MICKALENE THOMAS

With a dedicated studio practice that spans multiple disciplines, Mickalene Thomas explores and challenges societal understandings of beauty, femininity, and identity through her work. Known for her bodacious collage-style, rhinestone-clad paintings, the refreshingly-uncontrived, artistic mastermind is the embodiment of chaos and control.

Photography and Interview by Dustin Mansyur
Unisex Suit and Shirt by Vivienne Westwood, Sunglasses Artist’s Own

The ground-floor, sprawling, warehouse studio that Mickalene Thomas runs is anything but the archetypal cluttered creative hub one might picture when visiting an artist’s studio. Instead, its organization suggests a need for clarity and control required for the artist to create. Small-scale collages, paper and material remnants drape across a single work surface like a patchwork tablecloth, with a pair of scissors propped suggestively on a roll of electric green tape as a centerpiece to its cacophony of color. In a far corner of the studio, a heavy vinyl curtain is swagged aside revealing a space reminiscent of a car-paint room, the color-spattered work table in the center is cleared with equipment tucked away. Adjacent to it, a barrage of carts are trolleyed up neatly, loaded like pack mules with a rainbow of oil pastels, paint tubes, mixing utensils, and a spectrum of boxed rhinestones. Mickalene pushes one with a generous smear of cobalt paint and a pair of knives towards an unfinished piece that she’s “mucking up”, its wheels singing furiously like an operatic aria of the paint’s destiny. Flanking the walls, large-scale canvases of works-in-progress commune with one another, while awaiting canvases are filed away orderly in gargantuan cabinets. The multi-disciplinary artist needs space to breathe and listen to the dialogue of her work as it banters across the nucleus of the studio floor. A library elicit of her groovy, soulful sets offers an inviting corner to entertain studio visits, but we will stand and talk today as Thomas works on a diptych.

An alumni of Pratt and Yale and a United States Artists Fellow, Mickalene Thomas is a dichotomy of soft-spoken eloquence and outspoken intellect, a juxtaposition that feels arresting and gravitational. With a separate office space that runs the length of the studio and a quarter its width, it’s evident Thomas runs a tight ship over her studio practice and team. The role of boss aside, Mickalene Thomas is a distinguished visual artist, filmmaker, and curator whose work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and is housed in many permanent collections including Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1 New York, and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, among others. Her work embraces art-historical, political, and pop-cultural references. Employing the disciplines of photography, painting, collage, sculpture, and installation, her exploration of the complex notions of femininity challenges prevailing definitions of beauty and aesthetic representations of women.

Here IRIS Covet Book shares some studio time with the artist as she articulates on adding to the dialogue of the conventional canon of Western art history.

Racquel Reclining Wearing Purple Jumpsuit, 2016

Were there any influencing factors in your childhood that really helped nurture your love of art? What motivated you to pursue this as a life and career for yourself as an artist?

Being raised by an adventurous, industrious and resourceful single mother who exposed me and my brother to art at a very young age. Around the age of 7 to 12, my mother enrolled my brother and I into various art programs in New Jersey and New York. My fondest memories are at both the Newark Museum and the Henry Settlement in the Lower Eastside. In our house there was a constant engagement with art, fashion, and music. My mother’s eldest brother was a trained fashion illustrator. He illustrated for magazines and designed some record covers, as well. I loved looking at his drawings, they remind me of Bill Traylor’s work. The biggest inspiration on this “jersey girl” was New York City.

We ventured to the city on every weekend we could afford, to attend the Met Museum and to see Broadway shows, mostly Off Broadway. My mother surrounded us with her creative friends. They organized house parties and fashion shows around Newark and East Orange. She and several in her group of her friends produced these events. Their parties were called “Better Days” and one of the plays I remember was called Put A Little Sugar in My Bowl. My mom’s friend gave me the script to the play. Looking back and reading the script reminds me of Tyler Perry plays, excluding the religious banter. I guess you might say that art chose me. I’m a product of my mother’s creative environment.

You work in so many different disciplines. You do photography, collage, painting, sculpture, and installation. Presently, what disciplines are you utilizing in your work?

