma
Paysha Stockton Rhone / Boston Globe
May 09, 2008
BOSTON, MA – Since he was young, his grandmother’s style has inspired him. The pencil skirt and Chanel-like jacket. Stiletto heels. A hat, long gloves, clutch purse. And pearls “the size of mangoes,” said Prajje Jean-Baptiste, laughing. She was just going down the street to church in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. No matter.
“She looked so beautiful that day,” he remembered. “And I was in my little blue suit and white shirt. She said, ‘It don’t matter how hard times are, you always have to leave your house looking presentable.’ To leave your home looking bad is a crime!”
His grandmother, now 85, and adoptive mother still reprimand him if – God forbid – the 24-year-old fashion designer visits in sweats, tired from long days making beautiful dresses at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he is a graduating senior. “It’s still a crime,” he said. “They ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ “
As a child, Jean-Baptiste did not aspire to this profession. “Growing up in Haiti, I never heard of a fashion designer,” he admitted. “It’s called tailor, and no family wants their child to do that!” But he loved the church ensembles. And he loved making doll clothes.
“Pleated skirts, hand-sewn,” he remembered. Even then, he specialized in dramatic dresses for special events. “There was always a wedding, always a First Communion for the dolls.”
Tough Beginnings for Designer
But it was a tough childhood. Jean-Baptiste’s biological mother died when he was a toddler and his father moved to America, leaving him to pass between his grandmother and other family and friends until he came to Cambridge at age 13. Adopted by a close friend of his father’s, he found his calling in a fashion design class for high school students at Mass. Art. There, he met Boston designer Andrea Alexander and became her assistant, helping with everything from sewing to organizing shows, he said.
He produced his first solo show as a high school sophomore. And his phone began to ring with requests for gowns, show appearances, even wedding planning. “It was taking me by surprise,” he said. After a summer at the Rhode Island School of Design, he came back to Mass. Art and eventually started his own company, Prajje Couture.
Recently, he outfitted Sara Underwood, the former WBZ anchor, in a Marie Antoinette-style white strapless gown for a fund-raiser. “He was a perfectionist,” Underwood said. “He wanted to make sure the gown fit me perfectly. He took care of my hair and my makeup and he wanted to make sure each curl on my head had the right bounce.
“I’ve never met anyone who cared so much about making me look fabulous,” she confessed. “I felt like a princess because of Prajje.”
