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The exclusive fashion drops, art openings and collaborations injecting your May with motion

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52 minutes ago

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May 2, 2026

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Press Room

The exclusive fashion drops, art openings and collaborations injecting your May with motion

“Spectacular Brooding” by Harmony Holiday at REDCAT

Harmony Holiday, Excerpt from “Cry Variations,” 2026. Sprung dance-floor, Ballet barre, 2-camera documentation with camcorder and self-wear camera, Audio and Projection playback system, bench, mirrors with ephemera and written material, lightbox.

(From the artist and REDCAT)

Contemporary artist, poet and Image contributing writer Harmony Holiday explores Black grief through an idea she calls the “Black Backstage” in her new show. With a gallery space split between a dance studio and a film editing room, the exhibition weaves elements of choreography, documentary, oral history and ritual. Open through July 5. 631 W. 2nd Street, Los Angeles. redcat.org

F1 X Louis Vuitton

Kicking off the start of the Formula 1 season in 2026, Louis Vuitton is displaying trophy trunks at every Grand Prix ceremony this year. For the winners, the champion trophy will emerge out of the monogrammed case. louisvuitton.com

“Several Eternities in a Day” and “Space Is the Place” at Hammer Museum

Guadalupe Maravilla, "Disease Thrower #16," 2021.

Two shows open at the Hammer this spring, exploring cultural heritage across the Americas and the idea of “‘space’ as a conceptual framework,” respectively, through living material sculptures, paintings, installations and mixed media works. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. hammer.ucla.edu

Gucci’s the Art of Silk Rodeo Drive exclusives

Gucci’s new collection of silk scarves features two designs created exclusively for the Rodeo Drive store and LACMA, in time for the opening of the David Geffen Galleries. Available now. 347 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. gucci.com

Clare Vivier X Wallshoppe

Walls need refreshing too. Give your home a French lakeside feel with whimsical patterns from the Clare Vivier X Wallshoppe collab. wallshoppe.com

“Tokala” by Marcus Correa, Carlos Jaramillo and Thomas Lopez

“Tokala” is a new photography book illustrating climate and social justice through the lens of 13 activists from 11 regions, cultures and spaces across the country. Photographed by Carlos Jaramillo and styled by Marcus Correa, the book is available at Now Instant. 939 Chung King Road, Los Angeles.

Street Grandma opens in the Arts District

Playful, feminine, masculine, oversize shirts and pants. Street Grandma’s new showroom features its unique silhouettes in a space that feels — as the namesake suggests — like nana’s house. Open Saturdays by appointment only. 941 E. 2nd St., Los Angeles. streetgrandma.com

“Ninety-six and Pissed” by Magdalena Suarez Frimkess at Marciano Art Foundation

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess "Untitled," 2025 Pencil and colored pencil on paper Unframed: 24 x 18 in.

Part of an array of new openings for the spring, artist Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’ show “Ninety-six and Pissed” features more than 30 new cartoon drawings, expanding her universe of irreverent “caracteres.” Opening May 6. 4357 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. marcianoartfoundation.org

“Nascence” by Maddy Inez at Megan Mulrooney

Maddy Inez "Blood Bloom," 2026 Glazed Ceramic

L.A.’s roots in colonial agriculture run long and deep. Sculptor Maddy Inez, granddaughter of Betye Saar, crafts a series of ceramic vessels — each an ode to different plants brought over during the transatlantic slave trade — reframing gardening as an act of resistance. Opening May 16. 7313 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. meganmulrooney.com

Rocky's Matcha and tin on top of a croissant.

Skip the line. Community Goods is coming straight home to you this month in a collaboration with Rocky’s Matcha. The unique blend from Yame, Japan, has a nutty taste, umami finish and comes in a bright orange tin. Available online at rockysmatcha.com.

Sprüth Magers 10-year anniversary

Kara Walker Invasive Species (to be placed in your native garden), 2017 Bronze

The influential gallery is celebrating its 10th year in L.A. with an exhibition titled “10 Years LA!,” featuring works by Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman and Barbara Kruger. Opening May 15. 5900 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. spruethmagers.com

Hunza G X Burberry

Who said Burberry is just for winter city streets? The iconic beige check gets a casual revival in a collaboration with swim brand Hunza G. See it on totes, bucket hats, board shorts and slippers this summer. Available now at hunzag.com.

Supervsn X Lauren Halsey

Group of people wearing the Supervsn streetwear collection.

For the grand opening of “sister dreamer” sculpture park in South-Central, Lauren Halsey collaborated with streetwear brand Supervsn on a new collection, Camo We Live In. As the name suggests, the collection reworks camouflage as a collage-like reflection of culture in public spaces. Available at supervsn.com.