Including performance, video, and the other five disciplines you mentioned, I oscillate among all of these disciplines, depending on the scope of my project, the concept, or idea; eventually making a decision on which discipline is best to execute the idea. Currently, there are two main techniques that are a major thread in my work, which I use in tandem–photography and silkscreen. I employ silkscreen as a way to bring forth the photographic elements into my painting. Silkscreen is used in my work as a tool to convey that language. It’s extremely important to me that the photographic images on the painting, appear as a collaged element rather than literally gluing or pasting a photograph onto the paintings. Photography plays a primary role in my studio practice, and it’s the strongest thread throughout my work. I shoot all of my resources for my work; for found resources, after scanning, them I put them through a photographic process to claim them as my own. What excites me currently as an artist is transforming my photographic images into a painting language. Although, sometimes my photographs and collages serve as blueprints for my paintings. Now I’m thinking about how I could use these disciplines within performance. My new body of work is video based and performative. Working in film has given me license to explore the moving image as the editing process relates to collage.

Combining all these different disciplines…is it in anyway a metaphor for the complexities of your identity?

I think all of our identities are complexed, and these different disciplines provide a platform for me to navigate and explore my identities. As my art morphs and transforms, so do I as a person with my ideas and sense of self. I’m not the same person I was 10 years ago, neither is my art. I harbor various complexities in the same way as I oscillate within different disciplines. My mythos isn’t to be defined by the work that I make, in the same way that it’s an extension of myself. I can’t escape the methodologies of these disciplines because they are all pertinent for me to tell my story by any means necessary.

The strongest discipline in my work is photography. I see it as one of the most powerful tools constructing or deconstructing our identities. It’s our own black mirror, within the constructs of us having the need to constantly see ourselves instead of really seeing each other. Photography is it’s own visual language, it’s how we communicate–it’s on all our devices, it’s the new handshake, it’s the how are you today, and our third eye. I’m interested in using the photographic lens and other devices that will allow me to see myself and others.

Unisex Suit and Shirt by Vivienne Westwood, Sunglasses Artist’s Own

Where do you begin? How do you start a piece? During our photo shoot, I noticed there were several smaller collages on a work table.

The small collages are an iteration of my practice through a photographic process. I make a series of collages based on the photographs taken during photo shoots. The collages aren’t necessarily one-to-one with the paintings, they are research, resource, and a discovery into the the process of my paintings. The collages have their own strength that I try to bring into the paintings. The exploration within the collage materials allow me to be uninhabited and free of constraints. The discovery of making the collages is allowing the scissors to do it’s magic by cutting shapes and forms that tell a story with the images that I’m using. All my cut scraps are reusable for new images. I have piles and piles of images and materials, organized and chaos, colored and textured, pattern and glittered, layered and integrated. It’s exciting to think about all of those materials and how they will juxtapose with one another.

How did the rhinestones come to be such a touchstone part of your work?

I started experimenting with rhinestones when I became interested in the notions of pointillism during my time at Yale. In relation to my work, rhinestones seemed to be the most relevant material, and I realized that they provide a perfect combination of content, process, and materials not as an accoutrement. They serve to challenge my ideas of what paintings are, and can be. As my work evolved and developed stronger, the rhinestones started taking on other meanings as I expanded them into my practice.

I love that you really embraced that. Even though you referred to them as non-traditional material, you have given it this life to become its own medium, like oil or acrylic.

They are just as important as the acrylic and oil paint, the silkscreen, the oil sticks, and gestural marks. They play the same role as these materials and formalities. All of the elements or materials that I employ, represent the notions of artifice, constructed ideas, and means of how we consider adornment on ourselves and in our environments. How we can utilize and manipulate them to exude a certain quality, beauty or light. Also, rhinestones are a very interesting material to work with, the challenges are vast, and it possesses a multiplicity of ideas and notions that I feel like I could grow with as an artist. Figuring out how to use them in my paintings, but also as a material like paint is very exciting for me.

All of the collages in the interior spaces that you present within your work…I’m so fascinated by them because they look like such an interesting world to reside within. What does the interior as a subject matter mean for your?

For me, the interiors are just as important as the portraits because I think of interiors as portraitures. I think you can tell a lot about a person by the things they surround themselves with and how they live. There’s this residue of life, of cultural history, of storytelling, and all that is domestic that describes the home. How we surround ourselves to complete who we are, and the home or interior, is one of them; the landscape is another. I’m interested in how we reside within these spaces, and how these spaces tell a story of who we are.

I’m mostly trying to reference my childhood, and the environment that I found to be most comforting and inspiring as a young girl. I don’t necessarily think of it as being representative of a specific cultural or ethnic identity–while that may serve as one of the inspirations, it really is meant to reflect on the extensions of my own identity and history.

