6 Brilliant Brand Collaborations to Check Out During Frieze London
As London art week kicks off, don't miss these creative presentations by Loewe, Prada, and Tiffany & Co.
The worlds of art and fashion have been flirtatious for as long as any curious eye can recall. The Lobster Dress which sprung out of a creative duet between Elsa Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí in 1983 occupies a unique resonance in both visionaries’s similarly provocative lexicons. For the single-act ballet Le Train Bleu, it was Pablo Picasso who painted the set into his 1922-dated painting azure-washed Deux femmes courant sur la plage and Coco Chanel who helmed the similarly beach-weathered costumes.
Tastemakers in the garment industry more recently have been pushing limits of high fashion’s fated visual codes by adapting the groundbreaking work of bygone artists and translate their subversive languages for new generations. “There is a natural alignment between the worlds of art and fashion,” tells Galerie Emily Glazebrook, Frieze’s Chief Commercial Officer. “Art and fashion collaborations often allow both artists and brands to engage in new cultural dialogues, offering perspectives that bridge both worlds.”
The waltz between art and fashion, however, branches beyond collaborative garments to rather experiential and occasionally philanthropic territories. And art fairs, similar to biennials, are suiting occasions for top brands to tap into art weeks already laden with a creative spirit. Many lauded houses claim a piece of the limelight with their own presentations in which either long-established or young hot artists tailor their visions for a heritage brand’s iconic looks. This overlap particularly erupts with an abundance of happenings around town when an art fair is associated with a fashion capital, such as London and this week’s Frieze.
“Our partners all have a unique role in connecting us into a different world or way of thinking, expanding our audiences beyond our immediate core constituents and reaching new people and we offer the same to our partners,” adds Glazebrook.
1. Elmgreen & Dragset Prada Mode
Perhaps the work of no artist—or duo—is more tied to a fashion house than Elmgreen & Dragset whose now landmark status sculpture Prada Marfa silently sits on U.S. Route 90. Two decades have passed since the Scandinavian duo installed on a sleepy town their faux boutique with shoes and purses cherrypicked by none other than Miuccia Prada herself from her brand’s fall/winter 2005 collection. But their paths cross again for a take-over at Prada Mode in London, which is a series of immersive art experiences that the Milanese fashion house has so far mounted in occasions such as Art Basel Miami Beach in 2018 and Seoul during Frieze in 2023. The moody installation which occupies an alluring sterility like much of Elmgreen & Dragset’s work in three dimension features a film and life-like sculptures of figures donning Prada attires.
2. Loewe Perfumes Debuts Crafted Collection
Loewe builds up on its Spanish craft legacy with a limited edition perfume collection which is bottled in handblown glass sculptures with organic bubbly formations and granite caps. These three new fragrances with notes of oud or vanilla debut at the brand’s Mayfair boutique with a week-long staging which assumes blown glass sculptures by Spain’s 300-year old Real Fabrica de Cristales de la Granja as well as commissioned colorful furniture pieces by contemporary Italian designer Marco Campardo. A sponsor of Frieze’s VIP program, the brand also extends its support on emerging makers with its annual Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, which this year went to Japanese ceramic artist Kunimasa Aoki.
3. Bookmarc Pop-Up at the Standard
Bookmarc is an emblem of 2010s’ New York on the cusp of social media explosion and a new chapter for fashion and celebrity culture. Marc Jacobs’s corner book store for all things fashion and art still stands as a slice of the heydays of power moves in editorial and era-defining images in Manhattan’s West Village. A bit of that aura currently lingers at The Standard’s London location near King’s Cross. The bookstore’s six-month tenure at the hotel’s Library Lounge promises the similar repertoire of its Big Apple origin with all things print on fashion and art, selected by the bookstore’s staff on the other side of the ocean. The outpost will mirror the original shop which still attracts its fanbase with book signings with the likes of Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner, and Carine Roitfeld, as well as a recent book launch with Anna Sui. In fact, the iconoclastic New York designer will stop by Bookmarc London in November for a similar appearance. In September, they hosted 90s’ photographer Pamela Hanson for a casual conversation with hairstylist Sam McKnight to toast for Hanson’s new book, Pamela Hanson: The 90s.
4. Tiffany& Co. x Artist-to-Artists
Joining on board this is Tiffany & Co. with its sponsor of the fair’s ever-exhilarating section Artist-to-Artist which returns for a third year with pairings of established and emerging artists. This year’s six pairings include the multimedia artist Ilana Harris-Babou who makes video and sculpture about the obscurities of the mundane, picked by Camille Henrot, to exhibit game tables, video, and glazed ceramic and cement wall reliefs with Minneapolis gallery, Dreamsong. Amy Sherald, Chris Ofili, Bharti Kher, and Nicole Eisenman are among other nominators who bring to spotlight the works of artists such as René Treviño, Neal Tait, T. Venkanna, and Katherine Hubbard.
5. De Beers Group Presents Immersive Show at Frieze
Amidst the historical treasures and major cultural objects of Frieze Masters, De Beers is partnering with the fair for the first time to premiere “Voyage through the Diamond Realm,” an immersive video experience that celebrates the diamond as one of nature’s most ancient storytellers.
The installation acts as a compelling dialogue between the stone’s natural origins and its role in human history, inviting audiences to trace its genesis from stardust to their discovery in the rivers, deserts, and ice. “Voyage through the Diamond Realm” is the first chapter in a series of immersive experiences that will tour globally across the U.S., India and China, from early 2026.
6. Rick Owens at Carpenters Workshop
The parallel between Rick Owens’s sartorial and industrial designs has grown into an inseparable output. The Paris-based American gothic master’s otherworldly architectural silhouettes and his enigmatic bestial furniture pieces complete one another, coming out of his singular appetite for mythic revelations through extremely tactile finishes. Owens and his life partner and muse Michèle Lamy continue their exploration of furniture’s narrative potential in a new exhibition at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, titled “Rust Never Sleep”. The titular corroded substance lends itself to a series of pieces in which temporality and tactility clash and compliment each other. The dramatic Antler Bed makes its debut with its imposing recycled elm wood body, crowned on its headboard with two antlers that protrude as reminders of nature’s poetic endurance. In Pedalò Rust, a curved rust-covered steel chair is matched with a bulbous camel leather cushion, blending different forms and paces of natural transformations into a hefty result.