Artistic Creations That Suit the Body as Well as the Mind : * Fashion: Dealer’s one-of-a-kind collection will be displayed and auctioned at a benefit Sunday in Old Town Pasadena.
Susan Hollingsworth wears her art on her sleeve.
And on her legs. And feet. And head.
Call it art-to-wear--although she’d rather you wouldn’t. “That term conjures up those seaside stores that sell tie-dye shirts and beaded necklaces,” says the 47-year-old San Marino woman, who represents artists specializing in “art forms for the body.”
That, Hollingsworth explains, more accurately describes the type of apparel she sells.
“They are beautiful when they are hung on a wall,” she says. “But this is a fluid art form. The clothes come alive when they are draped on the body.”
Area residents can see for themselves at 5 p.m. Sunday during a fashion show and auction at the Armory Center for the Arts in Old Town Pasadena. Admission is $50 and will benefit the 2-year-old Armory Center, an art gallery and art education center at 145 N. Raymond Ave.
Unlike a Ralph Lauren or a Giorgio Armani, an item of wearable art is not mass-produced and cannot be found at Saks Fifth Avenue or I. Magnin. Every work is one-of-a-kind.
The creators consider themselves artists rather than clothing designers. They seek individual expression rather than trying to establish popular fashion.
Hollingsworth began collecting wearable art about 10 years ago while traveling with her husband. In the mid-1980s, she turned her hobby into a business. With the help of Paul Wittenborn, a wearable art specialist in New York, Hollingsworth learned about the field and began representing about 25 of the country’s top makers of wearable art.
In 1988, she put together a catalogue dubbed “Art Forms and the Body” and curated a show under the same name at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“I’d wear these pieces and people would always remark about them,” Hollingsworth says. “I just started thinking that Los Angeles would be the perfect place to sell these things.”
After the museum show, Hollingsworth opened the Wittenborn-Hollingsworth Gallery on Melrose Avenue, where she sold the work for about 2 1/2 years. Since January, she has been working from her home.
“The clothes are very beautiful,” Hollingsworth says. “But they are harder to sell than I expected. It is a very select market.”
For one thing, it is a market that caters to a wealthy clientele, including a stable of Hollywood stars.
The clothes sell from $700 for a hand-painted silk outfit to $7,000 for a headpiece made from silk ribbon.
“A lot of women who can afford these clothes would rather spend the money on haute couture, “ Hollingsworth says. “It takes a woman who is sure of herself and her taste to wear these clothes, someone who has a sense of style.”
Although some people buy apparel from Hollingsworth to display it, either on a wall or mannequin, most intend to wear it, she said.
Some of the pieces are decidedly more wearable than others. The headpieces crafted by Candace Kling, made from satin ribbons, are intricately molded, pleated and pressed into a helmet-like structure. They can take several months to make and seem more like sculptures than hats.
Other avant-garde pieces include a coat by Jane Kosminsky made from hand-punched leather and Dentalium shells. Once owned by singer Elton John, the coat has a leather iguana around the neckline and sells for $4,800.
There is a pair of shoes by Gaza Bowen made from copper and stainless steel pot scrubbers, brass brushes and washers and sink drains. The shoes, titled “The Little Woman’s Night Out,” sell for $4,000. And a Western-style jacket by Jo Ellen Trilling has hand-painted drawings and replaces the traditional leather fringe with miniature skeletons. The jacket sells for $4,000.
The more wearable items include a hand-painted silk velvet coat by Julia Hill that sells for $2,600; a $6,000 wool, hand-dyed and loom-knitted coat by Janet Lipkin, and a loom-knitted and crocheted smoking jacket made from viscose rayon that sells for $1,500.
“The artists I represent express emotions and ideas,” says Hollingsworth. “It is more an expression of the spirit of the artist than of the latest fad or trend.”