Dover Street Market X Comme des Garçons sale

Comme Des Garçons x Dover Street Market event flyer

Dover Street Market is hosting an L.A. sale, taking over Mica Studios in downtown. Called Market Market: Message Market, the sale will feature past season Comme des Garçons collections and Dover Street Market favorites with discounts of up to 70% off. Happening May 8 through 13. 356 S. Mission Road, Los Angeles. losangeles.doverstreetmarket.com

Lifestyle

Can the Costume Institute Survive Without the Met Gala?

Published

12 hours ago

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May 2, 2026

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Press Room

Can the Costume Institute Survive Without the Met Gala?

For years, as the Met Gala has grown ever bigger, blanketing social media with pictures of guests in their finery, smashing cultural fund-raising records, teetering tantalizingly on the line between fabulous and ridiculous, the questions and controversies surrounding New York’s “party of the year” have likewise proliferated.

Could the shindig, nominally a benefit for the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, get any more high-profile? When most of the country was struggling, should any institution be charging $100,000 a ticket for a party? And perhaps most importantly: What would happen when Anna Wintour, the evening’s mastermind and the woman who transformed it from a typical charity ball into an attention-guzzling juggernaut, retired?

Would the brands and people willing to pony up these exorbitant sums to be in one another’s orbits instead pocket the money? And if so, what would that mean for the future of the Costume Institute, a department that has been almost fully dependent on the gala as a source of its annual funds since the party began in 1948?

Could it even survive without the extravaganza?

It turns out the museum itself has been quietly working on an answer.

“Since 2016, we have been putting some money that we raised for the gala aside into a quasi endowment,” Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, said this month.

And by 2030 — possibly as soon as 2028 — the Costume Institute will have saved enough of a nest egg to potentially support its own basic operations for the foreseeable future, no matter what happens in the greater museum economy or with the gala itself.

Along with this year’s inauguration of the new Condé M. Nast Galleries in the Great Hall, which will house the Costume Institute’s blockbuster shows, the endowment fund represents a dramatic transformation in the position of the Costume Institute, not to mention its relationship to the party held in its honor.

“I, and the museum, always wanted the department to be not as reliant on the gala every year,” Bolton said. “The Met Gala is extraordinary, but sometimes it dwarfs everything.” Besides, the department has been forced to cancel galas twice, in 2002, after Sept. 11, and in 2020, during the early months of the pandemic.

“It was a real wake-up call,” Bolton said of the Covid cancellation. “What if there was another global disaster, and people were like, ‘I can’t come to a party?’” Ms. Wintour, he said, “takes immense pride in every year going higher and higher. But there will be a point where that’s not sustainable.”

A more permanent and reliable solution was necessary to ensure that “we would be safe in terms of the upkeep and the care of our collection and have enough money to take care of ourselves indefinitely,” Bolton said.

According to Darren Walker, the president of the board of trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., “it’s always great news if a department can be fully funded. But aside from some private museums, I don’t know of any that actually are.” Enter the endowment fund.

Though Bolton and a museum spokeswoman said it was museum policy not to discuss specific department finances, and though the Met does not break out such numbers in its annual report, they did acknowledge the Costume Institute fund had been formally created in 2016 and was, like most of the museum’s endowments, run by the Met’s investment and development teams. Currently, the department’s operating costs include salaries for curators, researchers and conservators; storage and conservation of more than 33,000 objects; exhibition costs for the smaller fall shows and publications; and support of the Costume Institute’s Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library. (Bolton also estimated that about 10 percent of the Met Gala money went to the museum itself.)

Still, some back-of-the-envelope math is possible. Given that the operating budget of the Costume Institute is approximately $5 million a year, it would most likely require an endowment of between $100 and $130 million. (According to the American Alliance of Museums, 5 percent is the average draw of an endowment fund.) The gala has raised $166.5 million over the past 10 years, so subtracting the operating costs and the amount that goes directly to the Met would suggest there is approximately $106 million in the fund currently (a bit less if there were unusual expenses one year). If the party continues on the financial trajectory it has set for another two to four years, that would easily ensure enough capital in the fund to allow the department to essentially live off the interest going forward.

“It is important for the Costume Institute, as it is for every department at the Met, that we do not spend all of the money raised annually,” said Max Hollein, the director and chief executive of the Met. The goal, he said, is “saving and investing funds so that the museum can be prepared for future challenges as well as cost increases.”

The Met’s overall operating costs were $427.6 million in the 2025 fiscal year, the last reported period, and that includes 17 different curatorial departments with widely varying budgets. Many departments also have their own directed endowments, including gifts earmarked for acquisitions or curatorial positions. The Annenberg Foundation grant, for example, awarded in 2001, gave the museum $10 million to create a fund for the acquisition of European paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures and decorative arts.

