Gen Art Turns 30, Returns to NYFW
● Gen Art is helping David Barton's TMPL to debut its first exclusive apparel collaboration.
To mark its 30th anniversary, Gen Art will be back on the scene during New York Fashion Week with four days of events and activations.
The fashion, multimedia and art company teamed up with TMPL Fitness, founded by David Barton, to create the first fashion line for the top-tier gym, which has five outposts in Manhattan. An exclusive athleisure collection will be unveiled at a presentation and party.
The following day, Gen Art will indubitably surprise some passersby with an activation that will feature fashion showcased aboard a parked fuselage from the private jet service Flewber's fleet. The “Flewber One” will will be near the Dream Downtown in Manhattan's Meatpacking District and La Victoria Social Club. Open to the public, the showcase will include fitness perks from TMPL, a glimpse of the new athleisure and other attractions.
TMPL's athleisure line, created by
Gen Art, includes 28 men's and women's pieces, priced $48 to $258, including vintage denim jackets, cut and sewn leggings and French terry separates. The line is made in Los Angeles.
In addition, there is a collaboration with Gen Art alum Nima Taherzadeh, the founder and creative director of Heroine Sport. Gen Art will roll out a custom pieces from a TMPL and Heroine tie-up this fall online and in-store.
“Democratizing art makes it userfriendly. Fashion week should not be elusive; consumers are the ones who buy the clothing," said Gen Art chief executive officer Keri Ingvarsson.
Inside La Victoria Social Club, Gen Art's artistic director Georgeana Ireland will unveil a Pop Art-inspired exhibition that will be on view from Thursday through Sunday. Visitors will find work from artists Dennis Ouch and Pitch Black, as well as wearable art from the Vietnamese fashion brand SixDo, which has 60 stores in Asia. The multiday installation is part of a yearlong partnership between Gen Art and La Victoria, which is the New York locale of the Miami-based social club that will feature other emerging art and fashion collaborations.
A private event and runway show is slated for Sunday at Spring Studios for SixDo, a three-year-old label that is headed up by CEO Huy Can Pham and is designed by founder Do Manh Cuong. Gen Art is coproducing the event for 350 attendees. The company is looking to expand in the U.S. through retail, pop-up shops and direct-to-consumer sales. As a vertical company that owns its factories, the label aims to keep margins tight and prices accessible. Retail prices for dresses, for example, start at $198.
Ingvarsson said, “Gen Art isn't just doing shows to do shows. We are essentially bringing new lines and direct to consumer retail concepts to the customer, while supporting growing international creatives that design for companies like Heroine Sport and SixDo.”
To keep the anniversary festivities going on the west coast, Gen Art debuted a "Gen Art Studio" location on Balboa Island, the tourist-friendly enclave in Newport Beach, Calif., in time for Labor Day weekend. That is in addition to the one inside of the La Victoria in downtown New York City that bows Friday.
“We don't take the gigantic commissions that other galleries take. We also don't do solo exhibitions. We run the studios 'salon style' with a minimum of three artists at a time so each artist can support and compliment the other. We tested this model for the last three years at Art Basel, Coachella and prior New York Fashion Weeks. We found that art sells better, when we combine a few artists to tell a story and co- promote their work, while also running a marketing campaign for each artist,” Ingvarsson said.
That strategy allows Gen Art to cover overhead and “create profit for our company and our artists faster, even though our commissions are significantly lower,” Ingvarsson said.