August News Roundup
1.
The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts – known as SWAIA – held its annual Native Fashion Show 2024 this past August. Indigenous designers celebrated their heritage through exploring traditional techniques and materials and melded them with fashion-forward silhouettes. Five designer collections were featured at the show, including the dramatic feathered and intricately beaded pieces by Plains Cree fashion designer Jontay Kahm, as well as the romantic prairie prints of Arikara, Hidatsa, Blackfeet, and Plains Cree artist and fashion designer Lauren Good Day. Check out all the runway images from the show here.
2.
Floral and fauna frequently serve as creative sources for designers when formulating collections, but co-founders Bradley Seymour and Fabrizio Taliani are taking it one step further and turning to the charms of horticulture for their elevated workwear label Rovi Lucca. Inspired by the gardens of Tuscany, which the duo discovered during the Covid lockdown, Rovi Lucca takes sportswear silhouettes and infuses them with Italian craftsmanship and style. To learn more about the brand and their love of the natural world, click here.
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, photo courtesy of Kit Leong / Shutterstock.
3.
North Boulder is getting a creative campus that will include a new facility for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), as well as a master plan for a new mixed-use campus. Five firms have been shortlisted for the project, with the winner of the competition to be announced this winter. Stay tuned for more details as they emerge.
4.
New York based emerging fashion label Commission has been gaining traction over the last several years. Winners of the LVMH Prize in 2020, founders Dylan Cao and Jin Kay – natives of Vietnam and South Korea, respectively – have a cult following for their contemporary reworking of timeless silhouettes. This article features an interview with the duo’ and discusses their design process, what inspires them, and how they seek to redefine Western stereotypes of Asian identity through their exploration of East Asian culture with Commission.
Maria Callas as Giulia in the Opera "La Vestale", by Gaspare Spontini, 1954, Teatro alla Scala, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
5.
Months ago, I wrote about Maria Callas being my Current Inspiration, and how she is trending in popular culture. With the screening of the film “Maria” at the Venice Film Festival, more space is being dedicated to revisiting Callas’ sophisticated, elegant style and public persona. Here, WWD looks at the designers Callas collaborated with during her career, as well as how she has affected the actresses who have portrayed her both on stage and in film.
Newsletter cover photo: Jontay Kahm, photo courtesy of Premeditated Chaos
