WHEN THE RIVER MUMMA CAME TO NEW YORK

By Karen Neita

Fashion Illustration by Yuko Katakawa (Art Studio Yuko) @pontariver

There are some things you do not design. You listen for them.

For Story & Myth, mythology is not decoration. It is a language of memory, place and ancestral imagination, and at New York Fashion Week, that language travelled from Jamaica to Manhattan in a collaboration with Rêve Jewellery for its SS27 collection, Reign of the Earth.

(Thursday, September 10, 2026)

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At the centre of the collaboration was the River Mumma,

Jamaica’s mysterious freshwater spirit, imagined in Story & Myth’s distinctive vocabulary of natural materials, folklore and adornment. 

Her presence appeared in the Blessing Bead headwear, where Job’s Tears seeds became more than embellishment; they carried the weight of an old Jamaican story.

Punctuated fragments and sun-bleached elements, the pieces channel Jamaican folklore. 

It is said that Maroon warriors originally used these exact seeds to mark safe havens during times of conflict, a history guarded by the mythical River Mumma mermaid.

There is something particularly compelling about seeing these symbols removed from their familiar landscape and placed within the theatre of New York fashion. 

The Job’s Tears, with their pale, weathered beauty, seemed to hold the memory of rivers, forests and hidden places, while the River Mumma remained elusive beneath the glamour of the runway.

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That tension is where Story & Myth thrives. The work does not explain the mythology so much as invite you into it.

Rêve brought the structure and jewellery architecture of Reign of the Earth, while Story & Myth introduced another layer of meaning: the spirit of Jamaica, translated through objects that feel gathered rather than manufactured, as though they have surfaced from some forgotten shoreline.

The collaboration became a meeting of two sensibilities. One shaped and structured… The other summoned the story around it.

And somewhere between the copper, brass, natural elements and Job’s Tears, the River Mumma emerged, not as a literal character, but as a presence. Beautiful. Watchful. 

Just beyond reach.

Story & Myth understood that she did not need to be explained.

She only needed to be remembered.