Gary Graham

Gary Graham is an artist who approaches fashion design as a material culture of elegance and decay. His work often combines historical narratives with fictional characters, blurring distinctions between past, present, and future in mysterious and unexpected ways. For over 20 years, Graham worked in the fashion industry as his own label, Gary Graham. Known for his engineered jacquards, knitwear, intricate detailing, embroidery, and his own signature prints, Graham's ready-to-wear collections have been featured in stores such as Barneys New York, Barneys Japan, Dover Street Market, If Boutique, Trois Pommes, and boutiques across the globe. Each iteration of Graham's distinguished brand and aesthetic efforts to forge new realities through process, collaboration, style, and drama. Raised in Newark, Delaware, Graham studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon graduation, he moved to New York City and began working for Artist and Designer J. Morgan Puett, learning the craft of garment dyeing and less formal approaches to textiles and historical interpretation. In 1999, he designed his first collection, and in 2006 he opened the first designer clothing boutique at ABC Carpet & Home. Three years later, Graham established his own boutique in Tribeca and was honored as a CFDA/Vogue finalist. The boutique achieved an instant cult following that still emanates today. Over the years Graham has collaborated with artists and museums in installations and performances that explore history as a living experience. Working with institutions, such as The American Folk Art Museum, The Peabody Essex Museum, and The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Graham has mined museological archives for inspiration and incorporated pieces into his own collections as textiles or surface treatments. In 'The Conversation,' presented in 2015, he collaborated with artist Meredith Monk to recast her iconic 1979 recording 'Bird Code' within an installation of historic furniture and textiles. Then, for his Fall 2016 collection, Graham filmed 'Palacetor,' a trailer casting some of his most creative cliental as seven female archetypes, including Kara Walker as "the General" and Parker Posey as "the Magician." In 2017, Graham worked with the Rhode Island Historical Society and Pollack Associates to design a textile collection inspired by three locales, showcasing the work with an installation of furniture, video, performance, and sound. Graham's latest project, GaryGraham422, is a site-specific, multidimensional operation stationed in Franklin, NY. Launched in 2018, Graham designs intimate collections drawn from local histories, using vintage and antique textiles as well as jacquards and wovens from domestic mills. As a studio, storefront, and a living space, GaryGraham422is the physical and conceptual reincarnation of the Gary Graham brand and a reflection of his aesthetic mission: looking back to look forward.