Still so far behind on artist collabs so bear with me as I try to catch up. Last spring Estée Lauder teamed up with Tokyo-born, New York City-based street artist Lady Aiko for a small collection consisting of two lipsticks and two Micro Essences.

Estée Lauder x Lady Aiko

Estée Lauder x Lady Aiko

As skincare falls outside the Museum's purview and the Micro Essence is not cheap ($120 a pop) I did not purchase them, but I'm sort of wishing I had even though the designs are the same as on the lipsticks. I feel they can be seen a little better on the bottles than the lipsticks.

Estée Lauder x Lady Aiko, spring 2020
(image from sg.asiatatler.com)

Lady Aiko (Aiko Nakagawa) was born and raised in the bustling Shinjuku area of Tokyo. She was always creating – whether drawings or collages – and also enjoyed painting with an artist who lived in the neighborhood.  "[There] was a painter lady who lived on the corner and my mother supported her as an art tutor. So when I was five years old I used to go to her studio and paint with her a lot. That was my favorite thing to do when I was young," she says.

Lady Aiko at age 5

The artist at age 5.

Upon moving to New York City in 1997, she began working for the legendary Takashi Murakami. Aiko knew very little English, and while the Internet existed people weren't connecting online the way they do now. It was Murakami's signature happy flower posted on a flyer that helped get her start. "I found an advertisement in a Japanese supermarket in the East Village. I came to New York alone and I didn’t know anyone, so it was hard to connect with people and it was very expensive to make a phone call to Japan. I was just starting to learn English and I was looking for artist community. So I went into the supermarket and I found an advertisement that said 'Assistant Wanted.' I saw that cute character that Murakami does, and I thought it was something I can try and maybe I can make some friends. So I knocked on the door and said hello. His studio was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and this was 1998, way before Williamsburg became what Williamsburg is today. I remember it was quite a scary area at that time. The studio itself was very small. It was really intimate before he became a super well known fine artist. I was helping him for about a year and a half, painting and taking care of the studio as he was getting ready for his first solo show, Super Flat, in SoHo. I also documented the production and made a documentary film about the show. It was a small production at this point, but I really liked it because it was the first time I got to see a Japanese artist working in New York City, and it was really inspiring."

Aiko left Murakami's studio after a year and a half and earned an MFA in Media Studies at The New School. Over the next few years she worked as the founding member of an art collective known as FAILE, where the roots of her signature motifs such as butterflies and flowers began to take hold. In 2006 Aiko established herself as Lady Aiko. The first stencil work she intended for street art was an image of a bunny holding a spray paint can, which she had thought of in 2005 during her time with FAILE.  "I remember when I was in London, Banksy said he liked it and I should keep doing it, even though no one got it at the time.  So I started stenciling the bunny along with some images of sexy girls, and other romantic images. I have been stenciling that image everywhere from Toyko to Shanghai, Instanbul, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Scandinavia and of course throughout the States…Bunny knows all my missions and we have been spreading little smiles to huge wows in every local neighborhood." The bunny has since become possibly Lady Aiko's most recognizable work, gracing everything from Banksy's bathroom door (her very first painted Bunny) to the sides of buildings like this one in Copenhagen.

Lady Aiko, Bunny in Copenhagen, 2019(image from pinterest.com)

The image was even turned into its own toy in 2008, just three years after Lady Aiko created it.

"Aiko Bunny", Lady Aiko and Kidrobot, 2008
(image from trampt.com)

I also really like the bunny as a Dunny, which was released in 2010. I picked it up because it worked well as a prop and it's adorable. I especially appreciate the "Girls Can Play" slogan on the back.

Lady Aiko for Estée Lauder, 2020

As Lady Aiko acclimated to New York's urban environment and expanded her artistic skills, she gradually found street art more appealing than working in a studio. "There was another girl who was working at Murakami’s studio, and her boyfriend Cer was a graffiti writer, so he introduced me to graffiti while I was working at the studio…When he came to studio and picked her up, he showed me his sketch books and photographs. That was something new and shocking in a good way. I discovered that there was this group of people that were getting together and going to an underground tunnel, or to somewhere abandoned, just to make some art and have a good time. I was a curious young girl, and I thought that’s something more interesting than sitting in a studio all day and making tedious and detailed artwork for a Japanese artist…I wanted to join them and work on crazy art on the street," she recalls.

