The Wall Street Journal - 22.08.2019

A12| Thursday, August 22, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

For Fashion Label Public

School, Old Is What’s New

The brand is trying to recapture attention by making clothes from

reused materials as sustainability grows more important to consumers

foundation of the museum’s perma-

nent collection. (Mr. Hirshhorn do-

nated 12,000 works to his namesake

museum, which opened as a Smith-

sonian entity in 1974.)

Ms. Chiu, a native of Australia,

is an expert on 20th-century

Asian art in part because she

championed it during her previ-

ous role as the longtime director

of the Asia Society Museum in

New York. At the Hirshhorn she

said she is “filling in gaps in the

global narrative.”

These missing pieces include Mi-

noru Hirata, a photojournalist who

followed avant-garde artists around

Japan and documented their perfor-

mances, including one event where

artist Natsuyuki Nakanishi covered

a model’s head in aluminum foil and

clothespins.

Another room brims with huge,

colorful canvases covered in breezy,

gestural brushstrokes or diffused

with graffiti materials like spray

paint.

Ms. Chiu said today’s rising-star

painters feel a “fresh confidence”

working on a large scale without re-

lying on traditional oils or complex

narratives, including Brooklyn, N.Y.,

artist Katherine Bernhardt, whose

2016 painting “Toilet paper and cig-

arettes black and pink” nearly spans

an entire wall.

Ms. Chiu said she likes the absur-

dity of Ms. Bernhardt’s everyday

vernacular: “Who paints rolls of toi-

let paper and cigarettes?”

Jill Mulleady’s 2017 painting

“Mother Sucker” depicts an

equally puzzling scene of a gray

monkey with a deadpan gaze cra-

dling a smaller, brown monkey

against a tiny city skyline at night.

Betsy Johnson, an assistant cura-

tor who helped organize the show,

said the Uruguayan artist now

based in Los Angeles is part of a

newer generation of artists fasci-

nated by jarring juxtapositions of

nature and technology.

“It’s supposed to be maternal,

but it also feels uncanny, like it was

pulled straight out of ‘Planet of the FROM LEFT: ALICJA KWADE/303 GALLERY, NEW YORK; MINORU HIRATA/TAKA ISHII GALLERY NEW YORK

the role its manufacturing plays in

harming the environment. Many

consumers, especially millennials

and members of Generation Z, say

concerns about the fashion indus-

try’s toll on the environment influ-

ence their purchases.

Polo Ralph Lauren, Missoni, Ve-

tements and other labels are look-

ing into their archives or vintage

stores for old garments that can

be remade into different ones, a

practice they call upcycling.

Macy’s and J.C. Penney have an-

nounced plans to sell used clothes

in some of their stores. A host of

startups like TheRealReal, Posh-

mark and thredUP facilitate buying

and selling second-hand clothes.

With Public School, “what’s dif-

ferent about this is instead of say-

ing we are going to use more recy-

clable materials, they’re saying, ‘No,

we’re stopping our business, we’re

resetting it...we’re rebuilding our

brand based on these principles,’”

said Julie Gilhart, a fashion consul-

tant with an emphasis on environ-

mental matters and a former Bar-

neys New York fashion director.

Public School’s move carries

risks. Making merchandise from

older materials increases expenses

for the small, independent label,

because it’s labor intensive to de-

construct, then reconstruct, re-

claimed fabric, said Mr. Mak.

Customers will notice higher

prices. “It’s how do you make peo-

ple understand that this is a better

footprint for us but it’s maybe a lit-

tle bit more expensive because it’s

more work to do?” said Mr. Os-

borne. A pair of shorts made from

vintage sportswear pieces, for ex-

ample, costs $300. A cropped parka

made from Japanese twill dead-

stock—surplus material that manu-

facturers don’t use—costs $875. A

pair of cargo pants made from a

deadstocked fabric costs $295.

“Any brand changing direction

is risky business,” said Michael

Fink, dean of the School of Fashion

at Savannah College of Art and De-

sign. “Will the brand’s cool-factor

be affected? Will [reused] mer-

chandise appeal to the previously

loyal customer?”

