Highsnobiety Debuts HighArt Platform
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Sylvie Fleury-designed crystal dildos in blue furry boxes, Ikepod x KAWS watches, and red lipsticks by Laurie Simmons and Edward Bess will all be available on Highsnobiety’s new HighArt platform.
Building on the content festival format it launched with its Not In Paris project, HighArt is a platform that blends content, commerce and experience, kicking off with a blitz of Miami programming, including a month-long pop-up HighArt Museum Store in the Design District as part of Art Basel Miami.
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“We really wanted to take this moment in Miami to explore this idea of how for our generation art and fashion are almost one thing now — they coexist and operate with each other. Our audience is someone who can just as easily be a collector of fashion, as they can of art. We created this concept store called HighArt. The concept of the store was to create a museum store without the museum,” said editor in chief Thom Bettridge.
Also launching Monday is an e-commerce store, where the products in the Miami store will be available — including clothing, art, books and lifestyle goods — curated by Highsnobiety founder David Fischer, Sarah Andelman of Just An Idea, and Jeanne-Salomé Rochat, creative director of Novembre Magazine. The drop will also include a capsule of HighArt merchandise, including apparel, accessories and stationery.
This all coincides with the release of Highsnobiety’s HighArt magazine, which features cover star Bad Bunny, photographed on location in Miami by Awol Erizku, and conversations with leading creatives such as Virgil Abloh, Nigo, Grimes, Dan Graham and beyond.
It was announced at the end of last month that Abloh, the founder of luxury streetwear brand Off-White and artistic director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton, had died age 41 following a private battle with cancer. Bettridge said that Abloh was a “real master” of melding fashion and art together, “whether it was having Lawrence Weiner do graphics on his clothing or having artists work with him directly as consultants.”
“It’s really like a 360 things for us. We created a print magazine with Bad Bunny on the cover. We did a lot of artist contributions in the magazine. We did artist contributions for the store. With these things we really try to hit every single angle,” added Bettridge of all the different elements of the platform. “At Highsnobiety we’ve been expanding and expanding our presence as a retailer and so going forward I think this format of these shoppable, experiential and content driven flagship projects is a really big part of what we’re doing.”
As previously reported, Highsnobiety is said to be exploring a potential sale and Bustle Digital Group, the publisher of Gawker, W and Nylon, has emerged as a potential suitor. Highsnobiety is said to have hired Aryeh Bourkoff’s boutique firm LionTree to handle the situation. Bourkoff was one of a group of investors who purchased W magazine last year.
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