Lady Aiko, Dubai Walls Festival, 2016
(image from graffitistreet.com)

The democratic nature of street art and relative anonymity it afforded while still being able to connect with others were also attractive to Lady Aiko. "For me, street art was a way to make friends since I didn't have YouTube or Facebook, Instagram. So it's like leaving my hashtag and my art mark on the street…I didn’t know anyone when I moved to New York, I didn’t even speak English, so street art became my language. I met a lot of artists through painting on the street, and we taught each other and grew together. When I started, painting on the street was illegal. I didn’t want to show who I was, at the risk of being arrested, so no one knew I was a woman. No one knew I was Japanese. They only knew me through my painting. I wanted to be a mysterious monster and let the work speak for itself…I think street art is art for everyone. It’s not for the fancy people, it’s for everyone and everyone can see it."

Lady Aiko, window display for Isetan department store, 2014
(image from thebeesknees.art)

Unlike most other street artists, Lady Aiko utilizes a stencil technique. While stencils appear fairly simple to make at first glance, the amount of work and time involved in hand-cutting the hundreds of stencils necessary to create a large-scale work is no easy feat. Aiko elaborates on the painstaking process:  "You have to spend a lot of time before [you] start painting. I normally cut stencil all by my hand it's like my first stage of the production. For this wall [in Eugene, Oregon], I spent two days cutting stencil and sometimes like I spent like months and months just cutting stencil for a big size wall. And after you cut the stencil I need to carry all the pieces of paper to the site. I need an assistant when I do a large scale mural because the size of [the] stencil is also enormous…there really aren’t a lot of stencil artists out there anymore. Nowadays they do a lot of machine cuts, but I do it all by hand." Whew!

Lady Aiko bunny stencil

But Lady Aiko actually enjoys the process as well as the physical rigor involved in painting on such a large scale. "I think street art is also like an athletic game for me. Like climbing up the ladder, up and down, and up and down, and carrying buckets of paints. It's like, you know, an athletic game."

Lady Aiko at work on a project for the Standard Hotel in Hollywood, 2010
(image from youtube.com)

Stylistically Lady Aiko's work differs from that of Yoon Hyup, the Korean-born street artist/muralist who collaborated on Bobbi Brown's spring 2019 collection, but thematically they are similar in that both pay homage to their cultural heritage, fusing traditional influences from their respective native countries with a modern city's energy. For Lady Aiko, distance from Japan helped her learn about and respect Japanese art and history all the more. "The more I stay away from Japan, the more I appreciate my country, culture, traditions. I’ve started to study more about Japanese heritage, because I discovered it’s interesting and super unique, and I am from there. Especially the art, fashion and culture in the Edo period, which was all invented and created by working class people in old Tokyo, we used to call Edo City. We used to have such great art forms and techniques such as Kabuki, tattoo, calligraphy, kimono textiles, wood block prints. These were amazing skillful art forms invented in 17th century. Hokusai and Utumaro were the original ukiyoe print masters, and I love and respect them as great artists. Printing was not just happening in the Warhol times, it was happening all the way back in my country 200 years ago. I thought 'holy shit! I didn’t realized that my great grandfathers were doing such dope stuff.'  I also discovered that old Japanese people used to do graffiti. The Japanese word for graffiti is RakuGaki. Raku means drop and Gaki means draw, so they used to make a drawing or a print, and they used to drop it on the street anonymously so that people would pick it up. It could be more for a political purpose and message, but it sounds like street art and sounds fun. We also used to have beautiful sticker culture, in that same time around the 17th century. It’s called Senjafuda (Thousand Shrine Tags), it’s a piece of tiny paper with a small wood block print.  They drew their own symbol, name, crew etc. and they used to carry glue in a small pot and a brush, and when we would go to a temple or shrine once we finished praying we would put their stickers on the ceiling so that our soul will remain in the temple to be protected. That was part of their ritual in the samurai time, but I feel I have that similar kind of ritual when I put my sticker on the street where I have visited and spent some time. Before I left Japan, I was young and ignorant, and I thought it was just normal thing. I couldn’t think that deep. I knew, but I didn’t feel Senjafuda as such a special art form and I wouldn’t search out the origin of RakuGaki.  Since then I have spent about 15 years living outside of Japan and working on street art, and I discovered all those beautiful Japanese traditions, but some are disappearing and being forgotten, so now I enjoy talking about it and reflecting it into my art very much."  One of the many examples of how Lady Aiko incorporates elements of traditional Japanese art was her mural for her mural for the Japan Society's exhibition "Edo Pop: the Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints" in 2013, which was inspired by Japanese wood block prints (ukiyo-e). A modern stenciled version of Hokusai's The Great Wave functions as a backdrop for a mix of cheerful pop art style flowers and butterflies, as well as a woman with a shunga (Japanese erotic art produced from about 1600-1900) inspired tattoo on her back.