You just opened a show at Rice University in Houston that featured one of your installations. Are the installations something that you utilize as an extension of the set from the photographic process, or a three-dimensional form derived from the collages or paintings of the interiors?

Yes they are. In some ways they’re really about me trying to make sense of home. I moved around a lot as a kid, and I think that a home is the constructed safe space for families. One of the things that we identify as the “American dream” is having a home. Most people aspire to obtain home as an object of gratification or fulfillment of success regardless of demographic socially, financially, or culturally. There’s still this overarching aspiration of security once you have a home. My environments started in graduate school, when I was photographing myself. I would put up fabric backdrop to create self portraits. So when I started photographing my mother, I started adding things to the environment to formally figure out the compositions for my paintings. Overtime the blank wall was filled and covered with fabrics and wallpaper. I’ve been doing this for the past 10 years, but it’s just been the past three or four years that these environments have been recently exhibited. This part of my practice has developed and expanded into various iterations site-specifically expanding from tableaus in the corner of my studio into major installations where the viewer can activate the space.

Naomi Looking Forward #2, 2016

Installation at Newcomb Art Museum 2017 Variable Dimension

Do you usually have several pieces going simultaneously so that you can take a step back, think about it, and process it while working on another piece?

Yes, I work on several projects and works simultaneously. Sometimes chaotic, and then focused. Each project informs the other, allowing the works to have a strong dialogue between themselves. Sometimes I will struggle with one body of work, but then it makes sense in the other, and the works start speaking to each other, and the challenges erupt and make sense. The experience of making art is that it does not lie to you. It starts speaking to you in a certain way, and you have to listen to it. If you’re honest with yourself.

You take classical subject matter – nudes, portraiture, landscapes, interior spaces – and you re-appropriate them based upon your own cultural vantage point and perspective. When you first began your career how was the work received and has that changed over time?

It’s important to me that my work changes overtime. As I grow as a person I want my art to grow with me. It’s important as an artist to find your own voice and be authentic, and hopefully you’re adding a new dialogue to the discourse, to expand it, and to make it richer. I’m interested in using Western art historical canon by deconstructing the traditional notions of beauty within art. By bringing forth the women and beauty that have been removed from the stories, erased, and rewritten.

Art history is known to be so Eurocentric and non-inclusive.

What I’m excited about is the large circle of African American individuals as art historians: as our leaders within art history who are going to be in the position to allow these discourses to be put forth within the institutions. When you look at museums that start to embrace young African American curators, then there’s a shift because they’re entering a new paradigm that is going to allow new conversations to emerge and change in museums and other institutions. I think we need to encourage people of color to be a part of the creative field if they have that interest. There’s a huge generation of younger creative intellectuals that are coming forth that are really exciting. To me, those are the individuals I’m embracing because those are the people that are going to write our legacies and stories.

Earlier, you spoke about the photographic language acting as a kind of “black mirror”. Is that really what art is then, for you, a way of holding up the mirror to society?

I’ve read some of Lacan’s philosophy and something that really inspired me is his theory of the “mirror stage”. That our innate desire and notion of ourselves is to be validated by others, the desire is to be seen. Therefore, whena person gazes at you,it validates that existence because they’re looking at you. This idea of the gaze is very powerful and the notion of validation, and incorporating its existence into Art. Without it, we don’t see ourselves until others see us, which, in turn, gives us our sense of validation: recognizing something familiar in someone else. When we recognize our familiar selves in others, then things will change [in society].

Empathy is such a scarce quality today. How does this quality affect your work?

There’s always a greater part of empathy in artists. We are the most empathetic people. We are the leaders of the world and are capable of allowing people to become their better selves through our creativity. No matter how egotistical and selfish some artists can be, I think there’s still a greater part of empathy to making art. As an artist, we gift so much of ourselves to the world, the fiber of our existence as artists is to help others see the world through our eyes to create change.

Your work also focuses heavily on our understanding of beauty and expanding that. In fashion advertising the big buzzwords right now are diversity, inclusion…How do you think that society’s understanding of beauty is going to change in the coming decades?

The understanding of beauty today is going to become compacted with a deeper meaning of who you are, not necessarily what you look like.

You have this amazing space. It’s so huge, it’s orderly, and it’s still warm and inviting. It appears that you’re anything but the proverbial starving artist.

