Possessed, the much-anticipated Eckhaus Latta exhibit, opened this past Friday at the Whitney Museum—marking the museum’s first ever shoppable space in one of their galleries, as well as their first fashion-related exhibition in 21 years. Split into three sections, the show depicts a distillation of today’s consumer culture. The exhibit, as founders Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta told me, doesn’t have one overall theme as much as it simply poses a question.
There was one question in particular that I couldn’t quite kick: isn’t forcing us to question why we buy the things we do a bit counterintuitive to running a fashion label? Put differently: why leave me mulling over an Eckhaus Latta mohair cropped top I just bought — and which, in certain lights, is a dead ringer for air conditioning insulator — when you could just… not?
It recalls a trend among designers in recent years to portray themselves as approachable — as “one of us.” Maria Grazia Chiuri did it — if quite poorly — when she sent models down the runway in shirts that read “I’m a feminist,” as if that would instantly put her in our good graces. As if putting the phrase “I’m a feminist” on a t-shirt must necessarily mean that it’s true. New York-based label Vaquera does it with their ironic and rather hyperbolic designs — sending a model down the runway in a life-size Tiffany’s pouch, for instance — that seem to be one big, slightly veiled “fuck you” to capitalism. And then of course there’s Demna Gvasalia, whose design-stunts often confirm the meaningless (and rather ludicrous) state of our current consumer culture.
The difference between these designers and Eckhaus Latta, however, is that the bicoastal brand has been doing this since they first launched — long before you could buy a DHL t-shirt for upwards of $200 — and with incredible designs too. And, in doing so, they’ve built an aesthetic that’s distinctly, irrefutably them.
It’s why anyone familiar with Eckhaus Latta would know that the lightbox ads in the first section of the exhibit were obviously made in jest. Because, despite featuring their clothes and oft-used models (barring Gemma Ward — that kind of threw me for a loop), the ads — all glossy, fit for an airport, flashy, and canned — reek of a strain of elitism that’s the antithesis of what Eckhaus and Latta represent. But then, to assume that must mean that their label is entirely inclusive wouldn’t be completely accurate either. And I have residual tremors from their SS17 show to prove it.
Eckhaus Latta’s exclusivity is of an art school ilk. They’re intimidating, in other words, precisely because they often evade clarity. Take their usual show notes — which aren’t exactly notes as much as indecipherable poems. I distinctly remember reading notes for their SS17 show, while waiting for it to begin, and cackling at well, the whole thing, but one part in particular: “As all my flesh moves toward the center of my face like an anus / My eyes are sea urchins and all I can think to say is / ‘Charge her.’” But when I looked up for some sort of chuckle — or at the very least, a nod—of agreement, I was instead met with a sea of self-serious patrons wearing stoic expressions, timepieces and monocles. It left me seriously questioning my sanity, and whether I was missing an essential underlying message behind the poem. “This was funny, wasn’t it?” I wondered. “Our iPhones do still tell the time, don’t they?”
With Possessed, however, the message — and “joke,” if that’s what you want to call our perversely excessive consumer habits — was entirely clear. And the public is certainly in on it.
The second part of the exhibit, the shoppable space, contains racks of clothing that Eckhaus and Latta made specifically for this show, and which you can try on in the makeshift dressing room — which, along with every other display case, furnishing, decoration, and even lighting in the room, was a commissioned artwork by friends and family of the designers.
As they explained it, the exhibit-cum-retail-space is their way of “experimenting within the context of an art institution and what that means when commerce is involved.” Well, for one, it means that visitors are allowed to touch and interact with the art. Bridging the gap between elite art institutions and the lowly art school student, the exhibit left you wondering at times if this was all just an elaborate prank being played on the Whitney. A haphazardly-assembled fan, for instance, adorned with photos of the designers, by the Portland-based artist Jessi Reaves, is titled “I’m a fan.” Socks on display (and available for purchase) bore the phrase, “WHO’S PAYING FOR ALL OF THIS?” And a pair of jeans with “MOST PLACES COME UNDONE” printed on the side — jeans that you can also take home, but that don’t seem to promise a very long shelf life. It’s almost as if they’re testing the Whitney’s patience.
The last room in the exhibit is arranged as an amateur surveillance room, with the entire back wall filled with screens playing footage from Eckhaus Latta’s L.A. store, from retailers that carry the label’s clothing, and a live stream of the actual exhibit. In other words, you have full access to both the consumer-facing and the company-facing side of a retail space. Purchase an item in the exhibit, and you can then relive that purchase in the surveillance room, and examine exactly how you justified buying a knit sweater for $3500, and the fleeting sense of gratification that it gave you. (To be fair, that was just one knit sweater available for purchase; others were much more reasonably priced).
If breaking down the habits of today’s consumer culture in order to illuminate its inherent fallacies seems like a strange decision for people who ultimately rely on such fallacies to keep their business afloat — you’d be right. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps, as Eckhaus and Latta see it, things have gotten so dire — our consumer culture has gotten so out of control — that they’re willing to risk their business to draw attention to it.
Then again, it could just be another grand attempt to convey that they “get it.” That you can buy their clothes guilt-free because they don’t feed into capitalism — they resist it. “Try stuff on, too,” Latta said to me after answering some questions. “Do it” she said, when I told her I didn’t want to be the first.
Eckhaus Latta: Possessed is at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York until October 3, 2018.