Destination DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION: 1 to 8

With the unprecedented pace of life and work, seeking out sources of inspiration proves both necessary and healthy – regardless of one’s industry. That said, those of us who work in the creative realm, often feel irresistibly compelled to absorb as many forms of stimuli as we can handle to ignite new ideas fueled with passion.

This week, Lior Azoulai (creative director) and I (chief moxie officer) ventured to The Bass Museum in Miami Beach to experience the special DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION: 1 to 8 exhibit.

Walking amid the fanciful couture, accessories and related exhibit photography, propelled me into another world. In this world, an outfit can not only transform one’s persona, but also her or his possibilities. It’s amazing how fashion, even our down-to-earth daily wardrobe repertoire, on some level, represents each of us as a brand.

Indeed, fashion manifests as part of our form of creative expression — this applies to both individuals as a brand, as well as entities.

If you’d like to get transported into the avant-garde world where art and fashion collide, then you must check out the DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION at The Bass Museum in Miami Beach this weekend before it wraps.

The DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION is an incremental project conceived by the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art to consider and trouble the boundaries between art and fashion. Each year from 2007 through 2014, DESTE commissione­d an artist to survey that season’s international fashion offerings and to select five related items with which to execute a capsule project, reflecting on the formal, representational, material and social economies that circulate between art and fashion. Initiated with the Benaki Museum, Athens, in 2014, the exhibition DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION: 1 to 8 assembles all eight years of capsules and project.

Adapted by The Bass in collaboration with the DESTE Foundation, the exhibition design in Miami Beach is created by architect Edwin Chan and marks the first time the collection is exhibited in its entirety within the United States. DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION: 1 to 8 seeks to compare the artists’ fashion selections and their interpretations, and to expose the ligatures, relays and exchanges within the components of the collection. Neither solely about fashion nor about art, the exhibition builds on the tensions, affinities, and distance between the two and the problem of contemporariness revealed in their relationship. Moreover, the show navigates these boundaries through a curatorial apparatus that draws connections among the elements of each capsule, while simultaneously re-inscribing separations, differences and distinctions. Participating artists in the DESTEFASHIONCOLLECTION project are: Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak (M/M Paris), 2007; Juergen Teller, 2008; Helmut Lang, 2009; Patrizia Cavalli, 2010; Charles Ray, 2011; Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2012; Diller Scofidio +Renfro, 2013; and Maria Papadimitriou, 2014.