There was buzz: In the grand, gilded salon of the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture, Gigi Hadid sat in the first row wearing one of the prints of the season. Backstage, the cofounder of Each x Other, Ilan Delouis, was giving only a handful of interviews with the Los Angeles–based artist Austyn Weiner. Each x Other’s other cofounder, Jenny Mannerheim, was MIA for the best of reasons: maternity leave. The scene wasn’t entirely new to Weiner: She started her career as a backstage photographer for Fashion Week.
“The media, my journey, and my work have brought me to painting, and now Ilan has brought me back to another side of fashion and its ideas,” she offered. A Miami native, she grew up where the sun shone eternally, yet her mother never wavered from her comfort zone—even if that meant turtlenecks (a sartorial signature that family members still marvel at). Her mom was at the show, and yes, she was wearing a turtleneck. “It’s just the idea of being relentlessly you, whatever you want, whenever you want,” the artist said.
Weiner herself grew up body-conscious “as beings do,” and she seized on those memories to collaborate with Each x Other on fluid shapes. For her, it was a manifesto of sorts, an exhortation not to conform to the clothes, but to let the clothes conform to the wearer regardless of size or shape. “Inclusivity and fluidity in all senses are important to me. I never think of it in a binary way. I’m a painter, so for me, it’s sort of a lifestyle. I hope that this collection reflects that,” she said.
Insofar as the collection touched on her works, that was the case. The Spring Each x Other outing reprised Weiner’s artistic narrative in floral motifs, painterly daubs, and cartoon-like characters. “I wanted it to be very ‘of now,’” the artist noted. Added Delouis, “We wanted to create a wardrobe to use as a media.”
But the baseline—menswear classics transposed for women—lacked punch. The pitch—a “shared gentlewoman’s wardrobe” of metaphorical canvases to wear as one wished, which Ilan called a “timeless, ageless, genderless, seasonless aspect”—translated to a crisp blazer, glossy cropped black trousers, or a caramel overcoat in vegan leather, and a striped shirtdress. But the real personality belonged to the artist.
Of her brief re-entry into fashion, the artist offered: “I appreciate that my life requires nothing more than my own two hands, which is different from fashion, where there are so many people behind the production.”
Perhaps that was the point: This collection is slated for a limited launch in Miami during Art Basel, on October 19th, Weiner will open her first solo show in New York City, and the art pieces are set to be sold online only (with the possible exception of a few artsy pop-ups). Each x Other was founded with the mission to put artists forward. Now, by default or design, it has become the canvas.