Lady Aiko, mural for the Japan Society's exhibition Edo Pop: the Graphic Impact of Japanese Prints, 2013(image from metropolismag.com)

Speaking about the wall she painted for Eugene, Oregon's 20 x 21 mural project, Lady Aiko further explains some of her iconography. "She's a Maiko, it’s an apprentice of geisha, and she's a trainer to be a dancer. And I chose this motif because it's very young energy around her and really festive…My wall is really tall and skinny so I had a little time to think about the execution. I chose this way to express day and night, like flip the girl, and it’s like a playing card. I like the butterfly. It’s an image of transformation and I feel like not only women, but for everyone, like we have the moment of transformation and I really like to keep painting the image of a butterfly in different countries."

Lady Aiko, "Japanese Sisters" mural in Eugene, Oregon, 2018(image from klcc.org) 

The playing card motif has become Lady Aiko's literal signature. The mural she completed for Opening Ceremony in Seattle shows it particularly well. 

Lady Aiko, mural for Opening Ceremony (Seattle), 2017

Her style is also inspired by vintage pin-ups, comic books (I'm getting Lichtenstein vibes) and tattoo imagery, which really shine in these gorgeous Coney Art Walls she painted in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Plus, MERMAIDS! I love that she worked in an homage to the famous Coney Island Mermaid Parade.

Lady Aiko, Coney Island Art Walls, 2015

Lady Aiko, Coney Island Art Walls, 2017(images from ladyaiko.com)

Lady Aiko generally maintains an upbeat outlook in her work, trying to spread positivity and beauty. "I love to create images related to romantic momentos, lovers and kisses. My subjects are pretty much always about romantic stories, lovers and sexy girls in everyday life. My name, Aiko — which is the most common Japanese girl’s name — means love. Love has been my theme throughout my entire life, even from early childhood…I enjoy making something that gives us a good feeling, and creating something beautiful that I can share with everyone. Something that is full of love."

Lady Aiko, Bushwick Collective mural, 2016(image from about-street-art.com)

Occasionally Lady Aiko's representations of love delve into decidedly erotic territory, such as the murals for a 2019 show entitled "Beyond the Streets".  Creating a red-light district of sorts, Lady Aiko combined shunga with the seediness of '70s era Times Square. But while the images could be interpreted as degrading depictions of sex workers, they were intended as an unabashed celebration of women's sexuality and pleasure. "People used to draw really sexy stuff in my country, so I'm making this whole section sexual and pornographic. But also it's more about women. You see [in the work] more sexual energy from women than men. My red-light district is more about how women want to have good time. We also want to enjoy some sexuality…Guys can paint sexy ladies that they want to fuck but the female figure is ours; it’s also for us to enjoy. It’s nothing against boys; I’m just celebrating female energy."

Lady Aiko, walls for "Beyond the Streets" exhibition, 2019

The painting on the right is a re-imagined version of another Hokusai work, a shunga print from 1814 entitled The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.

Lady Aiko, installation for "Beyond the Streets" exhibition, 2019. Photo by Martha Cooper.(images from northcountrypublicradio.org and beyondthestreets.com)

Hokusai, "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", 1814
(image from wikipedia.org)

Between the fairly explicit portrayal of women's sexuality in "Beyond the Streets" and her other equally eye-catching, thoughtful work, Lady Aiko has proven herself a critical player in a new generation of street artists who are changing the way graffiti is perceived in the art world. In the eyes of academics, galleries and museums, for many  years street art was snobbishly viewed as nothing more than vandalism (in fact, Aiko was arrested early in her career), but now it's being curated by the likes of gallery owner and art dealer Jeffrey Deitch.  Over the past 20 years or so, Deitch and others have set up specific (legal) spaces for street artists to compete for a chance to show their work. One such space is Manhattan's Bowery Wall, which Lady Aiko had the honor of being the first woman to paint. After completing Miami's Wynwood Walls in 2009, Lady Aiko set her sights on the coveted Bowery, but felt she "had to let the boys do it first". Finally in 2012 she was awarded the opportunity.  "Wynwood Walls was one of the first big walls that was painted by a woman and that got good attention, and people started to know about me and my serious stencil murals. People started to realize that female artists also can paint a big wall."

