Wear LACMA taps designers of LFrank and the Great for a floral-filled spring 2018 collection
LFrank’s Liseanne Frankfurt and the Great’s Emily Current and Meritt Elliott are the latest local designers to join the Wear LACMA fold by designing apparel and accessories inspired by pieces in the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts’ permanent collection.
Frankfurt, a jewelry and lingerie designer, took inspiration from works in the Pavilion for Japanese Art including a 19th-century red lacquer tea carrier adorned with gold leaves, the watercolor painting “Banana Tree in Rain” by Hirafuku Hyakusui and a kimono textile fragment dating to Japan’s Edo period to create silk robes, slips and sleep masks adorned with similar flora.
The Great’s Elliott and Current chose a trio of American West landscape oil paintings as an inspirational starting point: Granville Redmond’s “California Poppy Field” (circa 1926), William Keith’s “California Pines” (1878) and “Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe” (1864) by Thomas Hill. The result includes a vintage-looking denim jacket and sweatshirts popping with all-over poppy embroidery; a green, military-style jacket with an embroidered landscape on the back; and women’s T-shirts screenprinted with mountainous landscapes. (The Great’s offerings also include sweatshirts and tees in children’s sizes.)
The art-meets-fashion mashup is the brainchild of Katherine Ross, a fashion consultant who formerly worked at LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (and the wife of LACMA Director Michael Govan). Since October 2012, it has seasonally tapped local design talent to create limited-edition items inspired by pieces in the museum’s permanent collection.
Last season’s fall 2017 offerings included a tasseled floral lei designed by RTH founder René Holguin (inspired by an 1876 Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez painting) and a 14-karat gold-plate choker necklace designed by Gabriela Artigas & Co.’s sisters Gabriela and Teresita that took inspiration from a 15th-century pair of hammered gold tweezers.
Previous Wear LACMA designers include Lisa Eisner, George Esquivel, Greg Lauren, Irene Neuwirth, Juan Carlos Obando, Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy and Libertine’s Johnson Hartig.
The Spring 2018 Wear LACMA collection officially launches June 6 at the bricks-and-mortar LACMA Store at 5905 Wilshire Blvd. and online at thelacmastore.org with proceeds benefiting the museum.
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