Amid the gray, rainy city of London, fashion student and Memphis native Kris Keys found herself in an indescribable pain. A gallbladder attack, the doctors told her, triggered by hereditary elliptocytosis — a rare blood disorder that Keys was diagnosed with as a baby.
Searching for a way to heal, Keys turned to research. She contacted St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she was treated as a child, and got a hold of slides of her blood cells and the blood tests doctors performed on Keys’ older relatives.
Soon, those organic, elliptical blood cells that Keys observed spread across her illustrations as she replicated the deep reds and purples with watercolors. It was cathartic to see her disorder on paper and later on fabric in her 2019 womenswear collection, “Hematology.” “Using my pain as an artist was my way to heal,” she says. “One thing that shifted my mindset of having an illness was pushing it into an art space.”
After returning to Memphis and releasing “Hematology,” Keys says, she started hearing from people around the world who shared the blood disorder, and she knew she hadn’t finished her research. The disorder is genetic, affects one in every 3,000 to 5,000 people in the U.S., and mostly affects people of African-American and Mediterranean descent. “I wondered, how can this be resolved?” Keys says. “How can we avoid continuing this pattern?” She wanted to find the genesis of her disorder, so she started tracing her lineage and listening to her older relatives’ stories.
“I still haven’t found the origins of the disorder,” she says, but the stories she did find have offered her insights into her identity. “There’re so many reasons why we act the way we act. A lot times it comes from our ancestry. There’re these streams of things that lead back to slavery. I never realized how much slavery affected DNA. I started seeing patterns in my relationships, my friendships that I really couldn’t get a grasp on until I started to sit down and think about where these patterns are coming from. Like, oh, this is coming from my grandfather or my great-grandfather.
“Sometimes,” Keys continues, “the patterns help us to be stronger, but sometimes they work against our purpose.” Her most recent collection, “Genealogy,” explores this connection between ancestral patterns and the opportunity for healing. Unlike the mysterious and dark violets and reds of her first collection, this collection features flowers in dusty yellows and earthy tones, light colors that reflect the enlightenment Keys has found in uncovering her family’s stories.
“Flowers have these healing properties,” Keys says of the floral motif. “I thought, what natural resources do I have around me, and what did my ancestors have?” During her travels, Keys noticed wildflowers, daffodils, and elderberry and magnolia flowers growing around her relatives’ homes, and the inspiration took root and blossomed with the help of her choice medium of watercolors.
“Watercolors are one of the only mediums of painting that you have to completely surrender,” says Keys. “You can’t control where it goes. You put the paint down, and it kinda flows where it wants to even if you have an idea of where you want it to go. I relate that to life. You can have an idea of what you want your life to be, but you have to surrender to your story and make beauty out of what you have.” She adds, “To really live a life that’s magical and purposeful and that’s gonna make an impact, we have to learn where we’ve been and how we got there.”
Keys unveiled “Genealogy” with a virtual exhibition on September 7th. The exhibition, still accessible on her website, features watercolor paintings, accompanied by videos that explain the story behind each piece. Within a year or so, these paintings will be turned into a patterned fabric for womenswear that emphasizes comfort and style for the traveling woman.
To register for the exhibition and for more information, visit bykriskeys.com or @bykriskeys on Instagram.