(laughter) I am! I am, really! I’m not starving, but I’m always hungry. I’m starving for women to sell their art at the same price point as their male counterparts without complaints of it being too expensive. I’m starving for inclusivity, and for being in the right collections, museums, biennials, on the art historian tongues, in the ear of curators, and working with the best galleries nationally and internationally. I’m starving to see more people of color and women having major retrospectives. I’m starving for auction houses to pay artists residuals.

I’m curious what you’ve had to overcome, either personally or professionally, to get to this place in your career. I feel like creative people often have a strong internal dialogue with themselves.

I persevered throughout my life. Everybody has a story, there was a glimpse of my story told in the documentary I directed about my mother in Happy Birthday To A Beautiful Woman.

What advice, then, would you share with any young person who is wanting to choose this for themselves as a life and career?

Despite your personal obstacles, it’s really important to maintain a strong studio practice and a sense of self.

Do you have a glass ceiling? What does success mean to you?

I once heard someone say, “the sky is not the limit it’s just the view”. There’s no glass ceiling for me because I’m hungry and greedy. One of the quotes that I love by Toni Morrison is “…if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” This is success to me. I can only keep trying to do more than my best.

Hair and Makeup by Nina Soriano using Elemis, Production by Benjamin Price, Special Thanks to Susan Grogan at Mickalene Thomas Studio

All art work © Mickalene Thomas images courtesy of the artist
For more information visit mickalenethomas.com

STUDIO VISITS – TALI LENNOX

Away from her newly adopted home of Los Angeles, multidisciplinary artist Tali Lennox takes us inside her New York loft to share her daring, emotional paintings and collages that capture the fleeting nature of memories.

Dress by Burberry
Portrait Photography by Tiffany Nicholson | Interview by Anna Furman

In Tali Lennox’s self portraits, her face is often obscured by charcoal-black facial masks or distorted by bulging eyes and drooly, menacing expressions. When she paints figures, their identities are kept hidden and their facial features are imbued with an abstract, spectral quality. The British-born artist, daughter of singer Annie Lennox and film producer/ director Uri Fruchtmann, has made a name for herself in art and in fashion. At the age of seventeen, Tali began walking runway shows for the likes of Miu Miu and Roberto Cavalli (most recently, she starred in the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur’s tastefully noir-inspired campaign as well as the international campaign for David Webb shot by Inez and Vinoodh).

In 2015, she spent a month in residency at New York’s Catherine Ahnell Gallery, and the following year, mounted an exhibit inside the storied Chelsea Hotel. Both shows explored Western attitudes toward aging and the role memory plays in our collective conscience. She represented grooming habits as odd, culturally specific acts, and took a close look at ordinary gestures (holding a glass, washing one’s face)–encouraging viewers to reexamine their own everyday lives. Elements of Lennox’s portraiture–unusual head-to-body proportions, sanguine facial expressions–invite comparisons to celebrated American painter Alice Neel.

After tragically losing her boyfriend to a kayak accident two years ago, Lennox moved across the country to start a new chapter of her twenties in East Los Angeles. IRIS Covet Book sat down with Tali to chat about maintaining a bicoastal lifestyle, painting in solitude, and our shared admiration for the artist Tracey Emin.

Nose Bleed, 2017

‘Inhale the Oasis’ collage, 2016

‘Mood Swings’ Collage, 2016

Hi! How’s your morning been?

Very quiet. My roommates are both away right now so it’s just me in our treehouse-y home. My favorite hours to paint are either first thing in the morning or late at night so that’s what I did. I’ve had a full day of painting reclusiveness.

What are you painting right now?

I’m working on a painting of my friend Lili. It involves blood, tan lines, and pink silk. I’ve been curious about what it is to be a woman capturing other women. I want to gently challenge the viewer’s own awareness of sexuality. I love to paint nudes, skin, boobs… it interests me to figure out how my perspective differs from that of a man’s, which can come from such an objectified angle.

I’ve had a morbid curiosity since I was a child. I’m fascinated with gore and ghosts. I like to add in elements like blood and drool to my recent portraits, to explore the lines of attraction and repulsion. Recently, I posted a picture of spilled red ink on a mattress and it wound up in the newspaper because people thought it was period blood. Men and women were commenting on it–calling it disgusting. I wasn’t even trying to suggest or make a point about period blood when I took the photograph, but it did get me thinking. It’s a little absurd that women have been having periods since the beginning of humanity and yet people still find it so outrageous.

You relocated to Los Angeles from New York, but you still live in both cities. Why did you decide to move?

