An interactive exhibition celebrating style, culture and art hopes to draw and delight weary fashion editors at New York Fashion Week this September.
Digital lifestyle media company Refinery29 is outfitting a 50,000-square-foot waterfront warehouse in Greenpoint in Brooklyn with 29 rooms that showcase art installations, performances, virtual reality experiences, film screenings, and music. Collaborators from the worlds of fashion, beauty, food, art and design include Shantell Martin, Hattie Stewart, CONFETTISYSTEM, Charlotte Tilbury, Petra Collins, Danielle Levitt, Amirah Kassem, Print All Over Me, Hisham Bharoocha, Crystal Moselle, and the women of ALDA. The multi-sensory experiences are designed to shine a light on issues facing society today, such as gender identity, body positivity, and politics.
Speaking to Blouin Lifestyle, Refinery29 founding partner and executive creative director Piera Gelardi says the installation, titled 29Rooms, is to celebrate the company’s 10th anniversary this year.
“We wanted to bring our site to life in a physical way so the audience can have an immersive experience of our brand,” she says, adding that art was a natural medium given her own background in studio art, which she studied at New York University. “We were inspired by the emotional and unforgettable immersive art installations we had been to over the years. The element of surprise is something that has always been important for us, because the content on our site is driven by things that the audience doesn’t expect.”
Finding a location that already came with 29 rooms — alluding to the number in the company’s name — was also fortuitous, Gelardi adds.
The visually-driven playground comprises concepts including: “1,000 Questions,” where artist Shantell Martin invites participants to answer the question “Who are you?” by writing on the wall using Sharpies provided on a string; “Literary Heroines Fashion Dioramas,” where visitors can peek through tiny holes in hallways to discover whimsical dioramas that celebrate two literary heroines: Alice of Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz; “Drive-In Cinema,” a desert-inspired movie theater that will screen short films from cutting-edge female directors such as Crystal Moselle, Ry Russo Young, Jessica Sanders, Janicza Bravo, and Tatia Pileva; and even a bouncy castle — in the shape of an oversized women's handbag styled with props, such as inflatable lipsticks and a cellphone.
Meanwhile, London-based doodler Hattie Stewart has designed “Art In The Dark,” a room for guests to dance through black lights and a silent disco (pictured above), and “Sound In The Clouds” (pictured below) is a space where guests can pop their heads inside “clouds” and listen to music curated by Saint Heron, the new movement under Solange Knowles' label, Saint Records.
Courtesy of The Gathery for Refinery29
“Style is at the core of whatever we do, and we view it as something that influences many more life choices that women make today. Home is part of style, and even what you eat is part of style,” explains Gelardi. Staging this experience during New York Fashion Week was to “create an open conversation about fashion content [that has traditionally been] very exclusive and top-down, bringing it to the audience [in a way] that they can access, understand and bring into their own lives.”
The 29Rooms exhibition is free and open to the public on September 11 and 12, from 12 noon to 8pm, at 15 Huron Street, Brooklyn, New York.
