The EMLINE Ball doesn’t ask you to leave New Orleans at the door. It asks you to bring every inch of it with you and dress accordingly. At the center is EMLINE, the local fashion brand seen across the city and, on this night, worn across the room. Founded in 2017 by James Mayes in the heart of New Orleans, the brand was built on a simple but radical idea: that luxury and urban culture are not opposites. That you can move through the world in something beautifully crafted, deeply rooted, and entirely your own. More than a label, EMLINE has become a cultural marker, the style language of New Orleans itself, rooted in a sense of “for us, by us,” where each piece is designed to make the person wearing it feel the full weight of their own presence.
Founded alongside Ball co-founder and producer Kristin Meyers of Like Minds Dine Productions, the weekend affair has grown into one of the city’s signature Mardi Gras moments: part cultural celebration, part runway, part homecoming. Every guest understood the assignment, arriving with intention and a signature story stitched into every adornment. Here, presence holds power. But style tells the story.
“Our style in New Orleans is very unique because it describes us as people,” said attendee Thomas Harris, his custom suit designed by local designer Detrell Wright of Tvche — a living proof of the point. “We work with what we have, and we know how to recycle, repurpose, and present it in multiple different ways.”
Few looks in the room made that point more quietly, or more powerfully, than Tyron Lagarde’s. His deep purple double-breasted pinstripe suit was sharp from the front, tailored and deliberate. But the story was on the back: “Soul Child” embroidered in gold script, and beneath it, his cousin’s street name.
“I wear it in his honor,” Lagarde said. When asked to describe the Ball to someone who’d never been, his answer was immediate: “Black excellence in all colors, shapes, sizes. If you haven’t been, you’re just missing out.”
Where the men arrived in sharp tailoring and revivalist suiting, a mood echoed in recent collections from Sergio Hudson and Kai Collective, Jasmine Mayes took the conversation somewhere else entirely. EMLINE’s Women’s Creative Director came up with a custom design that turned transformation itself into a silhouette, familiar fabrics made unrecognizable.
“I like being different and taking things and turning them into gowns,” said Jasmine Mayes, EMLINE’s Women’s Creative Director, who arrived in exactly that — a structured silhouette built from reimagined materials, familiar fabrics made unrecognizable. “Last year, I transformed denim into a gown, and this year I wanted to go even bigger. I’m part of the brand, and it means a lot to me. So why not?”Her look was the brand’s ethos made wearable: take what exists, reimagine it, make it undeniable. It was also a quiet thesis statement for the entire room.
The theme “For the Lovers” transformed the Contemporary Arts Center into a Valentine’s-inspired dreamscape, velvet draping, rose petals, portrait installations, a backdrop designed to be worn as much as admired. The deep reds and soft golds pulled the room’s fashion into sharper focus, the kind of intentional pairing that made every look feel more considered, every silhouette more deliberate.
Local DJs moved seamlessly from bounce to smooth R&B, keeping the dance floor full from the first set to the last. The music mattered to the fashion too — in New Orleans, you don’t just dress for how you’ll look standing still. You dress for how you’ll move. Every train, every structured shoulder, every cinched waist was chosen with the dance floor in mind.
The evening also paid tribute to the enduring legacy of Chef Leah Chase of Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in Treme — a reminder that in New Orleans, style has never been limited to what you wear. Chase helped define Creole cuisine as a cornerstone of American culture, creating a gathering place that welcomed Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, and President Barack Obama. She also served as the inspiration for Disney’s Princess Tiana. Her legacy lives in the city’s understanding of presentation, of hospitality as its own kind of dressing up — the belief that how you set a table, how you receive a guest, how you show up is always, in some way, a style statement.
That spirit of honoring those who shaped the culture ran through the entire evening. The “For the City” Awards recognized Councilman Oliver Thomas, bounce pioneer DJ Jubilee, and local legend 5th Ward Weebie, each a different thread in the city’s cultural fabric, and each, on this night, dressed for the occasion. Community Star Awards went to Derrick Tabb of The Roots of Music and Senais Edwards of NOLAKEYS, both recognized for the work they pour back into the next generation.
The evening ultimately served as a reminder that within our culture, fashion is never just fashion. It is memory, it is music, it is the particular way a city insists on celebrating itself — especially when the world isn’t watching. As gowns swept across the floor, brass met bass, and conversations lingered well past the final song, the EMLINE Ball felt less like a single night and more like a continuation of something much older. Here, getting dressed is an act of culture. And culture, in New Orleans, has always known how to wear itself well.
