Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1024601
182 culturedmag.com banded stripes and block capitals. Lime green, blush pink and periwinkle were paired with a rich chocolate reminiscent of Louis Vuitton leather. Engaging the now-commonplace reflexive strategies of the logo flip and the bootleg, the collaboration produced one-of-a-kind craft objects while simultaneously pointing out that "authenticity" has become an all but meaningless category. One might wonder if and how Davis will grow No Sesso's prêt-à-porter, given the brand's commitment to unique, labor- intensive handiwork. While the NS 2018-1 collection introduced a handful of sporty basics for sale in their e-shop, a jacket from 2016, completely covered with embroidered depictions of black women in various hairstyles and resplendent gold hoops, required six months to complete. Davis does not see No Sesso's clothes as moveable inventory or even as haute couture, but rather, she told me on the phone, as "art objects that might someday be in a museum." And indeed, No Sesso is already in these spaces and participating in such dialogues. In August, the brand was invited to hold a show at the Getty as the final installment of the museum's summer evening series Friday Flights. Kelsey Lu scored the event and played cello on the runway. For the capsule, Davis took as reference points the ornate historical costumery depicted in the museum's collection, re-contextualizing baroque extravagance within present-day concerns about resources and representation. However, for fashion to become more like art, it must become, in some way, anti-fashion. Even the alleged merger of fashion and art—from artists walking runways to museums hosting contemporary fashion exhibitions—relies upon the same perceptual dichotomies that maintain them as mutually exclusive. Art has (at least in theory) always resisted creating exactly what fashion has relied on—a product that is both reproducible and scalable. And art's value still requires that it remain antithetical to mass anything—mass production, mass culture, mass taste. Slowly but surely, a changing of the guard is underway across these once dauntingly opaque and exclusive creative industries—and metrics of value and taste are shifting too. Among numerous intersecting catalysts, one is an awareness among young creatives like Davis about the limitations of traditional models of representation by and within elite cultural institutions and corporations alike. It has been clear for 20 years that prevailing iterations of identity politics were not subverting the fashion industry, but rather lending it content and credibility. Davis told me that she's frustrated that representations of black, brown and non-cisgender people are often little more than marketing ploys—tactical moves for titillating an ever-widening and diversifying customer base. With a different kind of authenticity in mind, Davis and her peers are insisting on working with and designing for their own communities. They are redefining the terms of and the relationship between fashion, art and popular consumption. They are pushing and pulling at these precarious boundaries, exposing the fundamental instability of hierarchies of culture—of art/fashion and niche/mass. This means looking for alternatives—alternative ways of dressing, alternative communities, alternative measures of success. The runway at the Getty was a fountain on the museum's famous grounds. All looks by No Sesso. Styling by Pierre Davis & Autumn Randolph; hair by Malcolm Marquez; makeup by Paige Marton.