18 posts tagged "Nate Lowman"
Lots To See, Just One Eye
Just One Eye is not your typical e-tailer. For starters, their brick-and-mortar flagship stands in the mazelike Hollywood compound where Howard Hughes used to live, work, and seduce movie stars. But really, it’s their product selection that makes them so extraordinary. Where else could you find a Warhol-signed Rolling Stones necktie tee, some Carlo Bugatti chairs, and a range of antique fine jewelry alongside looks from Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Olympia Le-Tan, and Maiyet? Since opening the store last spring, co-founder Paola Russo (formerly of Maxfield) has focused on mixing fashion and art. And we mean big-time art. Ed Ruscha has been collaborating in various ways since the shop’s launch. Work by Murakami, among others, hangs on the walls at headquarters. And today, the shop is launching the first in an ongoing series of artist/designer collaborations, debuting a limited-edition range of Damien Hirst-decorated backpacks from The Row.
According to Russo, Just One Eye’s interest in commissioning these projects comes from the store’s mandate to create “specialness.” “Our vision,” she explains, “is to make and sell things that will last. We don’t want to be involved with mass-produced fads,” she says. “Real luxury is something that is timeless and exceptional.” Naturally, true luxury comes with a hair-raising price tag. Or, in the case of the backpacks, which ring in at a cool $55,000, a gasp-worthy one. But it helps to know that some of that cash will go to a good cause. A portion of the proceeds from the bags will be donated to UNICEF; ditto Just One Eye’s next, more cost-democratic collaboration, which will see Nate Lowman teaming up with Converse. “He’s painting 25 pairs,” says Russo. “So the question for the people who buy these shoes will be, you know, do you wear them, or keep them as art?” A question many of us have posed about our shoes. But not typically of our sneakers.
Visit Just One Eye at justoneeye.com.
Buying Brooklyn: The Art Edition
For the style set that insists on local food, local booze, and locally sourced designs, here’s local art. The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) kicks off its eighth annual BAMart Silent Auction tomorrow, and honorary curator Beth Rudin DeWoody selected pieces made by artists either based in Brooklyn or who have previously collaborated with BAM. They include Nate Lowman, Richard Prince, and Terence Koh. Polaroid portraits of Dolly Parton, Keith Haring, and Bianca Jagger may go quickly, but we’re told that a few other artists’ works are set to be the big-ticket items here. Among them, a piece (pictured) by Mickalene Thomas (whose portrait of Michelle Obama was the first painting of the First Lady to be acquired by the National Portrait Gallery), an ink and graphite work by Matthew Ritchie, and an etching (Plate Distortion II) by Tauba Auerbach. The works are currently on display at the Dorothy W. Levitt Lobby of the Peter Jay Sharp Building at BAM and viewable online. The auction, supporting BAM initiatives, launches tomorrow on Paddle8.com and runs through April 22.
Two’s Company
“I didn’t think I’d ever have a store,” Sophomore’s Chrissie Miller says. “I thought, crazy people shop and I didn’t want to be involved in that. But I did it in L.A. and I loved it—that lifestyle, being there and talking to people about the clothes. As soon as I got back, it’s all I was thinking about.” So when a small shop space opened on Ludlow Street, Miller (above right) and friend and fellow designer Lindsey Thornburg (above left) pounced. Just one month after signing on the space, their new collaborative store, 143 (named after the building number, though Miller notes it’s also pager code for “I love you”), the first permanent retail space for either designer, is set to open this Friday.
143 will be divided between the Sophomore collection, which Miller designs with Madeleine von Froomer, and Thornburg’s cape-heavy namesake collection. (Both designers have also moved their studios to the building as well.) But it will also feature new and vintage pieces from a network of friends and the likeminded, including clothes, books, art, and jewelry. “The neighborhood is super vintage-heavy; I think people go [here] looking for vintage,” Miller says. “So I found the best vintage dealers I could, rather than go to New Jersey and try to buy a bunch of stuff myself.” She’s been following the Texas-based dealers Sisters of the Black Moon on eBay for years, for example, and L.A.’s Filthmart, at whose now-shuttered New York store she worked years ago, is supplying vintage menswear.
Shen Beauty will curate an assortment of beauty products, and Miller’s boyfriend, actor and artist Leo Fitzpatrick, will organize art and art books from the likes of Nate Lowman, Bruce Weber, Richard Kern, and Cass Bird. “Leo is obsessed with art books, and we don’t like keeping them in the house after we’re done with them,” Miller says. Retail, the broom of the system! By the same token, shoppers can expect to find Sophomore and Thornburg samples and one-offs on the racks.
143 opens Friday, November 18, at 143 Ludlow St., NYC.
A New Reformation Period
The Lower East Side-based shop Reformation debuted an expanded store space on Ludlow Street this summer. Next week, Reformation will celebrate the launch of its Web site, TheReformation.com, with host Zoë Kravitz. For the occasion, artists Nate Lowman, Hanna Liden, Leo Fitzpatrick, and Adam McEwen designed funky, limited-edition T-shirts to benefit Grow NYC. Reformation gave the artists total creative control of the shirt designs, simply asking them to create something that expressed the artists’ current state of mind. Here, Style.com has the exclusive first glimpse of the shirts before they go on sale on TheReformation.com on October 26.
Leisure Time In L.A.
When Chrissie Miller (the founder of Sophomore) and Erin Krause (the director of artist Donald Baechler’s studio) decided to intertwine their fashion and art backgrounds, the result was bound to be a good one.
“We both have so many friends doing the same thing as us, and I have always thought we should all come together and do something,” Miller tells Style.com. She and Krause rallied their impressive group of buddies—including Richard Prince, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, Terry Richardson, Tara Subkoff, Rogan Gregory, and Charlotte Ronson—to contribute to their new creative concept shop, Arts + Leisure, set to bow in Los Angeles this week at Space 15 Twenty.
The pop-up shop is their attempt to bring a dose of New York cool to L.A. “There was a show in New York a few months ago, Greater L.A., and it made me sort of realize that there was a lot going on in L.A. that New York didn’t really know about,” says Krause, a ten-year veteran of the New York art scene. “And now I’ve sort of realized that that goes both ways,” she adds. She has pulled in the cream of the crop to show off New York’s artistic talents, with over 60 different contributors. Many of the artists created pieces specifically for the store, such as Olaf Breuning, who made “an unlimited-edition floor lamp made of paint buckets,” and Dan Colen and Nate Lowman, who collaborated on signed posters for the project. For her end, Miller brought in clothes from the likes of Proenza Schouler, Vena Cava, and Daryl K. Although the shop is only scheduled to be open through August 28, the two are thinking of taking their concept global in the near future.
“I have this idea that we would do it in another city—Paris would be great,” Miller says. “I feel so grateful that all these people have been so cool that it’s scary to think I have to ask them for a favor again.”
Arts + Leisure, August 5 through 28, at Space 15 Twenty, 1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd., L.A. For more information, visit http://arts-leisure.com/.