It’s three days before their debut runway show at New York Fashion Week and the Lucky Jewel girls can’t stop giggling. Even as I beam into their Ridgewood studio, the giddiness is palpable. Designers Olive Woodward and Shay Gallagher are digging into racks of clothing, with Lola Dement Myers egging them on from an adjacent Zoom window. “Wait, show her the video of the masking tape pants,” one of them says. “Or the shoes that are covered in cement,” says another, voice indistinguishable amidst the chorus of increasingly absurd suggestions, which include mentions of foam miniskirts and cardboard briefcases. A moment later, when the mirth has subsided, Shay says, with a dawning realisation, “Lucky Jewel is… funny”. All three dissolve into laughter, once again. This is what Lucky Jewel has always been about: friendship, fun, and, yes, fashion.
Lucky Jewel has lived many lives. Prior to NYFW, which saw the collective reborn as a fashion label, Lucky Jewel has existed, at one point or another, as an Instagram account; a string of dinner parties; and a series of exhibitions turned pop-up shops. Initially, the fashion and art collective, as it exists today, was born from a clothing swap, an event smaller in scope, much less formal than a catwalk — albeit no less intimate. Organised by School of the Art Institute students Olive, Holly Richwine, Vivian Xu and Ramona Beattie, and held in Chicago venue-slash-living space Laura, the 2018 event was a means of bringing together members of the city’s art and music scenes. “For a long time, there had been a feeling of torpor,” recalls Vivian. “Everyone in Chicago is depressed but making things, acquiring things, admiring things. We thought: why not do it together?” Collectors and resellers brought vintage garments and eBay finds, while local artists and designers contributed clothing and objects they had made themselves.
The swap at Laura spotlighted — or, perhaps, reignited — the synergy that had always existed within the city’s creative community. Olive, Vivian and Ramona realised they’d stumbled upon something “magical”. Shortly after the first event, and at the behest of much of the community, the trio held a second one, a shoppable gallery show under the moniker Lucky Jewel. And then another. With each event, the collective continued to grow: Lola, then a fellow SAIC student, joined as a digital artist in 2018; a year later, Shay flew in from New York to partake in Lucky Jewel’s next official iteration, named, simply, ‘A Shopping Experience’. Slowly but surely, and, perhaps, inevitably, Lucky Jewel drifted East across state lines, from Chicago to New York City, where it resides today.
Olive, Shay and Lola, the core members of Lucky Jewel’s current incarnation, describe their work as an “event-based practice”; the trio themselves makers of “dreamscapes”, transforming nightclubs, galleries and the like into immersive environments for their revolving crew of collaborators. “We create these worlds for all of these other things to exist in and create a platform that cultivates this community,” Shay says. “It’s an art form bringing all people together.” At a recent installation in New York’s Lubov Gallery, shoes sat atop sludgy cinder blocks and teetering cement towers; graffiti’d FEARSAFE tees and club-ready confections from Giacconi were hung from gothic hangers designed by Lucky Jewel OG Ramona Beattie; various textile mobiles dripped from the ceiling. After all, back in Chicago, the collective was dressing warehouses with sculptures, makeshift tables and beds. “Every time Lucky had an event, there would be a bed in the space, covered in pillows, soft sculptures, etc. — all pieces made by the artists involved in the shop. In the first few pop-ups, the bed also served as the register where you would go to make purchases, but would turn into a place where friends and customers were sitting down and hanging out,” Ramona says.
The collective has now officially relocated from Chicago to New York, and where’s been a subtle shift in aesthetic, their interests remain largely the same. Namely, shopping and community, and the points where these two things inevitably converge. As noted in their Instagram bio, Lucky Jewel believe that shopping is much more than a monetary exchange; it’s a practice, a feeling and a means of connecting with others. “We come to these events to celebrate the works and to appreciate the moment our work gets rehomed,” says multimedia artist Mimi Park, who collaborated with Lucky Jewel on the interiors for their 444 Club and Lubov Gallery installations. “There’s an intimate relationship between the maker and the buyer that’s cultivated through the object they’re transacting,” she says. Lola elaborates: “When you have a special connection to the maker of the object, I think you hold onto it in a different way.
This sort of sentimentality — to have, to hold, to cherish — sits at the core of Lucky’s ethos and its community. “The essence of Lucky Jewel is carrying around the same foam structure for years and years and reusing it,” Lola laughs. Olive explains that she lugged a cinderblock lamp she bought at their second event all the way from Chicago during her move. “We’re always moving things,” Lola continues. “And holding onto things forever,” Shay adds. “The sentimental power of objects and the act of gift-giving can unify people. We always say, ‘I’m giving you this because I love you’.”
After last year’s event at Lubov — and nearly half a decade creating dreamscapes for others — Olive, Shay and Lola decided to shift their focus towards a dream of their own and got to work creating their first in-house collection. “With Lucky Jewel, we’ve sort of had to put our personal practices on hold a little bit. This was a chance for us to get back into making clothes,” says Olive, who studied fashion design alongside Shay at SAIC. “Lucky Jewel has a very DIY history to it. With this collection, we wanted to keep that essence there, but elevate it with nice patterning and tailoring,” adds Shay.
The trio’s SS23 offering, titled ‘Yours Is Perfect’, is the culmination of four years of Lucky Jewel. “We’re looking inward and looking back at all the events we’ve held to try to translate the essence of Lucky Jewel into this wearable collection,” Shay says. This process isn’t all figurative, but quite literal as well. “A lot of the materials we’ve used in this collection have been used in our spaces,” Lola says. Leather tablecloths from past iterations have been reincarnated into low-riders and miniskirts; a blanket that once decorated one of Lucky Jewel’s infamous check-out beds is now enjoying its second life as a handbag; bits of shearling have been recycled to form the marabou-esque neckline of a slinky slip dress.
“This collection also embodies our fantasy idea of a business woman,” Lola explains. “Us as business women.” Shay laughs and reveals that the trio recently — and reluctantly — took on the mantle of the girlboss, themselves: “We recently became a legal business because we had to.” As such, it’s all very ‘it’ girl goes Working Girl: skimpy waistcoats, midriff-baring blazers, pinstripe tube dresses and bootcut bumsters… alongside absurd cardboard briefcases and masking tape pants so tight they wouldn’t afford the wearer a seat at the boardroom table. Call it the wardrobe of the quiet quitter.
Despite stepping out on their own this season, the trio emphasise that Lucky Jewel is — and will remain — very much a collective effort. This season, Lola collaborated with Shana Cave on the collection’s jewellery – dainty necklaces, winding chokers and a logo headpiece — a counterpart to the label’s signature singlets. Off the runway, the trio worked with makers including Basil Marrow, Kai Jenrette and Bill Harvey on a complementary installation at Estrella Gallery’s group show, ‘Friends With Benefits.’ “It’s always a community effort. The power of Lucky Jewel lies in that constant flow of people, constantly working together and sharing things,” Shay says.
With one runway already under its belt, Lucky Jewel have left friends and fans gagging for more. So what does the future hold for the famously amorphous label? “We don’t want to limit what we can do,” Olive says. “We are a store at the core of it, but it feels like we can do anything we want and that’s sort of what we’re doing now with the fashion show and creating our own collection.” Their future, put simply, is expansive. “It feels all-encompassing,” Shay concludes.
Credits
Photography Ben Taylor
Styling Marissa Baklayan
Hair Matthew Sosnowski
Make-up Shaena Baddour
Production Hillary Lui
Casting Nancy Kote and Maya Laner