But Public School’s designers

have shown a knack for capturing

the zeitgeist before. After re-

launching in 2012, Public School’s

Messrs. Chow and Osborne won

the industry’s attention with

clothes that uniquely fused

streetwear, tailoring and athletic

influences. The clothes had atti-

tude and so did the designers, ad-

dressing political themes in their

collections. Fashion editors ele-

vated the duo to fashion-industry

darlings. The label accumulated

awards for its menswear.

In 2014, Public School expanded

into womenswear. Retailers includ-

ing Barneys and Saks Fifth Avenue

carried its collections. Messrs.

last summer. Since then, Public

School has been working on mak-

ing more of the line from repur-

posed materials. It declines to say

exactly how much is made that

way currently.

Shoppers have taken notice. Akil

Wilson, a 37-year-old barbershop

owner in Washington, D.C., noticed

a post about the strategy on the

brand’s Instagram account earlier

this year.“Iwasimpressed, I

thought it was forward-looking,” he

said. “There weren’t too many

brands that I liked that were paying

attention to this. It’s good that one

of my favorites was doing that.”

Laura K. Wise, a 32-year-old so-

cial-impact writer and editor in

Dallas, supports but doesn’t yet

own Public School clothes. But af-

ter seeing a post about the brand’s

environmental ambitions on Insta-

gram, she said, “I absolutely will

buy. This is something I personally

care about.”

Steven Kolb, president of the

Council of Fashion Designers of

America, cited the label’s plans to

develop a business that helps other

brands be sustainable as a factor in

its winning the top award of the

CFDA+Lexus Fashion Initiative,

which supports brands fostering

sustainability. With the $100,

prize money, Public School plans to

implement a program that supplies

streetwear-oriented and concert-

merchandise brands with tees and

sweatshirts made with reclaimed

and responsibly-sourced materials.

“It’s a well thought-out approach

to rebranding,” says Gary Wassner,

chief executive officer of Hilldun

Corp., a lender to many fashion

brands. He doesn’t see any down-

side “except for execution—and that

will be up to them.”

Chow and Osborne became the

creative directors of DKNY, the

contemporary line of the former

Donna Karan label, in 2015, while

still running Public School. Mean-

while, they collaborated on lines

including Nike’s Jordan brand.

But the DKNY collections

weren’t a hit with consumers, and

in late 2016, the designers and

DKNY parted ways. They and Mr.

Mak started to rethink Public

School’s business amid big shifts

roiling the industry, including the

retrenchment of department

stores, consumer demand for

more-frequent releases of clothing,

and the rise of direct-to-consumer

fashion startups. In 2018, the label

moved to selling solely on its web-

site and via a pop-up store.

As they looked at how to move

forward, the designers became in-

creasingly interested in using old

fabrics and clothing. “Continuing

to just make product on product

on product just feels really irre-

sponsible and old,” said Mr. Chow.

At a sustainability conference in

Copenhagen in 2017, the designers

heard Eileen Fisher, whose label

pioneered resale a decade ago, dis-

cuss her company’s initiatives.

The conference “was a big turn-

ing point for us,” said Mr. Chow.

The designers visited Eileen

Fisher’s factory in Irvington, N.Y.,

to learn more about reusing old

clothing. “They were very hands

on,” said Carmen Gama, design

and production manager for Eileen

Fisher’s “Waste No More” pro-

gram, which recycles garments.

The brands collaborated on a

collection, released in 2018. Then

Public School’s designers applied

what they learned to their own

line, debuting upcycled garments

PUBLIC SCHOOL,the edgy New
York fashion label, once was hailed
as the next big thing. Now, it’s try-
ing to recapture attention with a
new tack: making new clothes
from old clothes.
The label has been overhauling
its business in the past year and a
half. The goal: to make as much as
it can from surplus fabrics that
would otherwise be discarded, or
refashioning vintage clothing. A col-
lection of hoodies that debuts in
October, for instance, will be made
mainly from surplus fabrics. Ulti-
mately, the designers behind Public
School plan to make a substantial
portion of its products from sur-
plus, vintage or recycled materials.
It’s an ambitious sustainability
effort at a time when such endeav-
ors are very much in vogue. The co-
designers behind Public School,
Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne,
say the move is motivated by both
environmental and business rea-
sons. At its peak about four years
ago, the label was carried by Bar-
neys and Saks Fifth Avenue. But it
lost momentum and switched gears,
now selling only via its website and
a pop-up store. The brand now
brings in less than the $4 million it
hit in sales at its height, said Alan
Mak, a managing partner.
“This decision is probably
equally motivated by a [socially]
conscious one and a business one,”
said Mr. Chow. “From a purely
business point of view, this was a
business decision that we felt
would ensure the longevity of our
brand, moving in the direction
that our industry is moving in.”
Public School’s move comes as
the fashion industry grapples with

BYRAYA.SMITH

Apes,’” Ms. Johnson said.