What made the Costume Institute an anomaly in the museum ecosystem was that it raised most of its money via a party — one that had increasingly overshadowed almost every other activity of the museum itself, and that, like Wintour’s daytime employer, Condé Nast, seemed increasingly reliant on her presence and power . And though Wintour has been quick to say she is not going anywhere, she is 76 and last year relinquished day-to-day control of American Vogue to focus on her role as Condé’s chief content officer.

“Anna Wintour is not replaceable,” said William Norwich, the editor for fashion and interior design at Phaidon Press and a former editor at Vogue. (In recognition of her efforts, the downstairs Costume Institute galleries were christened the Anna Wintour Costume Center in 2014.)

Also, because the gala traditionally inaugurates a blockbuster exhibition, it by definition requires that the Costume Institute put on a major show every year, rather than adhere to the more traditional schedule of smaller shows with one mega-show every other year or every three years. That creates what Bolton described as “enormous pressure” for the department.

And the party has increasingly become a lightning rod for uncomfortable discussions about social and financial inequality. Since 2021, there have been protests around the event over police brutality, climate change and the war in Gaza. This year, posters have gone up calling for a boycott because of the involvement of Jeff Bezos, the evening’s honorary chair and main sponsor, pointing to allegations of worker exploitation, among other issues. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, has publicly announced he is not going to attend.

Allowing the gala’s profile and profit goals (the party raised $31 million in 2025) to be downsized would take some of the pressure and attention off the museum and the brands that have supported it. Many of them have begun privately bemoaning the expense of the party, which involves not just buying tickets but also paying for celebrity guests to fly in with their entourages, stay in five-star hotels, wear custom looks and have their hair and makeup done. (This year’s fashion sponsor, Saint Laurent, is underwriting only the exhibition catalog.) Especially as the luxury industry enters a period of slower growth.

Still, Norwich said he doubted it would ever go entirely away. “There is an ongoing human need and fascination for such parties,” Norwich said. “Celebrity and fashion and the sparklers will always need to be seen in order to be believed and in order to be distinguished from the crowds.”

In any case, even once the endowment is complete, more fund-raising will always be required. Operating costs continue to rise, there are special one-off investments required to maintain and expand a department, and the major exhibitions themselves require their own sponsors. But the amounts involved will not be as onerous, or as imperative. Indeed, it seems the very reason for the price inflation may have been to anticipate a time when it will no longer be necessary.

In a texted statement, Wintour simply said, “As a Met trustee, I have always felt strongly that the Costume Institute must stand on a solid footing.”

Now it is almost there. Which means, when it comes to the party, “it’ll be interesting to see how it’s going to evolve,” Bolton said.

Robin Pogrebin contributed reporting.

Lifestyle

A powerful photo project became a love letter to the workers who built L.A. Metro’s D Line

Published

13 hours ago

on

May 1, 2026

By

Press Room

A powerful photo project became a love letter to the workers who built L.A. Metro’s D Line

In 1995, when the L.A. Metro system was in its most nascent stage, Ken Karagozian — then an amateur photographer in an Owens Valley, Calif., workshop — found his way underground to document the subterranean marriage between downtown L.A. and Westlake through Metro’s Red Line, now called the B Line.

From that came a feature in Life magazine, but more importantly, a driving principle: Karagozian believed that the construction workers, engineers and electricians who were subject to the whims of a city indecisive on the subway project were deserving of intimate documentation. The invisible many who built the pyramids and New York’s skyline never got that chance, he said, but the people who contributed to the historically controversial Metro D Line from Koreatown to Westwood would, if he had a say.

“When I did take photography workshops, they always said, ‘Do a project close to your home,’” Karagozian said on a call from his Agoura Hills residence. “I wrote a letter to [L.A. Metro], which said, ‘How can I get permission to photograph?’”

Days before the fires ravaged L.A. in 2025, Altadena-based historian and author India Mandelkern had a phone call with Karagozian, who was interested in collaborating on a project about the D Line. After publishing a book on the art and politics of street lighting in Los Angeles, Mandelkern worked on the L.A. Metro blog, soliciting interviews from Angelenos who seemed desperate for a line to the Westside.

A Karagozian photo shows a group of workers during the Section 2 breakthrough during the underground construction of the Metro D Line.

(Ken Karagozian)

A photo by Karagozian shows sunlight filtering underground into the Wilshire/Fairfax site during construction.

After Mandelkern connected with Karagozian, their project had solid form: a photo book, titled “Wilshire Subway: The Making of the D Line Subway Extension,” about the history, conflict and people behind the scenes and underground ahead of the May 8 opening of the subway expansion along Wilshire Boulevard. (New stations will be added at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega. In the future, stations in Beverly Hills, Century City and Westwood will open.)

