Art and fashion combine to reinvent street classics
A multidisciplinary art platform and fashion label is earning rave reviews for its creative reinvention of street classics
When New Yorkart curator George Benias first met George Gorrow, co-founder of Australian fashion label Ksubi, through a mutual friend, the first thing he asked him was what scent he was wearing. "I don't usually get that from guys — especially from straight guys I have never met," says Gorrow. "Then he didn't want me to tell him because he knew what it was straight away. The way he was crazy about scent, I knew, right at that moment, that we would work together."
The two got talking about the collision of their two worlds — art and fashion. "I mean, artist collaborations with brands are nothing new. It's everywhere and there's some great things happening, but we wondered if we could take it a step further," says Gorrow.
Benias, the curator of New York's Allouche Gallery, and Gorrow, whose fans include the likes of Kanye West, Lady Gaga and Cheryl Cole, founded Cocurata, a multidisciplinary art platform and fashion label, in New York last year and now it's making its debut in Asia at Lane Crawford.
Their goal is to blend the two disciplines as much as possible, letting art take the lead rather than fashion, so the results go beyond simply slapping a print on a T-shirt.
Working with a roster of 25 artists, each season they'll select three to co-create a collection, showcasing their work across a variety of mediums, including clothes and accessories, scents and sculptures.
For their first collection, Extraction, Benias called on three talented close friends: Bäst, Paul Insect and Rostarr for a line of street classics and denim.
Hailing from Brooklyn, Bäst is an internationally renowned street artist, and one of the few who has managed to remain anonymous. Paul Insect, known for his colourful Dadaist collages, once had an entire solo show snapped up by avid fan Damien Hirst. Also based in Brooklyn, Rostarr is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited around the world, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
"We used current works from the artists, dissected them and extracted elements from the art, piece by piece, and applied the different levels and layers of the works to clothing," says Gorrow.
As they all formed part of the same movement, Gorrow says, the three artists share an understanding of, and respect for, each other's work.
"Because they know each other so well, this gives a cohesion across the collection, a continuity between ideas and process," he says.
"They all share a deep history of creating work on the streets, so while their subject matter and visual language is varied, there is a deep affinity with one another that binds them, their work and the collection, all together."