I’m in Silver Lake mostly. I love having trees outside my window, and the sense of vast space in LA gives my ideas a certain expansiveness. LA is weird and faded. It’s hard to grasp reality here, which I find so inspiring. I go to New York City every couple of months and it’s always just a big slice of cake–in a wonderful and somewhat overwhelming sense.

Dress by Burberry

What do you miss most about NY when you’re away?

Chinatown, the movie theaters, Serendipity, 24-hour delis, the Met, exchanging a hello with a man who looks like Santa Claus who sits outside my building every morning, the raging desire for a strong coffee in the morning.

Your Instagram bio says that you’re a painter slash jellyfish breeder. Jellyfish? Breeder? Please elaborate.

Really the jellyfish breeder thing is just to be silly. I mean, social media should never be taken too seriously. I do have a fascination with sea creatures though. It stems from childhood. I remember being completely hypnotized by fishmongers when I was probably four years old. I loved looking at the fish scales and the variety of colors, and experiencing the strange smells. I would secretly touch the dead fish when no one was looking. I’ve always been curious about the things others might find gross.

Do you have a regular routine for your creative work? Where is your studio?

I have a rough routine, without regular hours. Right now I paint most often from my room, which I like because I can paint at any hour. Sometimes I like to work late into the night. A lot of people like separating themselves from their work, but I find that working where I live heightens my relationship to the paintings. I mean, I literally wake up and fall asleep seeing it, so I really need to like what I’m doing because there’s no escaping it.

Do you listen to music while you’re working or do you prefer silence?

I like to listen to a lot of film soundtracks. Hitchcock soundtracks are great. Jonny Greenwood, Disney scores, Alan Watts and Ram Dass are great when you don’t want to feel like you’re falling down a vortex of isolation. And when I need a little energy, I’ll put on the Fat White Family’s Champagne Holocaust album.

What are you reading right now? Either book or magazine-wise or just a lingering link in your browser tabs?

I’m about to finish Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami–it’s utterly beautiful. For a quick bedtime chapter or two, I’ll read Anaïs Nin.

Tell me about when you first started painting.

I’ve been drawing and painting forever, or at least since I was very young. I was the kind of kid to stay in the art room at school during break time. When I was nineteen, I moved to New York and started to develop my work with oil painting. I had been modeling full time since I was seventeen. I guess I was looking for a sense of identity outside of that world. Painting builds such a private relationship with oneself. It’s lonely and frustrating–but wonderful.

Kaya, 2017

You were raised by world-famous parents– Scottish singer Annie Lennox and producer Uri Fruchtmann – in the UK. Can you tell me a bit about your childhood?

I grew up between north and west London and went to a pretty liberal school called King Alfred’s, where it was encouraged to be open minded and independent. Honestly, I didn’t feel like there was a difference between my mum and anyone else’s. I was raised with pretty strong values.

How has your mom’s creative work influenced your approach to art-making?

My mum came up with all the visual concepts for her videos and took a lot of risks. She has always been unafraid to express herself, which has encouraged me to keep exploring and experimenting.

I love how you painted terry cloth in that series of self-portraits where you’re wearing a bathrobe and charcoal face masks–what other textures or surfaces are you drawn to painting?

I absolutely love painting breasts. Nipples though can take a very, very long time to get right.

You’ve talked about how your painting practice helped you cope with the loss of your boyfriend, who died in 2015 after a tragic kayak accident. Have you found other practices to be helpful for emotional processing and healing?

I talk a LOT. I’m very open with people I trust. I’ve also explored a lot of energy practices, mindfulness, being able to truly sit with one’s emotion, being present with what comes up. I’m all for feeling fully, releasing, and clearing the way.

What visual artists do you look to for inspiration?

It changes all the time, but lately I love looking at Gerald Brockhurst’s paintings. His paintings are eerie and bold and often have an unsettling quality. I love paintings of the past, before so much technology existed, with female subjects. From the Pre-Raphaelite period, John William Waterhouse and from Baroque times, the painter Georges de La Tour. From the Renaissance, Sandro Botticelli. Their technical skill and level of imagination is simply mind blowing.

Do you have any upcoming shows or creative projects?

I would love to do video and performance art pieces. And curate experiential art shows. My last show was throughout The Chelsea Hotel, and my aim was to alter the viewer’s perspective of reality. So I’d love to continue mind-bending experiments in obscure locations.

Do you have a dream collaborator? Any particular artist or designer, dead or alive?