A related photo exhibition, “Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian,” is on view through May 14 at the 1301PE art gallery on Wilshire Boulevard.

This week, we chatted more with Karagozian and Mandelkern about their project.

After writing a book about the social history of street lighting, what brought you underground?

Mandelkern: Well, a couple different reasons. First, I was very interested in Metro just because I had worked there as the blog editor, and in that role, I got to explore so many different stories. I thought Wilshire Boulevard was one of the most interesting places, the stories of this rail-building ambition that persisted for so many different years, and what that says about Angelenos. Second, I think that we talk about L.A. as a horizontal city, and that’s certainly true. If you go somewhere like Tokyo, you instantly see that this is what a vertical city is, but I wanted to bring a little bit of that to L.A. There is so much history buried beneath the ground that we seem to forget, and once you start tunneling, you realize that it’s always been there and it hasn’t disappeared. It’s just pushed beneath us.

India Mendelkern, left, and Ken Karagozian at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.

Of all the people you spoke to for this book, which one most influenced the way you understood what the D Line could provide for the city?

Karagozian: This was a joint venture between three contractors, and they each had their specialty. It was Skanska, Traylor [Bros.] and Shea. With Traylor, they were brothers and they were doing the tunneling. Richard McLane [chief mechanical engineer of Traylor Bros.] was very helpful in telling me a little bit about the history of Wilshire Boulevard and facts of tunneling. … All these different contractors impacted the project in some way.

Mandelkern: I always say Ken is one of the best construction photographers out there, but his specialty is really people. When I interviewed some of these individual workers, a whole different story came to light, and I realized that many of these workers came to L.A., started at the bottom of the totem pole, and through working on the subway have risen through the ranks, gotten promotions, become leaders, and their kids now work in construction. … It’s just so amazing that so many of these individuals are doing all this work behind the scenes that creates infrastructure that connects all of us.

1

2 A concrete supervisor photographed by Karagozian at the La Cienega Boulevard station.

1. Carpenter Jenna Dorough poses for a portrait by Karagozian during the underground construction of the Metro D Line. 2. A concrete supervisor photographed by Karagozian at the La Cienega Boulevard station. (Ken Karagozian)

There are many portraits in the book of the builders who created the D Line. India referred to the short lifespans of the workers compared to the marvelous structures they craft: Was it intentional that you documented most of the D Line’s visual history through the people who built it?

Karagozian: When I go down underground and after the stations are completed, to me, it’s the people that built it that should tell the story. I didn’t just want to get a shot of them from behind. I really like to photograph their faces. … When I photographed the workers from the Red Line, some of these workers from the middle ’90s are still working on the Purple Line. I’ve known them for years, and now their children are working in construction; it becomes a family issue. … Going down and photographing the tunnels with that lighting in that perspective, it’s always been so interesting.

Mandelkern: That just reminded me of one of the quotes in the book from John Yen, who is the VP of operations at Skanska. He said, “In construction, we work ourselves out of a job.” I always found it really interesting that, as we build, the whole point is to kind of disappear. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes in the essay, when James [Rojas] writes [that] when the stations are open, they’ll be shiny and new, but that will kind of erase all the memories and all the work of the people who’ve been doing this for all this time. This book really became a way to sort of remember all of these different people that have been working on these projects for decades and decades, even if they’re not really remembered in the official record.

As the D Line prepares to open, does it somehow feel like the end of a journey?

Mandelkern: This just [started] so many other things for me. Afterwards, I decided I really want to learn about the geology of L.A., and I found an interest in paleontology, too. I hope with any book that it just gets people curious, and it gets them to start asking questions. I think that “Wilshire Subway” does accomplish that. L.A. is just this bowl with all these different salad layers, and as we penetrate down, we learn more and more about our history.

Karagozian: It does a little bit. With May 8 being the grand opening, and as the stations are complete and they’re testing the trains underground, it almost feels like it’s graduation time. Time to celebrate the journey of going through high school, college, whatever. I am still continuing to photograph the [Purple Line extension], which is Rodeo or Beverly [Hills] station … Now it’s just the accomplishment of celebrating all the work that I’ve put into this project and going down almost once a week and photographing the process for so many years.

Art exhibition

‘Wilshire Subway’ exhibition

“Wilshire Subway: Photographed by Ken Karagozian” is a new exhibition based on a new photo book by Karagozian and writer India Mandelkern.

Where: 1301PE art gallery, 6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Through May 14.

Hours: The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. (There’s an opening reception and book signing from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday.)

Admission: Free

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