It’s always a pleasure to see a brand and an artist grow, and Greg Polisseni’s Artistix line has been making major strides this season.
The biggest news is that they’ve added Andy Hilfiger as artistic director, and after a rollicking men’s week presentation this summer, they charged into New York Fashion Week on one of the main stages (and Tommy Hilfiger showed up backstage for added kicks). The brand has a definite rock-and-roll aesthetic and Polisseni himself looks like he could be a rock star, but he is really a painter, and an artist at heart, and his abstract paintings inform the entire line.
From jackets to underwear, the free form brush lines that are seen in his paintings are transferred to the clothing. There were also some nice solid color body suits and jackets, and the models strutted with attitude; this was not a show where the girls were staid or stiff. Accents were super minimal, consisting mostly of thin gold chains and sunglasses.
A word about the color theme and the music selections; besides hints of blue in the abstract patterns and those gold necklaces, almost everything else was black or white, and the monochromatic theme worked quite well. Every song complimented that aesthetic, from AC/DC’s “Back In Black” to The Rolling Stone’s “Paint It Black,” and the show-closing “Black Or White” from Michael Jackson. The Artistix shows always have a great rock soundtrack (and truth be told, aren’t shows with rock or pop songs always more fun than monotonous beats or ambient noise?) and this was the first time the songs were united around a common theme. Here’s looking forward to more evolution with Artistix.
-Jason Jaskot