I would love to connect with Tracey Emin. I have so much admiration for the vulnerable honesty in her work. Gustav Klimt for his imagination and mad technical skill. And Hieronymus Bosch because he created vast realms, centuries before there was even electricity, and that fucking blows my mind.

Dress by Burberry

Hair by Austin Burns using Oribe, Makeup by Tonya Riner using NARS cosmetics, Art Direction by Louis Liu, Editor Marc Sifuentes, Production by Benjamin Price

DAO-YI CHOW AND MAXWELL OSBORNE OF PUBLIC SCHOOL NYC

Born and bred purveyors of New York cool, Public School are surpassing their own successes by delivering their signature synergy of street and substance to their women’s collections.

Photography by Bon Duke | Styling by Kate Carnegie | Featuring Models Ana Christina @ New York Models, Sahara Lin @ Elite Models, Jordan Legessa @ Heroes | Interview by Alan Bindler
All Clothing by Public School NYC

Luxury Streetwear. To an outsider, it can seem an oxymoron of sorts. The history of streetwear is long and storied, the specifics of which are hotly debated in the comments sections of 21st century cultural hubs like Complex and Hypebeast. Born out of surf and skate culture of the late 1970s and infused with urban wear aesthetics of the 1990s, luxury streetwear combines these influences with the timeless quality and craftsmanship one would expect from European maisons. Founded in 2008 and relaunched in 2012, Public School has been evolving the genre to great accolades for nearly a decade, defining what is cool and coveted by a rising generation of luxury consumers. Originally a men’s label, designers Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne launched their women’s line in Fall 2014, marking a seamless transition for the go-to brand of born-and-bred New York cool. 2017 is a benchmark year for Public School, with the volume of their women’s business about to surpass the men’s. Here, Iris Covet Book chats with the duo about designing for women, why luxury streetwear is so relevant now, and the new definition of luxury.

I understand that this year the women’s business is surpassing the men’s business. Do you think that’s going to affect how you show the brand in the future and the overall brand story?

Maxwell Osborne: I think in the longer term, for us, yeah, women’s business is growing and it has turned into a bigger business than our men’s business, which we kind of knew would happen going into it, and I think we just change with the times and really figure out what’s best with us in terms of how you show and release products. And I think that’s also just a sign of where we are in general in the marketplace and how women and men shop, and how our retailers buy the products. So it’s not surprising that our women’s business is bigger than our men’s business. I think we’ll always be known as a menswear brand first and foremost, but it’s actually also refreshing to have the women’s business grow at the pace it’s been growing.

Can you speak a little bit more about this and your vision for who your female customer is?

MO: Actually, it’s evolving. Our women’s business is still so new, so we’re still learning more information about our Public School Girl. We’re finding out now it’s actually Public School Women as well. They blend, and now we’re learning that Public School is not just a girl line, it’s also a woman’s line, maybe even more so than we thought. So we’re continually learning about our own brand through the people that wear it and buy it. Right now our lines have been blurred in terms of who the girl is. It’s really just this girl who’s transformed into a woman. It’s great to watch.

That’s exciting. It’s almost as if your customer is growing with you.

MO: Yeah, basically. They’re maturing with us, for sure. Do you have any specific muses? MO: I think we have a lot of different ideas of who this woman is – there’s not just one specific girl, but it’s the girl on the go, the girl who lives in a metropolitan city, who knows what’s up and goes from work to drinks, or work to dinner to an art gallery to a party and never really has to change. She’s comfortable in her own skin. Obviously all very cliché, but that’s exactly who we design for in terms of being a New Yorker or being in Tokyo or another big city. Just a girl that’s on the move and very comfortable in what she does. She’s not just one girl. It’s the girl of many faces.

What are some things you find yourself thinking about when you’re designing for women that you didn’t think about when you were designing exclusively for men?

MO: The idea of ease and femininity is something that we never really thought about for men. We’ve kind of softened that up because a lot of women just want to be feminine. And it’s like, what’s the reason you’re buying a Public School women’s dress? We’re not floral and ruffles all the time. We’re different than that. So what’s our take on that? I think that’s the challenge we always have. A good challenge in designing for women, for our customers, is what’s that line of femininity which also makes it very Public School. So we’re always challenging ourselves and figuring out that piece.

In today’s market, department stores, even luxury ones, are full of sale racks. When you go to an industry trade show, it’s a sea of booths for small labels that no one may ever hear of; It can be kind of easy to get discouraged from a designer’s perspective. Do you ever feel that? That there’s just so much out there, and how do you find that voice?