Other highlights include Berlin-

based Alicja Kwade, whose glassy

installations explore ideas about

optics. Ms. Kwade, who grew up

near the Berlin Wall, has a reputa-

tion for investigating the way audi-

ences see her works as they walk

around them.

The question situates Ms. Kwade

in optical-illusion territory mined

by greats like Marcel Duchamp and

Richard Serra, but her “World

Line” piece from 2018 offers a fresh

take, Ms. Johnson said. The work

looks like a set of window frames

standing in a zigzag formation

alongside a scattered group of tree

trunks. As people pass by, they see

that some of the panes are mir-

rored and some of the seemingly

wooden logs are made from con-

crete or cast in bronze.

“You think you know what

you’re seeing, but the work is de-

ceiving you,” Ms. Johnson said.

(The piece is the first major in-

stallation by the artist to be col-

lected by a U.S. museum.)

Other pieces in the show explore

elements of poetry, subtly in the

case of French artist Laure Prou-

vost, whose 12-minute video “Swal-

low” lends the exhibit its title, “Feel

the Sun in Your Mouth.” At one

point in the piece the artist whis-

pers the phrase; the video other-

wise is punctuated by a staccato of

gasping breaths and bucolic scenes

of birds and nude bathers.

Ms. Johnson said the artist made

the 2013 work during a six-month

residency in Italy, and “Swallow”

uses technology to “conjure the

senses” like a travel memoir.

WHEN MELISSA CHIUwas hired
to run the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden in
Washington, D.C., five years ago,
she took a hard look at its collec-
tion and found the holdings were
strong in modern sculptors like
Henry Moore but weak in works by
women and anyone living outside
the U.S. or Europe.
Since then, Ms. Chiu said she
and her curatorial team have
sought to broaden the museum’s
scope by organizing shows of art-
ists like Yayoi Kusama, the Japa-
nese painter of polka dots whose
mirrored “infinity room” installa-
tions helped to draw 1.2 million
visitors to the Hirshhorn two years
ago—more than doubling the mu-
seum’s typical annual attendance.
“That was a game-changer for
us,” she said. The crowds that
snaked around the doughnut-shape
museum building as they waited in
line gave her curatorial team the
confidence to keep reshaping the
collection’s canon. So far, they have
added roughly 150 works by dozens
of artists by way of donations and
purchases for an undisclosed sum.
On Aug. 24, the museum will re-
veal a selection of these newcomers
in the exhibit “Feel the Sun in Your
Mouth: Recent Acquisitions.”
For the new show, one gallery is
lined with black-and-white photo-
graphs documenting 1960s-era per-
formances by other Japanese artists
who were overlooked when Latvian
immigrant and financier Joseph
Hirshhorn assembled the modern
and postwar art that formed the

BYKELLYCROW INTERNATIONAL REACH: Minoru
Hirata’s ‘Natsuyuki Nakanishi’s
Clothespins Assert Churning Action
(Clothespins on a model at the artist’s
studio for Hi Red Center’s event, 6th
Mixer Plan, in Tokyo, May 28, 1963)’

The New Game Plan for a Smithsonian Showcase

Public School’s upcycled track shorts,

made with vintage sportswear pieces.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP RIGHT: EILEEN FISHER; PUBLIC SCHOOL (2)

A Public School

parka made from

surplus twill. Far

right: Public

School’s Dao-Yi

Chow and Maxwell

Osborne with

Eileen Fisher’s

Carmen Gama.

LIFE & ARTS

WOMEN ARTISTS: The Hirshhorn Museum has expanded its offerings of

works by women, including Alicja Kwade’s ‘WeltenLinie’ or ‘World Line’ (2018).