“I’m the Flag Boy. I love the position. I embrace it a lot. It is just like a whole character. It’s a spirit that takes over you on Mardi Gras Day.”
Marwan Pleasant was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he grew up masking as a Mardi Gras Indian in the Golden Eagles tribe. Pleasant learned to bead and embroider from his grandfather, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, creating elaborate outfits for Mardi Gras each year. And he has used those skills to create his own successful fashion brand, Marlence. Natalie Chanin and Olivia Ware Terenzio spoke with Pleasant while he was in Paris, learning new skills to bring back to New Orleans. This conversation has been condensed and edited for publication.
OLIVIA WARE TERENZIO: Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up.
MARWAN PLEASANT: I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. New Orleans is separated by seventeen wards, and I grew up in the 13th Ward, located uptown. The streets are Valence and Magnolia. I’ve been masking [as a] Mardi Gras Indian since birth, since the age of one, under the tutelage of my grandfather, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, who brought me into the culture, taught me everything I know. And when I was younger, he used to make all of my suits and all of my cousins’ and sisters’.
OT: May I ask the name of your tribe?
MP: My tribe is the Golden Eagles, by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux.
OT: Do you have any special memories of your grandfather? It sounds like he is a really cool person.
MP: When we was young during Hurricane Katrina, the big hurricane we had, we were sitting at the table, we was just all around him. He was sewing and he was telling us, “You see how I’m sitting there sewing? This is how you do it. You just do it, and you don’t stop. And one day y’all going to be sewing your own suits and you just got to keep doing it.” And here I am today, just still doing it.
OT: Did he teach you?
MP: My cousin, he’s actually older than me, so he was sewing before me. He came by my house one night and had some beads and some canvas, and he was sewing. One night he went to sleep, and I took some of the beads and canvas and started just beading. I was so excited I went to my grandfather’s house the next morning and showed him what I did, and then he corrected me. From there he put the beads in my hand, put the stones in my hand, and said, do this.
OT: Do you know who taught your grandfather those skills?
MP: I’m not familiar, but I know his dad used to mask when he was younger. He’s been doing it since he was seventeen years old, and he’s eighty-three now. And the beading, it’s not something you can go to school and learn, it has to be passed down through generation and generation.
OT: For someone who has never learned about it, how would you describe the Black masking tradition?
MP: On the streets you have about thirty to forty different tribes. And in those different tribes you have different positions. There’s a Spy Boy, Flag Boy, Wild Man, the Big Chief, and Queens. I’m the Flag Boy. I love the position. I embrace it a lot—it is just like a whole character. It’s a spirit that takes over you on Mardi Gras Day. Like if you would see me on a regular day, you’d be like, “Oh, he is so nice and sweet and quiet.” But if you see me on the street on Mardi Gras Day in my suit, something takes over my body and you will hear it all. Basically, from me sitting here sewing my suit all day and spending so much time with it, I practice what I’ll say to other guys, and it comes all out on Mardi Gras. It’s an amazing feeling.
OT: What are some of the things you might say?
MP: Some things I might say: “You didn’t sew enough, you need to go do your homework.” “I’m the best Flag Boy.” If they have maybe twenty, thirty other Flag Boys in the city, if I’m masking Flag Boy, [there] can only be one Flag Boy. And we have the phrase that we say, “We kill them dead.” We’re not using guns or weapons to kill them. We’re using the needle and thread. So I put so much time and so much detail and everything into my needle and thread to, well, I want to kill someone, really crush them.
When I was in middle school, a lot of people didn’t know I was Indian. Some people knew, but not a lot of people because being an Indian, it’s like we had a bad image on us. A lot of people would hear about the Indians, and they used to be like, “Oh, y’all fight and kill people and stab people and stuff like that. It’s violent.” Back in the days it used to be like that, but we grew out of that. Instead of fighting with fists and actually getting violent, someone—a very Big Chief, Tootie Montana—he actually changed the game and said, “We’re going to fight about, we’re going to see who’s the prettiest. We’re going to put all this work into our suit and battle each other like that.” So that’s where the words come from. You want to be the prettiest—that’s the game now. You want to be pretty. But yeah, a lot of people in middle school, they were scared to be around the Indians, so that’s why I hid it.
NATALIE CHANIN: When did you stop hiding?
MP: I would say maybe eleventh or twelfth grade when I found out it can get me out of trouble in school. Once people found out who my grandfather was, they looked at me a certain way and my grades went from failing grades to higher grades.
OT: Do you mean because he was so well respected?
MP: Yeah. Yeah, that’s when I stopped. And then when I graduated high school and I started doing it more and more—more beading and actually putting the suits together—that’s when I became not shy about it anymore. And even on the streets on Mardi Gras, I used to be really shy. I didn’t say anything. At one point I wasn’t building my own suit, so how [could] I talk trash? But once I started putting all my creativity [in] and spending all those hours on it, that’s when it really came out. And people love it. People love me for it. That’s who I am. That’s who my grandfather is.
