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A little after 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, a crowd found their way to Great Jones Alley, a few blocks north of SoHo’s onetime renegade art scene, for Rachel Comey’s spring 2024 runway show. Industry types and faithful fans of the designer took their places on slim benches, in defiance of the heat wave hanging low over the city. A phalanx of photographers gathered at the far end, where Comey’s young daughter and her friend claimed impromptu spots beneath the lenses. Overhead, neighbors leaned out of apartment windows and ventured out on fire escapes, in anticipation of a particular kind of New York moment: a high-brow happening at street level.
Right in the center of it all was Joan Jonas, a white-haired luminary in Rachel Comey print pants, seated not far from the sound system that would soon play a score by Vorhees’ Dana Wachs: contemplative drone layered with interview clips of the 87-year-old artist. “You don’t go for poetry to begin with. You don’t go for magic,” Jonas said in a voiceover, speaking about the creative impulse. “You cannot make a work of art without structure.”
Two blocks south, at a loft space on Broadway serving as backstage, the same rang true for the collection, where Comey signatures—soft tailoring, denim in unexpected silhouettes, airy dresses designed to catch a merciful breeze—set the framework, with Jonas supplying poetic inspiration. Comey credited a friend at Soft Network, an organization that forges connections between artists, with the introduction. “Joan is in SoHo, where she’s lived for 50 years, and I’ve lived and worked in this area for 25,” said Comey, who paid a visit to the artist’s studio and pored over materials from the Gladstone archives. Jonas, 87, with a retrospective at MoMA next spring and an upcoming Drawing Center show, remains a prolific force—another reason she is a lodestar for Comey and others. “She crosses between all different media, from performance to drawing to installation,” said the designer. “I feel very lucky that she was so generous.”
Some of the resulting nods to Jonas’s career are evident in the clothes—such as a poster for the 1976 installation, The Juniper Tree, here translated into a textured minidress. Other references are more oblique. Stills from 1989’s Volcano Saga, featuring a young Tilda Swinton, migrated onto fabric. Comey gestured to a nearby model wearing a blazer and maxi skirt over a plunging yellow tank. “It’s a swimsuit, actually,” the designer said, explaining that its print takes after one of Jonas’s pieces. “She loves the water. She’s very connected to nature. But I was trying not to delve into her content and her narratives as much because I wanted to be inspired in a different way.”
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