MO: Yeah, we do feel like that. To be a designer and also be conscious of what’s going on, and knowing that nobody really needs to produce another piece of clothing in this world because we have enough to survive. But at the same time you can’t say that because it’s what you do and it’s what you love. It’s refreshing when you see a brand that has a clear voice and understanding of who they are, as opposed to a bunch of brands that are just doing the same thing and fighting for the same thing. I think that gets a little frustrating. Not discouraging, but more frustrating. As an artist, you want to see other people get excited and inspired. It’s exciting when you see a brand that has its own voice, its own creativity, and its own lane.

Public School is a luxury brand, influenced by a streetwear aesthetic. Some would call that ironic, as there are certain socioeconomic factors that come into play there. Also, when a brand is streetwear influenced, there’s a certain authenticity and exclusivity that contributes to the price point, as well as the quality. How do you balance that, and do you have any thoughts on the irony of having to appeal to a “cool” consumer, but also a consumer that can spend a certain amount of money on products of this quality?

MO: The quality and fabrication help dictate those prices, so showing a baseball cap, but in a different fabric, automatically takes it to a designer price because you used designer fabric. We’ve always tried to blend what we love, like the streets and the highs and the lows — for sure. That’s what we always want to do. We just try to blend those pieces in and own our lane. It’s not just street, it’s not just high fashion or designer. It’s just a mosh pit of it all, all in one. And look at the market place – I’m trying to think of any street brands that are like, really street, but offer high-end pricing without the quality matching. Usually it’s just inspired by the street but still very much luxury. You can say that for Vetements, especially; these ideas of street pieces but done in a not-so-street way. It’s not just a basic French terry, there’s always more elements to it, so it makes sense to me, it warrants that. I don’t think of it as streetwear at luxury pricing for no reason. There is a reason for it.

Dao-Yi Chow: There’s perceived value and there’s inherent value. From a streetwear standpoint, I think brands that have been able to take the perceived value, and take the product up to a luxury price point, I think that’s been the magic or allure of what those brands do. But what we do, it’s inherent value; from the fabrications, from where we’re making the clothes, from the trim that we’re developing… there’s tangible reasons why the things cost what they do. I think that there’s a distinction between those two. You have brands or designers who are able to charge more money for goods and position it from a luxury standpoint based on a perceived value, and whether the actual clothes do or do not merit the price points – it’s not my place to say. For the most part, we try to price everything based on what they cost us.

Luxury and designer clothing used to be reserved for a certain segment of the population, and obviously from an economic standpoint it still is, but this explosion, for lack of a better word, of luxury streetwear, what is that telling us about society? How is that a reflection of the changing face of the luxury consumer?

DC: I think it’s sort of a breakdown of barriers, judgement, and people – streetwear is streetwear because it’s what’s happening now. That’s what streetwear has been – what is happening on the street right now. How do we address it, and how do we take that messaging culturally and turn that into something you wear on your body? And so I think that there’s a breakdown of what people think is important now. What used to be important is no longer important, and so in a lot of ways the barriers are down and people can just sort of be who they are and not feel like they have to pretend.

So there’s not a specific mold for the luxury consumer anymore?

DC: Yeah, I think that’s also from a consumer standpoint, that people are not like, “oh, it’s from this European house and it costs $2,000 and that means that it’s luxury.” Luxury has opened up. The definition of what luxury is has broadened.

There’s a lot of conversation now in fashion press with regards to sustainability and technology. Beyond recycled textiles, what’s the future of fashion as you guys see it with regards to these topics? How do you see the industry evolving, and how are you addressing it in your own work?

DC: The fashion industry in general needs to figure out how to affect its carbon imprint on the world. We were actually in Copenhagen at a summit on fashion sustainability. So for us, it needs to start with being responsible, and not just being responsible in the things we do and create but being responsible for what we imagine, think about, and ideate. Nothing is being created without the thought or the intent, so the intent needs to come from a sustainable place, and we try to work with as few factories as possible. We try to have visibility and clarity on where the products that we’re using are coming from, but ultimately we are not 100% guaranteed. We’re also in a business that makes things we really don’t need. That’s tough to say as a designer, as a person who has a career in fashion. What we do is not very sustainable at all. I think we’re trying to think about it more and affect it in ways where we’re looking at the life cycles of garments that we create and the materials they come from. In a couple of upcoming collaborations, that is sort of the main idea and the main rallying point that we’re trying to get behind. So I think in general, our thought process needs to be sustainable, the ideas need to be sustainable, and then subsequently what we produce and create off of those ideas will be more sustainable. But, at the same time, I wouldn’t say that we are torch bearers.

