Since the release of Beyoncé’s new visual album, Black is King, fashion designer Marine Serre‘s crescent moon print has achieved a new level of popularity.
According to Lyst, a fashion search engine, queries for “Marine Serre crescent moon print” rose 426 percent following Black is King. Searches for Serre herself also rose by 51 percent.
Serre’s design takes centre stage in Beyoncé’s music video “ALREADY,” featuring Ghanaian singer Shatta Wale and musical trio Major Lazer. “Marine Serre was kind enough to make us custom catsuits with matching gloves in her signature moon print for Beyoncé and her dancers,” wrote Black Is King stylist Zerina Akers to Vogue in an email. “At the time the brand had not yet commercialized the brown colorway. I wanted a second skin, a brown skin—brown bodies and an even playing field where Beyoncé wears the same thing as her dancers and [they] are unified.”
The crescent moon holds deep symbolism. In an interview, Serre told Dazed: “The moon for us is like an icon, an emblem, an image, a representation, a flag, a language, a metaphor, an object of what we believe in: crossing boundaries, hybridity, and freedom.… It is one of the oldest symbols that ever existed, present everywhere, and that keeps evolving with us…. It is never stable and timeless at the same time.”
Beyoncé is not the only celebrity fan of the fashion designer. Dua Lipa wears Marine Serre in promos for her studio album Future Nostalgia, and Rosalía wore the full crescent moon catsuit at New York Fashion Week in February. Recently, K-pop girl group Blackpink sported purple crescents for Inkigayo, a South Korean music show.
Serre is also well known for being a staunch environmentalist. From transforming bed sheets and old T-shirts into elegant dresses to creating jewellery from seashells and crushed soda cans, she uses her designs to communicate beliefs about sustainability and fashion’s role in society.
