Stylish LACMA turns 50
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is celebrating its 50th anniversary in high style, with plans to launch an expanded Wear LACMA collection this week featuring clothing, accessories and perfume created by 19 L.A. fashion designers using the museum’s permanent collection as inspiration.
For the Wednesday launch, Irene Neuwirth crafted jewelry inspired by a bedazzled 18th century snuff box, and Juan Carlos Obando made caftans in prints adapted from photos taken at the museum during the 1960s. Monique Lhuillier designed dresses inspired by a blue-and-white 18th century French porcelain pitcher, and Rodarte made T-shirts and sweatshirts based on the museum’s iconic John Baldessari LACMA logo.
Influenced by surf icon Duke Kahanamoku’s board from the 1920s, jeweler Anita Ko created wood pendant necklaces and stud earrings with surfboard-like tips. The Elder Statesman’s Greg Chait made cashmere T-shirts and scarves festooned with a floral motif taken from the 1926 Granville Redmond California Impressionist painting “California Poppy Fields.”
Begun in 2012, Wear LACMA partners with fashion designers on products and gives the museum 100% of sale proceeds — to date more than $250,000. The project is the brainchild of Katherine Ross, a fashion consultant who formerly worked at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and who is the wife of museum Director Michael Govan.
“For the 50th anniversary, we really wanted to celebrate the growing L.A. fashion community and LACMA as a place to explore new ideas and expand on the ideas designers already have,” she said, adding that some of the designers featured have participated in the project before, while others are newbies.
Items from the Wear LACMA collection will be sold at the museum, at www.thelacmastore.org and, for the first time, on the fashion e-tail site Farfetch.com, which links the inventories of more than 300 boutiques around the world, including Just One Eye and H. Lorenzo in L.A. Farfetch will build a special online boutique for the LACMA collection.
“Many of the designers featured in the project are carried in our boutiques,” said Farfetch Chief Marketing Officer Stephanie Horton. “We thought we could expand the project’s reach. We have a global audience and we translate our site into nine languages.”
The size and scope of the Wear LACMA 50th Anniversary Edition collection speaks to the rising number of high-end fashion designers working in L.A., the increasing attention the L.A. market has been getting from the New York and Europe-centric fashion industry, and the museum’s position as a player in the fashion world.
In addition to Ko, Neuwirth, Rodarte, Chait, Lhuillier and Obando, participating designers include Cathy Waterman, Clare Vivier, CO, Dosa, Esquivel, Freecity, Greg Lauren, Gregory Parkinson, Jennifer Meyer, L’oeil du Vert, Libertine, Newbark and Nick Fouquet.
On Nov. 7, LACMA plans to host its fifth annual Art + Film Gala, honoring artist James Turrell and filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu and presented by Gucci.