Lady Aiko, Wynwood wall, 2009
(image from thewynwoodwalls.com)

Lady Aiko recognized the importance of women contributing to the Bowery Wall, inviting others to participate in the process. "It made me think, it must be my time? For years, that wall had always gone to guys. I waited to paint it for three years. I got the call, and I called my girlfriends as I wanted to make it a 'female only' wall! I called five of my good girlfriends, from the girl whose does my nails to Martha Cooper (the legendary photographer). There were loads of people watching and I think they really appreciated the fact that there were all these girls working away, it bought a new vibe to the mural scene. We did the wall, I felt honored." The feeling of camaraderie with fellow women made a lasting impression on Lady Aiko's process. "I was really tired of having it be dudes vs. girls. I think I got traumatized. Now when I do my own big wall I always call my girlfriends first. They care more about mementos and enjoying the process, instead of it being 'my idea is this' or 'my idea is that.' I enjoy the work and enjoy the time together."

Lady Aiko, Bowery Wall, 2012
(image from lady-aiko.com)

Despite this and the emphasis on femininity in her work, Lady Aiko never saw her own identity as a woman as the main aspect of her art, bristling at being asked to join women-only exhibitions and referred to primarily as a female/woman street artist. This is sadly common among women who work in a male-dominated profession. In 2017 Lady Aiko made it clear she would no longer be entertaining questions about being a woman in street art or participating in women-only exhibitions. From her Instagram: "Hello to people who are trying to reach me but unfortunately I'm not interested in answering your topic #femaleartist and #femalething movement anymore. I have been puking since hundred of people started asking me all of sudden to participate #femaleartexhibition and interview about #femalestreetartist. Yes I was only a girl in the early #streetart #graffiti era and everyone else had dicks, sure I love #pussypower because I own it, but Im not pushing and selling myself professionally as #womanartist. I am individual #artist since I was little child, when dick or vagina didn't matter. Personally I had depressing childhood in Tokyo that all girls in my class ignored me for semester, just because I was cute eccentric, good at playing ball games with boys, riding cool black bike not the pinky one, chilling with live crocodile not Barbie doll, stupid reasons. Group of girls were scary trauma to me. Making art was and still is great escape from such everyday's dark clouds. I deeply support women who are having very difficult situation in our society, I've seen they are really fucked up but I am not fighting against opposite sex. I feel everyone else like you should stop talk about gender issue like cool fashion. There must be more unique theme to research and present. Hope you like my answer, peace out" My takeaway from this statement is that while Lady Aiko broke significant gender barriers in street art, she doesn't want being a woman to define her work; her point was about the art world needing to focus on content and style more than identity politics.

Lady Aiko at work
(image from thewynwoodwalls.com)

Getting back to the Estée collab, I still have no idea how it came about or the level of creative control Lady Aiko was given. The interview posted by the artist on Instagram didn't offer much information, other than how she appreciates skincare that will protect her from the different weather conditions she encounters while painting outdoors in various locales.

Estée Lauder x Lady Aiko

The official Estée Lauder video for the collaboration, although pretty, didn't have any real insight either.

I would have liked to see imagery specific to Estée Lauder or makeup more generally. Lady Aiko's collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2013, for example, represents her style but also acknowledges the Louis Vuitton brand and seemed to be designed to work well as a repeating pattern on a scarf.

Lady Aiko for Louis Vuitton, 2013
(image from acclaimmag.com)

For Estée Lauder, however, it seems Lady Aiko just added a few of her signature motifs on the Micro Essence bottles and lipsticks, rather than modifying her usual designs to clearly indicate it was a beauty collaboration. I'm a little disappointed – I would have loved to have seen the Maiko figure applying lipstick or just lipsticks in Lady Aiko's vintage tattoo style – but who knows what the story is. Perhaps Estée preferred to keep it simple.

