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subscribe to style file blog via RSSMary Ping Says No To The Pop-Up
September 13, 2009 9:44 pm
We’ve written here before about our disaffection for pop-up shops, so it’s nice to report that at least one designer is attempting to answer back to the trend. Mary Ping’s Slow and Steady Wins the Race installation, which opens to the public tomorrow, uses the idea of the still life to, as Ping puts it, “react to the temporality of the pop-up, and go back to an older tradition of talking about objects.” Readers can parse that statement for themselves; we take it to mean that Ping has grown impatient with the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ethos of contemporary retail, the perfect symbol of which is the pop-up. Slow and Steady Wins the Race does, after all, have “slow” in its name, and Ping has made it a practice of her brand that once an item is introduced into the line, it’s there for good. She is anti planned obsolescence. This season, Ping is adding three categories of product to Slow and Steady: “The Bag Shoe” category comprises six styles of shoe, each incorporating design elements from bags—drawstring, topstitched canvas, backpack snap buckles. “Young Bag” includes three black leather bags—a backpack, a duffel, and a bucket bag—scaled down to pocketbook size. And the “Untouchable Bag” category returns Ping to Slow and Steady’s roots remaking iconic designer handbags in natural canvas, only this time Ping has played with the proportions and scale of the bags, making the reference all but unrecognizable. The wares are displayed at the installation alongside works on the “still life” theme by artists such as Andrew Kuo, Miranda July, and Tauba Auerbach. The Slow and Steady Wins the Race exhibition is open at the Saatchi & Saatchi gallery space on the corner of Hudson and King through the 18th. Just don’t call it a pop-up.
tags: Mary Ping, Saatchi & Saatchi, Slow and Steady Wins the Race
In all fairness, S&SWTR had a(n excellent) pop-up at Space 15twenty in LA this summer!
By Thulasi on 09/14/09 at 11:01 pm