Speaking of collaborations, you’ve collaborated with a wide array of brands including Tumi, J. Crew, Oliver Peoples, Fitbit, Jordan – could you explain how collaborations really work and why you’re so drawn to doing them?

MO: You know, collaborations are obviously the meeting point in the middle of the two brands. Each brand shares in the other’s aesthetic, but for us when we do these collaborations we’re really just working with the best in what they do that actually fit our lifestyle outside of what we do. So, to work with Tumi, it’s easy because we travel so much, designing luggage was easy for us. It’s like, what do we want from our luggage? And we obviously pick and choose which ones are best for us and the brand. We grew up wearing Jordans. We travel all the time. I wear glasses all the time. So it comes from a true place. It’s not like we’re pulling them out of a hat just to do them. It’s actually coming from things that we’re going to use, and that’s how we design it. It’s how we’re going to use it. We’re not doing it for anybody else, really.

You have a collaboration with Moët that’s coming out also. Can you tell me a little bit more about that.

MO: We’re going to be drinking a lot. (laughs) I guess that’s a start, right? There’s the reason for that one.

DC: Moët is sort of a culmination of this idea of celebration for us, having moments to be able to celebrate and share with other people. And that process actually was really cool because we were able to travel out to Epernay where the wine and the champagne are made. And how the Maison treats it as such an artform. It was eye-opening to see that entire process and see how important that process is to the brand. That was one of the perks of being able to collab with a brand like Moët, which has hundreds and hundreds of years of experience and history.

You’ve been outspoken with regards to your support of Black Lives Matter, and your Fall runway show included caps printed with the slogan “Make America New York.” How important are political movements to fashion, both as an industry and also in direct relation to the clothes that we wear? And does one sort of inform the other?

MO: What’s going on in the current climate of the world is very much where we draw inspiration from. What’s going on right now is what we’re thinking about when designing those collections. We are aware of whatever is going on in the world, in our culture and that’s what we try to put on the runway. So, if it’s about politics then it’s about politics. Black Lives Matter, for me, was the moment when I was just really frustrated. I definitely could have been way more outspoken. It’s cool to have a voice and for it to be listened to for a second. For the runway when we did “Make America New York”– what’s great about New York is that it’s a city that is a melting pot and you can’t hide that fact.

You have a call to action that you label WNL, which has multiple meanings; Where New York Lives, We Need Leaders… Can you explain a little bit more about this?

MO: WNL just sort of started out as an internal mantra, and when we say call to action it’s not really a call to action to anyone else other than ourselves. Originally, it was just highlighting and focusing on friends of ours who we felt were leaders in their particular industry, from a creative standpoint. It’s slowly morphed into more than just a platform where, especially now in this climate, we can express and demonstrate whatever our feelings of activism are and align with other groups and organizations who feel similarly. It’s not meant to be a preachy thing at all and hopefully it doesn’t come off that way. But it’s a reminder to ourselves that we need to do something bigger than clothes or making money. I think it’s a helpful reminder for us to be able to focus on our career, while simultaneously focusing on helping each other or helping people who don’t have as much, or helping people to give a voice to those who might not have one.

And is there any specific charity or philanthropic initiative that you guys are currently working on or actively working on with Public School, as far as that’s concerned?

DC: We work with several organizations. There’s an organization that I’m a board member of that’s called Apex for Youth. It’s the largest Asian American mentoring program here in the states that provides mentorship and college preparation for children of all ethnicities, but focused on Asian Americans that live below the poverty line. We also work with the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and we are planning to partner with the ACLU. We donated the proceeds from the sales of our runway show hats to the ACLU. We’re trying to stay active.

For more information about Public School, please visit PublicSchoolNYC.com – Makeup/Grooming by Laura Stiassni using Sisley @The Wall Group, Hair by Lizzie Arneson @ BRIDGE using Oribe. Art Direction by Louis Liu, Editor Marc Sifuentes, Photographer’s 1st Assistant Mariah Postlethwaite, 2nd Assistant Tom McKiver, Photo Intern Jeremy Hall, BTS DP/Digital Manager Casey Showalter, Senior Digital Tech Nick Korompilas, Production by XTheStudio. Special Thanks to Pier59 Studios.