This Sunday, more than a hundred well-dressed guests gathered inside a sunlit warehouse in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard for the unveiling of Canadian designer Jason Wu’s latest collection. But what they encountered first was not clothing, but a ten-piece installation. Arranged in a loose maze across the floor were seven-foot-high framed screen prints by American artist Robert Rauschenberg, presented as part of the artist’s centennial and on loan from his New York–based foundation.
Then the main event began, with models dressed in clothes referencing Rauschenberg’s textiles. The pieces were layered with image transfers from 1970s newspapers and magazines, sourced from months of scouring the artist’s archive. While sweeping retrospectives are usually the occasion for curators to unearth overlooked corners of an artist’s career, Wu dove into research at the foundation, leading him to Rauschenberg’s Hoarfrost series, considered little studied by art historians.
“It really felt like having a typical graduate research team there,” Courtney J. Martin, director of the Rauschenberg Foundation, told ARTnews minutes before the show began at around 5pm. The foundation’s staff, she said, had not guided Wu toward any particular chapter of the artist’s career, instead giving him the freedom to explore. “There was a commercial he did in the 1980s, but since then this is definitely the most substantial project. It did feel like Jason wanted to be in conversation with Rauschenberg.”
When the runway portion began, models circled the warehouse floor multiple times, their garments slowly revealing the depth of Wu’s references to Rauschenberg. Early looks offered subtle nods to collage, while later ones grew bolder: one dress resembled a shredded floor-length gown rendered in paper-thin fabric, while another, in sheer organza, was cropped and cut in ways that obscured how it held together at all—closer to a canvas study for a painting than a conventional gown.
If Wu’s collaboration with the foundation achieved anything, it was momentarily pulling Rauschenberg out of the rarefied world of museums and handing him over to a more lived-in space for experimentation. One of the show’s most striking pieces drew from postwar history: a faded pink strapless dress cut to mid-thigh with fabric spilling from the hips featured a print of a 130-year-old Purina dog food ad. The reference came directly from Rauschenberg’s use of appropriated imagery of the household product in the Hoarfrost series, reviving the cheekiness that American artists of the 1960s applied to consumer culture.
Wu was not alone in drawing from art during New York Fashion Week this year. Proenza Schouler staged its first runway show under new creative director Rachel Scott, founder of the label Diotima, at Olney Gleason in Chelsea, the successor gallery to Kasmin. The gallery announced its rebrand in August, five years after the death of founder Paul Kasmin. For both Proenza Schouler’s Scott and Olney Gleason, the show marked a new creative beginning.
Elsewhere, Seoul-born, New York–based designer Ashlynn Park presented her eponymous label at the International Center of Photography on Sunday, setting her minimalist, largely monochrome designs against Iranian artist Sheida Soleimani’s photographs of injured birds in a show titled “Panjereh.” Park, who already has three gowns in the Met Costume Institute’s permanent collection, has in recent years earned recognition from design researchers. Her reputation for being thoughtful and pared down fit well with the museum setting.
Wounded animals weren’t just aesthetic props for Park’s show. She told Wallpaper that migration and flight from home were themes she considered while building the collection. Soleimani walked in the show, and her experience as an immigrant was part of the calculus for presenting the pieces alongside her work. Park suggested the pairing was a way to convey what her clothes can’t make visible. “Her work is about the window,” Park said.
Park and Soleimani’s collaboration began two months ago. Park had initially considered building a show around Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of landscapes degraded by manufacturing, given her recent focus on sustainability. But when she came across Soleimani’s work at ICP, she decided to reach out. The two discussed Park’s mother being in Korea and her own experience living between two countries. Park found some kinship in Soleimani’s personal history.
“The museum wasn’t just offering as a backdrop without my consent,” Soleimani told ARTnews.
Over several weeks, Park worked to understand Soleimani’s practice, and the two shared visual references: pattern work, photographs, film. Finally, when Park’s team invited Soleimani to be dressed for the runway show, she got even closer to the designer’s process during a fitting in New York. The team wanted to know about the artist’s own style, ultimately selecting an all-black full-body set from Park’s archive with the artist’s input—a twin ensemble to the look that opened the show, where Soleimani sat in the front row.
Soleimani said she felt real respect for Park’s process, describing the pieces as highly technical and not just made for what’s marketable or for ultra-thin bodies.
“Usually, it’s all about centering the brand,” Soleimani said. “This wasn’t like that. I thought, this is another woman of color in her field thinking not just about cultural history, but about forging new paths forward.”