One of my friends, they were like, “You know your grandfather, he don’t have nothing to prove to nobody. He don’t have to keep putting on suits every year.” I’m like, “That’s who he is. That’s his life.” He don’t go by his first name. He go by Big Chief Monk Boudreaux. Everybody know him as Big Chief Monk, like Big Chief all around the world.
NC: Tell me how the words come to you as you work on the suits.
MP: The spirit, it hits you any time. Like they say, you can’t cage a bird. You will be sewing and you know you’re in a good spot, or you’ll see something . . . and just stand up and start shouting. And it’s the same on Mardi Gras Day. The spirit just hits you at any time. Any given time.
NC: Have you found any words this year that are an inspiration?
MP: Not yet, because mostly I’m doing the beading. Mostly the words will come out when I start getting my fabric and I actually see the color on the beads. “You knew I was coming.” That’s the only thing I have right now. “You knew I was coming, you knew I was going to look like this.” I try to not to do too much because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. And that’s when it can get violent.
Like last Mardi Gras, I finished my suit. I was running a little bit behind. I finished my suit Mardi Gras morning an hour before we had to meet up. And I had an hour and thirty minutes of sleep, no food on my stomach, put the whole suit on and just started screaming. Words started coming out and all of my aunties and their friends and stuff, they was like, “Oh my God, you said this and you said that. You told that dude this, you told that dude that.” I’m like, “I did?”
OT: It was like an out-of-body experience.
MP: It definitely is. I don’t know how I can do that with no food on my stomach, no sleep and wear a heavy suit. It’s crazy. It comes out.
OT: How much time would you say you spend on your suit each year?
MP: It takes a full year to make a whole suit. That’s for one Mardi Gras—the day after until the next. I cram all of my beading and everything into the last four to five months, just sitting there all the way until Mardi Gras morning. In my tribe, we say your suit is not finished until Mardi Gras morning because there’s always something you can add onto it to make yourself prettier. And the thing is to be pretty—you want to be the prettiest Indian walking in the streets. I started on my suit in September, maybe September 14, and I’ll be working on it all the way until Mardi Gras, and it’s just like eight hours a day, sixteen hours a day, twenty hours a day.
OT: Wow. I love it. What to you makes the prettiest suit? Are there specific details?
MP: Mostly the decoration. When it comes to the decoration, that’s when you kill them. And the detail—I use a smaller bead than everyone else uses. So I get more detail, so I kill them with the detail.
OT: Do you design everything before you start or is there some level of improvisation?
MP: It comes to me as I go. You can’t wait around too long trying to get inspiration. I start my suit the five months before Mardi Gras. So, while everyone is beading in February, March, April, May, I’m traveling, I’m doing things, I’m going outside, getting inspired. I keep things in my head, I don’t write anything down. Sometimes I take pictures, but I never go back to them. I’m just collecting that inspiration, and once I start beading, it starts coming back to me. And what you don’t want to do is have all your beads and procrastinate and just not sew anything.
I just start sewing one thing and then it leads me into the next thing. And that’s pretty interesting because other people, they would draw their whole suit up at one time and I just can’t do it like that. It has to come to me, it’s a feeling inside me. You sew from soul; it is inside you. You just pull it out.
OT: That’s really beautiful. Tell me how growing up with that tradition brought you to a career in craft.
MP: I didn’t even know it was in me, but when I graduated high school, I took a task to make my own prom outfit. I realized the connection between clothes and making my suits. So when I graduated high school, I just took it on fully, putting the beads with the everyday wear.
OT: Do you remember what your prom outfit looked like?
MP: Oh, yeah, of course. I was the best dressed. Yeah, so exactly like how it is on Mardi Gras, that spirit came in me on prom night and I was telling everybody I made it myself. I didn’t need help with stuff like that. I didn’t have to spend that much money.
OT: After prom, then what did you do?
MP: I actually was set on going to college to run track, but just seeing everyone’s reaction to me walking in prom and everyone asking for me to make stuff for them after, I came home, bought me a sewing machine, and started getting to work. Practicing, practicing, practicing. I was doing alterations. I opened up an alterations and custom clothing [business] because I can decorate. Someone would bring me a pair of jeans or something and I would just sit there and decorate.
And another part of my childhood is we always had materials around the house. Our family, we didn’t have that much money, so I would go to school and see other people with things and when I come back home, I can talk more trash. And some of the trash I’m going to be saying is, “You knew I was coming, you knew I was looking like this. I spent six months overseas to look like this.”
NC: Your fashion collection is called Marlence. Where does that name come from?
MP: I knew I wanted something that would stick for a long time. My first name is Marwan and the street I grew up on that I see every day is Valence, so I put them together. And when I came up with it, I was like, one day I want this street to be renamed from Valence to Marlence. I see Marlence sitting up there with the Guccis and the Louis Vuittons, and I want to have a fashion house. That’s the end goal: creating custom, couture looks. I don’t really have dreams of working for another house because I feel like I’m talented enough and have my own inspiration and my own ideas.
OT: What are your favorite things to make right now?
