Andrew Richardson truly does it all. After founding Richardson Magazine, an art and fashion focused publication that explores sex and sexuality through provocative imagery and artist collaborations, he dove into design, teaming up with Supreme on a series of t-shirts. Fast forward twelve years, and Richardson has expanded his label into a full-fledged line featuring graphics inspired by the magazine’s transgressive vision.
Today, Richardson’s first installation with Dover Street Market opens at the New York location’s fourth floor. The pop-up includes Richardson’s spring/summer 15 collection which offers everything from sweats to perfectly tailored coach’s jackets, baseball caps to phallic incense burners; a series of titles curated by Kawakubo’s resident rare book gurus IDEA books; and pages from the mag’s rich archives plastered on the walls. As DSMNY preps for prime Richardson takeover, we caught up with the man behind it all:
How did this installation come about?
I met James Gilchrist [DSMNY’s General Manager] through designer Adam Kimmel as we were planning a collaboration with Adam before he closed his line. James then moved to Dover Street Market, and someone recommended he check out what we were doing—that was about a year and a half ago. As we grew and the line expanded, it made more sense to get in there and create something.
What does the pop up space entail?
We’ve got our spring/summer 15 collection in there, which includes a collaboration t-shirt we did with Richard Prince based on an image of his that was used in a previous issue of the magazine. We also created our own version of one of those promotional t-shirts you get at some place like a hardware store that’s a special collaboration with Dover Street Market. We even used those specific but really generic fonts you often see on this particular type of t shirt. The installation also has an IDEA books component, which is exciting because we’d been looking to do something with them for quite some time. I follow IDEA on Instagram, and Dover Street thought it would be a good idea to include books in our installation as well.
Whether in print or clothing design, you’ve worked with some incredible artists. Are there any you’re dying to team up with?
In terms of the clothing, the art is usually something that I’ve used in the magazine and I feel would make sense translated to a t-shirt. I’d really like to work with John Waters in the future; I think he’d make a pretty incredible punk t-shirt.
We recently ran a piece about designers appropriating existing photographs as current campaigns: JW Anderson reusing Steven Meisel for Loewe, Patrik Ervell sourcing Peter Hujar, and of course Comme des Garcons’ iconic campaigns. As someone who works with artworks and images across different media, what are your thoughts on this trend?
I think it’s great! I think back to Yohji Yamamoto: they just selected the image they thought was cool and then realized you didn’t have to have the product in the campaign in order for it to succeed; I think that was a very liberating moment. What JW Anderson did with Steven was incredible. Bringing things back can actually propel fashion forward and reimagine fashion photography for the 21st century. I see it as, “What a brilliant idea, why didn’t I think of that?” It almost makes you jealous, and I’m always looking to be made jealous by fashion. Whether it’s a show, campaign, or editorial that’s just so good, I’m always looking for that little envious twinge in my stomach like, ‘I wish I’d done that.’
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Image courtesy Dover Street Market