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Art and fashion form a tight bond. And now, brands are seeking out more intimate settings to gain favour with the art crowd.
Felix Los Angeles is a small, independent art fair held in the rooms of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel, which ran from Wednesday 28 February to Sunday 3 March alongside Frieze LA. This year, for the first time, co-founder Al Morán sought out a way to bring fashion brands into the fold. He enlisted Dover Street Market (DSM) as an official partner to help recruit brands as collaborators. Pieces are sold at DSM’s Felix space.
Rather than having brands host adjacent events to capitalise on the buzz of the art fair — which has been fashion’s Frieze model to date — it’s an integrated approach and a point of difference from other fashion and art fair tie-ups.
This, Morán and DSM vice president of North America James Gilchrist agree, is key. “DSM has played and experimented in the art world for a long time. Since its inception, in fact,” Gilchrist says. “So in essence, facilitating collaboration between fashion brands and artists is at the core of DSM’s DNA.”
At the fair, guests saw offerings from: Oscar Tuazon with Comme des Garçons and Felix; Kaws with Sky High Farm Workwear and Nike; David Hammons with Denim Tears; Sterling Ruby with Vans; the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts with Brain Dead; and Levi’s and Otto 958 (a project by London-based fashion designer Kiko Kostadinov and Morán). Other brands and drops, including a Airei x Asics collab, were also available at the DSM space.
Fashion is already no stranger to art fairs. Prada, RTA and Ecco held Frieze-adjacent events in New York last September. The same month, at Frieze Seoul, Chanel, Prada and Acne Studios staged events. And at Frieze LA, which ran over the weekend, Stone Island (an official fair partner) brought its archival exhibition to town.
In an increasingly crowded brand landscape, it’s a way to stick in audiences’ minds by offering something different, which doubles as an intellectual pursuit, art historian and writer Sarah Hoover told Vogue Business last year. But, she flagged at the time: “It doesn’t work when a brand slaps an artist’s design on top of something that already exists. It has to be a true creative partnership.”
For the brands involved in these art fairs, it’s about bringing their work into a new context and reaching new eyeballs, says Drew Curry, founder and designer of LA-based brand Airei, which dropped its second collaboration with Asics at Felix. “When you bring [the brand] into a different context like that, that’s how eyes end up being on you and how projects and ideas can spread.”
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For larger brands, it’s a way to reach beyond the average consumer via art-centric collaborations. At Felix, Vans debuted its new platform, OTW by Vans, which the brand will dedicate to “pushing the boundaries” of product design and experiences, says Ian Ginoza, VP of creative direction for OTW by Vans. “Sterling is the archetype of the innovators we are looking to partner with,” he says.
The fair is “pretty intimate”, Morán says — it’s never had sponsors, fashion or otherwise. This was the draw for DSM. “We have been approached before by different art fairs but they felt a bit corporate for us,” Gilchrist says. “Felix, like DSM, is independently owned and I like the mix of emerging and established galleries and artists giving a fresh perspective.”
This may be Felix’s first formal fashion tie-up, but fashion has made its way into the rooms of the Roosevelt Hotel since the fair’s 2018 founding by way of visitors’ outfits, Morán says. This was simply the year Felix formalised fashion’s presence.
The timing is right, Morán says. Years ago, the combination wouldn’t have hit.
“Over the past decade, there’s been a blurring of fashion and art,” he says. “The two different practices have been edging towards each other, towards the middle.” It’s from this increasing overlap that the project stemmed.
Key to the collabs is that Felix and DSM invited the brands to participate, but left them to their own devices to coordinate their own artist partnerships. The organisers played the role of curator — like Morán does at his gallery, Morán Morán, which he runs with his brother (and Felix co-founder) Mills Morán. “Fundamentally, DSM is about curating and bringing creatives together to share space,” Gilchrist says. “So to create a distilled version at Felix, it was essential to bring in other brands and artists.”
When deciding the brands to tap, Morán and Gilchrist looked to personal relationships. Sky High Farm Workwear’s co-founder, co-CEO and CMO Daphne Seybold worked at DSM and Comme des Garçons for 15 years. Airei is part of DSM Paris (a brand development arm with a retail location on the way).
The pair also looked to brands that didn’t have too much overlap between communities to capture a wider audience, Morán says. “Editing and curating is a very large part of our job so it was fairly simple,” Gilchrist adds. “First, we thought about which brands could sell well at Felix — and then juxtaposed that with brands and artists that we thought would bring a strong image to the project.”
A new kind of experiential retail
As consumers are met with an online onslaught of sameness, thanks to algorithmic recommendations that feel increasingly repetitive and stale, people are craving physical experiences.
“A lot of people right now are focusing on how retail might be dying,” Curry says. “Maybe retail as we know it might be going away. But doing projects like Felix and Dover Street Market is a great way to bring our community into something that feels fresh.”
By the Roosevelt pool on Friday, Morán says that, at first, seasoned patrons thought the DSM pop-up was just another part of the exhibition. They stood back and looked at the Tuazon sculpture as just that: a sculpture. It took a good 20 minutes for viewers to begin touching the clothing, trying it on. This, he says, is a sign that the three – Felix, DSM and Tuazon – did indeed achieve something new; something unfamiliar.
Does a niche art fair have broad enough appeal to kick-start a new retail format?
The Dover Street Market hype speaks for itself (notably, Felix tickets weren’t needed to shop the pop-up). But by placing the already innovative retailer’s pop-up at the fair and offering exclusive, art- and artist-centred items, it brings a fresh feel, says Airei’s Curry. In essence, it gave the branded projects multiple co-signs: DSM, Felix and, in Airei’s case, Asics. “That’s really what creates even more buzz around the project,” he says. “It was really Dover Street Market that was able to boost the presence for this.”
Exactly who the collaborations are reaching isn’t front of mind for Morán and Gilchrist. But Morán does operate with the philosophy that if you build it well, they will come.
“You’re basically trying to impress the six people closest to you,” Morán says. “And if these six people really like what you’re doing, there’s a tendency for 6,000 to follow, you know?”
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