JENNIFER MINNITI AND MATTHEW LINDE’S exhibition at Pratt Manhattan Gallery this past winter pulled together some of the definitive names of experimental New York fashion of the past decade: Eckhaus Latta, LUAR, Telfar, Gauntlett Cheng, and Vaquera, among others. Though these brands have made the leap to mainstream recognition, many others remain underground legends, lingering on the lips and gracing the bodies of downtown trendsetters, from emerging DJs to established creative directors and unemployed party monsters.
In 1986, three fashion curators, Harold Koda, Richard Martin, and Laura Sindebrand, similarly brought together a coterie of fringe fashion and design innovators in their exhibition “The East Village” at the galleries at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. A review in the New York Times singles out key pieces: dish towel garments by Nick Nix featuring portraits of Stalin and Lenin, and clothes by Bayard decorated with screen-printed dollar bills and American flags. Analogous inspirations were on display at “The New Village: Ten Years of New York Fashion,” for instance in ALL-IN’s ruching and draping of garish baby-blue and floral-pink terry-cloth towels into an elegant silhouette reminiscent of 1950s Parisian couture. On an adjacent podium, Vaquera’s backless credit card dress glistened near a gown strung together out of a tattered American flag. Though flamboyant and theatrical, these garments trod mischievously between praise for and critique of the faded glamour of American idealism. Nearby, Telfar’s eerie corporate cosplay in his A/W 2014 Collection Video Lookbook exuded a similar ambivalence. Hyper-retouched models flash perfectly soulless smiles in branded CUSTOMER tees while rhythmically repeating the word Telfar in an empty echo. There are broader parallels between the two exhibitions: a penchant for panache over professionalism, whimsy over wearability, and irreverence in the face of potential or attained commercial success.
So what has changed since 1986? How new is the “New Village,” and where is it? A village conjures the idea of a geographically and culturally defined community, a scene. Many of the people featured here had worked, collaborated, and partied together over the years. Neighborhoods come to mind: Chinatown, the Lower East Side, Bushwick, Ridgewood. But also, Instagram, a place where artists and especially brands are now obligated to live.
A printed search bar graced the shoulders of Experience 4, 2022, a muted yellow dress with a grand train in humble stretchy cotton by Women’s History Museum, a collaboration between Amanda McGowan and Mattie Barringer. Below the search bar, a distinctly curated list of designer names cascaded onto the floor, among them Andre Walker, Norma Kamali, Junya Watanabe. This is a statement of taste but also a monument to the insatiability of online vintage collectors and the resellers they depend on, a booming niche that Women’s History Museum has entered with its own inimitable boutique on New York’s Canal Street. In Loot Sweets, 2021, by Martine Syms—another of the many working artists in the show—a small screen inserted into a black nylon garment bag played a video of Syms purchasing a jacket from a Janet Jackson celebrity auction. As with Women’s History Museum’s dress, shopping is a means to probe, dismantle, and refashion desire. While in the past it could take a lifetime to earn the right to an aesthetic, now all one needs is the perfect cocktail of search terms and purchasing power.
faux fur, silk, Alexander McQueen dress, stuffed and
taped Alexander McQueen clutch purse and strap,
taped Alexander McQueen shoes, painted plaster
resin dog with Alexander McQueen clutch purse
chain. Installation view, Pratt Manhattan Gallery,
New York, 2024. Photo: Megan Proctor.
The show as a whole evoked an internetless world of handmade textures, fluid shapes, and nostalgic references to the past, both historical and personal. This was a campy, bohemian fantasy whose hermetic values of authenticity and experimentation remained irrevocably linked to the fabric of material reality. What is remarkable about the “New Village” is not how different it was, but how closely it resembled the “old” East Village scene, despite the circumstances of living in New York City being drastically different. But while the pieces of clothing themselves remain protected from the tyranny of the digital by their intrinsic relationship to the flesh, what has changed, while not immediately evident in the clothes, is the process of creation and the digital dissemination of the works.
For her sculpture Marigold, 2022, Beverly Semmes presented a luscious velvet robe that engulfed a bright-yellow F/W 2022 Alexander McQueen dress and extended it, with the help of some flesh-colored organza, into a living-room rug, providing an absurdly economical two-for-one solution to both furniture and sartorial needs. Headphones nearby whispered the somnolent musings of the owner of this dress-rug: “Perfect ruffle . . . my mother’s prom dress . . . I love pink velvet . . . crushed silk.” Like Semmes, many of the artists in this showcase were transforming and reinterpreting the transient bits and scraps of the everyday into new iterations. Lou Dallas embellished a simple T-shirt with black stud-ded bands disjointedly suturing the waist along with Swarovski ruching and tight rows of safety pins for a punk fairy effect—THINK OTHERWISE, it announced. Artist Jessi Reaves’s Set to Self Destruct, 2021, lured found materials such as painted fabric, glass, metal, and hardened sawdust into its wiry web. The contorted industrial harshness of the metalwork was backlit by the warm romantic glow of a hidden lightbulb. Susan Cianciolo is an artist who has also designed clothing since the ’90s. In her meticulously makeshift Prayer Circle, 2016–17, empty chairs sat around a mobile and a patchwork quilt produced from fabrics gathered from the artist’s personal life along with drawings made by her daughter. Bundles of wood conjured the comforting warmth of a hearth. Inside Out Closet 3, 2024, displayed, purportedly, “every item of clothing” Camilla Carper owns in an eviscerated closet that doubles as a performance space. Their ex’s laundry, hand-decorated oranges, broken makeup packaging, and other domestic detritus were strewn next to a group of bedraggled toy figurines bearing the indelible marks of child play. Here, again, was a fascination with the left-behind, the forgotten. SC103 was founded by Sophie Andes-Gascon and Claire McKinney in 2019. Their SC103 Store Replica, 2019–23, carefully re-created the interior of their currently closed pop-up store. It appeared to have been put together and deserted by stranded artists scavenging a postapocalyptic wasteland, which feels apropos these days. Exquisitely distressed clothing hung on the wall: a long-sleeve shirt dyed in ombré khaki green and cement gray cinched by asymmetrical folds, handpainted pants embroidered with rows of talismanic hardware, a crocheted dress. This cluttered abundance renounces the moral purity implied by minimalism and invites us to wonder, as with Jessi Reaves, at the possibilities of beauty out of the abandoned.
Surrounded by like-minded artists, without the contrasting backdrop of mainstream fashion, the designers evinced little critical edge. The atmosphere was instead carefree and celebratory. “The New Village” was not so much about the new versus the old, the present versus the past. This village was more than anything concerned with itself and with the self, which is timeless and, one could say, handmade, in that it evolves primarily through encounters with other human beings, whether online or IRL. If you identify and pull on the loose filaments of the psyche, the naked beliefs of a person or a culture can be disrobed or clothed anew. For this reason, the show demanded from us a confrontation with the poetry of the unfinished and the impractical.
