The Museum of Contemporary Art’s landmark “Skin & Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture” show, curated by Brooke Hodge, celebrates two disciplines beloved by people on the creative side of the event industry, and the collaboration between Rabin Rodgers and Nogues-Ball on MOCA’s opening-night gala was very much a love letter to the artists of the hour. “We were inspired by the exhibit,” said event producer David Rodgers. “I know all the designers’ and architects’ work. It was the perfect project and the perfect client.”
The production and design team worked closely with Vanessa Gonzalez, MOCA’s development events manager, and the museum’s fete committee, chaired by Pamela J. Smith, to come up with a design that referred to fashion and architecture in both obvious and subtle ways. In creating the indoor-outdoor cocktail area at the entrance of the Geffen Contemporary location, where the dinner was held, the designers used building blocks that were, well, building blocks of clothing. They created them from nine tons of discarded jeans and colorful shirts pressed and bound into 130 small and six large mounds used as seating and as camouflage for the DJ’s booth. (The clothing came from Julie’s Trading Company and was later returned so it could be donated to Afghanistan and other third-world countries.)
For the area just inside the entrance, architecture, industrial design, and fabrications firm Ball-Nogues designed a canopy made of colorful T-shirts from United Textile, which were tied together to form netting. “We conceived of it as an upside-down dress form,” Gaston Nogues said. “We wanted it to appear as if it had been a tornado of fabric, which was forming this sexy and alluring shape.”
Architectural references in the event design included bromeliad centerpieces, with the plants tucked in curving air ducts on the cocktail tables and pleated wire mesh on the dinner tables. With such a dramatic tableau greeting guests, Rabin Rodgers kept the dinner area visually clean and modern, with white tablecloths and Chameleon seats covered in white ultrasuede zippered up the side.
The evening began at the Grand Street location, where the museum’s 600 guests, including design notables Narciso Rodriguez and Ruben and Isabel Toledo, strolled through the exhibit. At 7 PM they hopped shuttle buses or drove the short distance to the Geffen Contemporary, where they sipped cocktails until a dinner of spiced yam and beef and lemon
tart with chocolate leaf was served at 8 PM. Fashion-world minstrel Rufus Wainwright regaled the crowd, which left around 11 PM, toting mementos of the evening: white saucers designed by Martin Margiela and Visionaire 37: [Diana] Vreeland Memos, a boxed set of notes penned by Vogue’s late legendary editor.
—Irene Lacher
Posted 12.08.06
Photos: Josh White (event), Courtesy of Ball-Nogues (process)
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