MP: I love jackets. I’ve put so much into my jackets. I was just on the phone with one of my friends, he was like, “You got your jacket idea done yet? You can have a fire jacket every year.” When we was younger, we used to make our suits, and after Mardi Gras, we would take them all apart to reuse the patches. But in 2018 specifically, I made a red suit, red jacket, full of rhinestones, full of beads, and it broke my heart to take it apart. I literally cried because I was like, man, I want to wear this out to a club or something but I can’t because it’s a really high-end jacket and I don’t have nowhere to go with this jacket. So that’s another reason why I started making clothes out of denim and then putting the rhinestones on that and stuff.
NC: You have some of your suits saved that you didn’t take apart, right?
MP: Yeah, now I have five jackets still up, five jackets and three full suits. I saved them, because one day I want to do an exhibition, a few exhibitions, wherever, around the world. Just showcasing how a Flag Boy looks on Mardi Gras. And people don’t really get to see the bead work in person. So this is their chance to see it and read about it and why do we do it.
My grandfather, he’s getting older, and the beading is only passed down through generation and generation and my whole family, all of us can bead. So, I try to inspire the next youth who don’t have that family member who might want to be an Indian. There’s a lot of kids that want to mask as Indian, but they don’t have that family member to give them a start. So, I host beading workshops all over New Orleans. I’m in high schools, I’m in a fashion program in New Orleans, just teaching beading techniques.
NC: I would love to hear about how you came to teaching, what you’re teaching, and what you see as the future of that.
MP: After I graduated high school, I got my first real working job at a Joann craft store. And I was teaching sewing lessons. I was really still learning how to use the sewing machine, but it was basic lessons, just how to sew straight lines, how to make pillows and stuff like that. I left Joann and I started doing private lessons on my own—everybody wanted to know how to use the sewing machine.
And then a few years back I ran into the Material Institute’s fashion program, and they saw what I was doing with the beads, putting it on clothing, and they asked me to do a few workshops. So that’s the ongoing thing I do, I’m a fashion instructor over there. Every Saturday I would do beading workshops. I still teach how to use the sewing machine as well. I teach, inspire, I mentor, I tell people how they can get to where they want to go with the sewing, with the beading.
OT: And you said you found that a lot of young people want to learn the beading techniques.
MP: Most definitely. Because the Indian culture in New Orleans is really strong, but most people don’t know how to get into it. Even older people, they don’t know. They don’t have that family member that’s a masking Indian. Or most people think it’s really expensive. Well, it is expensive, but there’s different ways.
NC: Everything that you’re doing is built on this really rich history. How do you see the future of this, and what impact do you think this work will have?
MP: That’s a part of the reason I came to Paris, to get more skills to inspire others. And I think I would definitely have an impact on the future of how to make an Indian suit. Even Indians, Mardi Gras Indians, we’re not supposed to show anyone our suits or what we’re doing, but I post snippets on Instagram every day just to inspire them and upgrade them. Help them get better because what we’re doing, it’s been the same techniques, just laying beads flat since the birth of the culture. I am taking beads and doing different things to them, turning them sideways and using different mixtures of beads.
I’ll be on the phone every night with multiple Indians from different tribes. But on Mardi Gras Day, we’re not friends at all. We were trying to kill each other, like for real.
NC: Needle and thread.
MP: Yeah. I had one of my homies, we were working in the same studio. I bought him to the studio because he needed more space to make the suits. You need a lot of space to make the suit because it gets messy. But on Mardi Gras Day, I’m talking that trash and you talking that trash to me. We not smiling at each other. We’re mugging Indians. We don’t smile at all. We’re just, who’s the prettiest? My Big Chief. Go get your Big Chief.
OT: Why do you think that you have stuck with sewing and beading, and it has become such an important part of your life?
MP: Because I saw what it was doing for me and what it did for me. It literally brought me here. And I love being creative. Twenty-six years old and I’ve been doing it since the age of one and it’s literally all I know. I literally needle and thread beads all day.
OT: It’s such a gift to hear your story, so thank you for sharing it with us.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, Marwan Pleasant has been masking in the Mardi Gras Indian culture since an early age. Practicing the skills and techniques used to build beautiful, elaborate handcrafted suits, he created a niche for the use of glass beads, pearls, rhinestones, and storytelling through his pieces of art, displayed through his fashion brand, Marlence.
Natalie Chanin is a designer, artist, writer, and founder of Alabama Chanin, Project Threadways, and The School of Making. She has a Bauhaus-inspired degree in environmental design with an emphasis in industrial and craft-based textiles from North Carolina State University. In 2000, she left a career in Europe and New York City to return to her hometown in The Shoals community of northwest Alabama, to begin the work of sustainable design, craft preservation, organic supply chains, local manufacturing, and the social equity work which culminates in the three organizations today.
Olivia Ware Terenzio is a writer, editor, and arts and culture administrator who works in the American South. She is the associate director of programs and scholarship for Project Threadways, a nonprofit that records, studies, and interprets history, community, and power through the lens of fashion and textiles, and the editorial and marketing manager at the Southern Foodways Alliance, which explores the diverse food cultures of the changing region.