In any case, I really like Lady Aiko's playful yet provocative aesthetic. There are so many different elements involved and many of them speak to me, especially the references to traditional Japanese art, the curvy retro pin-up girls, and the old-school tattoo illustrations. You wouldn't think that images of a geisha and a 1950s American tattoo-inspired rose would mesh well, but Lady Aiko's unique vision harmoniously brings these disparate forms together. I also admire the painstaking labor behind the stencils and her fearlessness at tackling the equally arduous process of getting them onto the walls.

What did you think of this collection and Lady Aiko's work? I so wish I could have seen those Coney Island walls in person and have my photo taken with the mermaids. Stay tuned for a piece on Estée's next artist collaboration with Åsa Eckström!

Duro-Olowu_I was compiling trivia focused on the topic of makeup-fashion collabs to put on Instagram a little while ago, and as with artist collabs, I quickly saw just how few were with Black designers.  Even worse is that I realized the Museum was missing one of the two official collabs with Black designers there have been (which, again, like artist collabs is unacceptable and needs to change.)  Estée Lauder teamed up with Nigerian-born, London-based designer Duro Olowu in the summer 2019, which coincided with the tremendous grief I was experiencing as a result of my dad's stroke earlier that year and the loss of my parents' home that August.  Needless to say the collection slipped by my radar. Fortunately I was able to track down 2 of the 4 pieces and I hope I find the rest eventually. 

The collection consisted of two palettes (one for more casual daytime wear and the other for evening), and two lipsticks in neutral and red shades.  Two makeup looks were modeled by Anok Yai, a Cairo-born model of Sudanese descent.  She became the face of Estée Lauder in 2018 and is, in her own words, "obsessed with makeup".

Duro Olowu for Estée Lauder - daytime palette

Duro Olowu for Estée Lauder - night palette

Duro Olowu for Estée Lauder

Duro Olowu for Estée Lauder lipstick

Anok Yai modeling the Duro Olowu collection for Estée Lauder

Anok Yai modeling the Duro Olowu collection for Estée Lauder

The packaging borrows prints from Olowu's fall 2016 and 2017 collections.  Anok also modeled a dress made by Olowu for the collab.

Duro Olowu, fall 2016

Duro Olowu, fall 2016(images from vogue.com) 

According to Essence, Olowu had always been a fan of Estée Lauder and was thrilled when they approached him to collaborate. Originally he was responsible only for the packaging, but that quickly shifted to choosing the makeup shades as well.  Olowu wanted to create something for everyone. "If you’re a man, you really can’t quite imagine what it takes to decide on the right shade for your skin, especially in this world we live in with women of different ages, ethnicities and skin shades. I really thought long and hard about that and tried to bring that into the mix. It was a really great learning experience for me," he says.  Olowu infused the collection with his signature ability to harmonize seemingly disparate themes.  "My aesthetic is about mixing things that wouldn't normally be mixed together," he told British Vogue. "The idea is that the woman who wears this makeup looks like herself, but also who she wants to be.  She's worldly, cosmopolitan and international.  The collection is representative of all types of beauty – it's a global approach.  That's what we wanted to create."

Duro Olowu for Estée Lauder - day palette

So who is Duro Olowu?  Born in Lagos to a Jamaican mother and Nigerian father who had met and lived in England previously, Olowu was used to spending the summers there to see his mother's family and visiting Geneva for his father's business trips.  Olowu attended school in England as a teenager and earned a law degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury before making the switch to fashion design.  With this background, it's no wonder a he arrived at his trademark cosmopolitan aesthetic.  The designer explains: "I would spend my time browsing in the Kings Road, Kensington Market and Hyper Hyper and going to clubs like the Wag, the Mud Club and warehouse parties. I managed to do very creative things in an important period of style and music in London, and I wanted to experience  all the aspects of that time. From New Romantics to  Leigh Bowery, punk and reggae, all mixed in. I read up on fashion from Vionnet and Saint Laurent to Fiorucci and knew all about that…I was particularly inspired by certain designers when I was young. Yves Saint Laurent, Stephen Burrows, Azzedine Alaïa, Madame Grès, and Walter Albini and Issey Miyake. My mother wore Rive Gauche when I was growing up, often mixing it with pieces of traditional Nigerian clothing and other pieces picked up on holidays abroad. I felt that these designers bought so many very different elements of culture and style into the realm of their work. The beauty of women was very inspiring to me, as were my parents, who loved clothes."

Duro Olowu, spring 2021
(image from vogue.com)

In 2004 Olowu launched his own label with a single dress that mixed pieces of vintage couture fabrics and new ones with his own prints on a loose-fitting, Empire-waisted silhouette.  The "Duro dress," as it came to be known, was an instant hit among both fashionistas and critics and put Olowu on the international fashion map.  Soon the designer was dressing the likes of powerful women such as Michelle Obama.  "I'm just amazed by how women can do so much regardless of natural or imposed obstacles, and I feel that it's my duty to make sure they look good and feel comfortable doing it…whether I'm initially inspired by Eileen Gray, Miriam Makeba, Pauline Black, or Amrita Sher-Gil, I always end up designing for women of all ages and ethnicities, women whose way of life and work I respect. Then I hope that the clothes I've come to, with them as inspiration, would be of interest to them…I want to make women feel confident in an effortless way," he says.

The "Duro dress", 2005
(image from cnn.com)

Says fashion writer Chioma Nnadi, Olowu's art history knowledge is "astonishing", and it informs his designs along with his personal background. "My prints are inspired by my Nigerian, Jamaican, and British backgrounds, as well as my love of art. Over the years, I have developed a curatorial and enthusiastic knowledge of historic and contemporary fabrics and textiles from all over the world. The mixing and draping of printed fabrics and textiles is something I have been exposed to all my life in the places I have lived or on my travels. It has been a signature of my womenswear collections from the very beginning and remains an integral part of my work. Fabrics always tell a story, and, when mixed well, exude the kind of joie de vivre and allure I am constantly inspired by…The color palettes of my prints are often by inspired art and artists, including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Henri Matisse, Alma Thomas, Robert Rauschenberg, Alice Neel, Chris Ofili, Édouard Vuillard, El Anatsui, Lee Krasner and Toyin Ojih Odutola."  I can absolutely see these influences in his color schemes, but what's even more impressive is how Olowu imbues his collections with the spirits of his current muses without directly referencing them and creates a whole new aesthetic in the process.  For example, for his spring 2020 collection he was inspired by photographer Beth Lesser's images of Jamaican dancehalls in the '80s as well as sketches by Picasso's lover Francoise Gilot.  As Nnadi points out, the former can be seen in the wide leg pants and some of the dresses' ruffled hems, while Gilot's are embodied by the drapey, flowing silhouettes and softer floral prints.  I'm blown away by how Olowu combines and reinterprets the vibes of these two totally different bodies of work while also adding his own style to the mix.

Duro Olowu, spring 2020(images from vogue.com)

Images from Dance Hall: The Rise of Dance Hall Culture by Beth Lesser(images from lostinburanism.tumblr.com and timeline.com)

Joe Lickshot with Prince Jazzbo and his son on Olympic Way, photo by Beth Lesser
(image from caughtbytheriver.net)

Duro Olowu, spring 2020(images from vogue.com)

Francoise Gilot sketchbook
(images from taschen.com)

Francoise Gilot sketchbook(image from nytimes.com)

While his clothing is wonderful, it's Olowu's curatorial experience I find most extraordinary. In 2008 Olowu married Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which further intensified his appreciation of art across all mediums. He curated his first exhibition in 2012 at New York's Salon 94 Freemans, followed by two more in 2014 and 2016.  All were so well-received by the public and critics alike that the exhibition catalogs had to be reprinted after repeatedly selling out.  Olowu's most recent exhibition, Seeing Chicago, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) is one of the most innovative and unique curatorial endeavors I have ever laid eyes on.  Comprised of 367 (!) works from all different eras ranging from painting and photography to crafts and books, the pieces are arranged salon-style to enhance the dialogue between them. Olowu's love for Chicago grew out of his long-term partnership with the boutique Ikram.  "I first came here because I've been working with Ikram, a fantastic store, for about 16 years…I was just amazed at the unique nature of the Chicago mindset. They're not followers; they do their own thing, and they're very proud of what is within their city, without showing off. And in that way I felt that sometimes you overlook actually what is there and how amazing it is." From there he  gathered objects he felt best represented the diversity and character of the city.  "I wanted to show old school, curious collecting from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, along with community and philanthropic collecting, in a forward-thinking way," Olowu tells CR Fashion Book.  "It was intuitive how it came together—the variety of having Matisse, Louise Bourgeois, and Glenn Ligon in the same space with Rashid Johnson, Martin Puryear, and Lorna Simpson. I did not purposefully seek any of the art—the artwork itself called me." I love the idea of art or objects "calling" – it happens to me when organizing the Museum's exhibitions, although sometimes I'm driven by certain words or phrases that just keep sticking in my head.

Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, 2020

Instead of arranging artwork into neat categories, Olowu takes an unexpected and refreshing approach that still makes sense thematically. Explains MCA (soon to be Guggenheim) curator Naomi Beckwith, "I don't think we realize that when we go to museums, oftentimes the work that we see in one specific gallery or in one show is usually like for like. That is to say that all the works in African sculpture are in the African galleries. All the works by French painters of the late 19th century are in another gallery by themselves. All the pottery from Asia is either in the Asian gallery or in the decorative arts gallery. We began to separate things out in ways that feel logical, but what it doesn't often allow is for things across cultures to speak to each other, or things across time periods to live with each other. Duro kind of ignored those basic art historical claims and just asked us to realize the affinities that art may have, across the country, across the world, across time." 

The colors of the walls and pedestals reflect the color palette used by Amanda Williams in her iconic Color(ed) Theory series, in which she painted structures slated for demolition in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood and named each to represent an aspect of Black consumer culture.  By using these colors for the exhibition decor, Olowu connects the objects both to each other and to Chicago's history.

Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, 2020

"Both as a fashion designer and as a curator, [Duro is] interested in bringing cultures and cultural objects together in an exchange and in a conversation that allows things to speak to each other in an equal plain, without hierarchy, without a sense that one thing is superior to another, or better than another, or that one culture, one geography, one place or one history should supersede another," continues Beckwith. "And really the question for his practice is, how do we allow all this to live together, in a kind of egalitarian beauty? And you'll see that happening in the exhibition."  This is a far less elitist approach to curation that we typically don't see in major art museums. Underscoring this more democratic methodology was the display of outsider art alongside canonical names like Kerry James Marshall and Jean Arp.  "He’s not making big distinctions between self-taught and academically trained artists. He’s looking at furniture as much as sculpture, at craft as much as painting.  We're at a moment in art history when we're seeing deep dissatisfaction with the standard narratives," notes Beckwith.

Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, 2020

The last room presents a group of mannequins observing the art, meant as stand-ins of fellow museum visitors.  While they're dressed in Olowu's designs, they're intended to emphasize his community-minded approach towards art and curation.  "They are looking at the art, and at you…there is a relationship between the eye and the heart, outside of genres and contexts. One of the joys of art is that it can bring people together—through diversity and unification, all divisions are gone," he says.

Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, 2020(images from crfashionbook.com)

In short, Duro Olowu was meant to be a curator, more so than a fashion designer, and I hope he pursues curation full-time. I love his clothes, but I find his exhibitions even more inspiring. My spirits are also buoyed up by the fact that his shows have been generally well-received without him having any formal curatorial training. I would dearly love to have him curate an exhibition for the Museum, although since he doesn't consider fashion to be art, he probably wouldn't consider makeup worthy of curation either. Plus, his style may be very difficult to translate to cosmetics.  As Jessica Baran points out in Art Forum, Olowu's aesthetic can veer into commercial territory. "[At] its worst the display method mirrored the style of luxe domestic decor and retail store design (in fact, Olowu’s first curatorial endeavors were seen as extensions of his London boutique, which is organized similarly). Full of surface seductions 'Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago' masked with its immersive pleasure its myriad contradictions, many of which are mirrored by fashion itself: a global industry blinkered by its own excesses, situated somewhere between haute merch and popular necessity, expressive art and practical consumability."  You know I despise any museums in which makeup is presented as something to buy rather than appreciate – it's something I've been even more mindful of since I interviewed an exhibition designer so many years ago – but I think I could channel Olowu's vision and put together a broadly focused show in his style that celebrates the diversity of makeup and its history without it seeming like retail. The ideas are flying fast and furious now so I better go so I can jot them down. 😉

What do you think of the Estée Lauder collection and Olowu's fashion/curation?