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A prison art show at Lincoln's Cottage critiques presidents' penal law past

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A prison art show at Lincoln's Cottage critiques presidents' penal law past

The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition features artwork by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on display at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

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The Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project exhibition features artwork by incarcerated artists critiquing the U.S. justice system and is on display at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

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Caddell Kivett was watching the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021, when the thread of an idea began to form.

He was inspired by Amanda Gorman, who took the podium and read her poem The Hill We Climb, which says, in part:

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“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice. …”

It was then that he really started thinking, Kivett told NPR.

“Some of the words of that poem just really touched how I feel about our country,” he said.

And those feelings are complicated, to say the least.

Kivett, 53, is serving an 80-year prison sentence for assault-related charges.

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He’s spent about 14 years incarcerated in North Carolina at the mercy of the U.S. criminal justice system and policies established by U.S. presidents, including Biden.

When the inauguration ceremony concluded, Kivett returned to his cell at Nash Correctional Institution in Nashville, N.C., where he’s been for the past eight years. He began to mull over a “kind of improbable idea” as the words of Gorman’s poem, “The norms and notions of what ‘just’ is isn’t always justice,” cycled through his mind.

He said he considered: What if there was a way to harness the voices of the incarcerated to critique this so-called justice system and to challenge the idea of what true justice in America could look like?

“Most people on the outside don’t know what is going on in here,” Kivett said. “And so, we just accept that this is how things are to be done and the correct response to people who commit harms or violence is to just lock them away.”

Caddell Kivett’s brainchild, Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, launched at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C., this month.

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He is surrounded by artists at Nash Correctional and considered ways to take that talent and use it to push forward these questions and ideas, he said.

These thoughts that started as just a flicker in his mind in 2021 took years and complex coordination with advocates from Justice Arts Coalition, such as founder and director Wendy Jason and programs assistant Janie Ritter, to come to fruition. But this month Kivett’s brainchild, an exhibit titled Prison Reimagined: Presidential Portrait Project, was revealed to the public at President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, D.C.

The exhibit of 46 pieces of art and writing was curated by the Committee of Incarcerated Writers and Artists, whose members all currently live within the carceral system across the U.S. In addition to Justice Arts Coalition, a group that supports imprisoned artists, the exhibit was coordinated by staff at Lincoln’s Cottage.

The exhibit, which costs visitors between $4 and $10, will continue through Feb. 19. It may later head to a few more venues but that’s yet to be confirmed. The pieces, however, can be bought once the current exhibit has finished with all proceeds going directly to the artists.

The art pieces include different takes on portraits of U.S. presidents, among them Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and put these leaders’ records on criminal justice under the microscope.

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The exhibition focuses on various presidents, including Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (bottom left) and Richard Nixon.

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The exhibition focuses on various presidents, including Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden (bottom left) and Richard Nixon.

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The difficulties of coordinating the exhibit from behind bars

Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.

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Wendy Jason is the founder and director of the Justice Arts Coalition in Takoma Park, Md.

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From the moment Kivett reached out to the Justice Arts Coalition in early 2021, the wheels started turning, even if slowly, and not without some hurdles. Ritter, nonetheless, worked to ensure that Kivett kept agency over the project.

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“It was his idea. I wanted him to make the decisions,” she said. “And, of course, a lot of the decisions couldn’t be made from inside. They had to be facilitated outside.”

Discussing the framework of the project with one another was among the challenges because Kivett has limited ability to call or email from his cell. And the artists whom Ritter and Jason contacted to contribute to the project are located in prisons throughout the country and rely heavily on snail mail to correspond.

Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Gradually, the artists began sending in their work to the group’s headquarters in Takoma Park, Md.

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To get these works to Kivett and his Committee of Incarcerated Artists and Writers at Nash, who were selecting the best pieces to exhibit, Ritter had to send 8-and-a-half-by-11 sized photos of all of each piece and copies of the written submissions.

“At the same time, our mail system here was going under a transformation from paper to digital, which created a whole new slew of hurdles for us to get past,” Kivett said.

Later on, Callie Hawkins, the executive director of Lincoln’s Cottage, sent a copy of their floor plan to guide the committee in choosing where to display each piece.

“It’s a massive space,” Hawkins said. “I was blown away by their ideas for placement and groupings. And literally all our team did was place it on the wall where they directed us to.”

Janie Ritter is the programs assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She wanted to ensure Kivett kept agency over the exhibition.

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Janie Ritter is the programs assistant for Justice Arts Coalition. She wanted to ensure Kivett kept agency over the exhibition.

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Kivett said it was hard not to feel discouraged during the process.

But, he said, “This project is a testament to what can be accomplished if you don’t let discouragement stop your momentum.”

Kivett hopes as visitors come to view the exhibit that they leave with a deeper understanding of the direct impacts of mass incarceration to critique the idea of whether incarceration is the true path to justice and that they’re motivated to take concerns directly to their politicians to make change.

“I hope everyone realizes that they’re all stakeholders. And I want them to realize what their individual part is in this process. And I hope they leave our show charged to do their part,” Kivett said.

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“Continuing to just cage people for harms committed in our country is not making us safer and not making us better as a nation,” he said.

He recommends rerouting money that is being put into prisons and jails into communities that need it the most rather than continuing to invest in the carceral system as it is now.

President Lincoln’s Cottage offers a poignant venue

A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on display at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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A portrait of President Bill Clinton and a collage of drawings of President George W. Bush are on display at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Watercolor paintings, mixed media collages and colored pencil portraits are now hanging in Lincoln’s Cottage in what was the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom some 160 years ago.

Some of the pieces are of Lincoln himself.

A mixed media collage created by Robert Spence incorporates photos of Black Lives Matters protests surrounding a portrait of Lincoln. Spence writes of this piece, “There are so many hidden (and not so hidden) racial biases and struggles that still exist in America. I wonder what President Lincoln would say if he was alive today. ‘What happened to America?’ “

Other pieces target Lincoln’s more recent successors.

The works reflect on how each administration and the policies they signed into law have impacted prisoners and contributed to the current state of the U.S. criminal justice system, which has locked up almost 2 million people — a disproportionate number of whom are Black Americans.

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A mixed media work featuring a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on display at the exhibition.

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A mixed media work featuring a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln is on display at the exhibition.

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Like former President Bill Clinton and his signing of the 1994 Crime Bill. Critics of this bill have said it is responsible for this mass incarceration of Black Americans.

Artist Mike Tran used this event to inspire his painting on Clinton.

Tran writes, “The 3 Strikes Law (the 1994 Crime Bill), designed as a crime deterrent, serves to prove how inadequate the ‘rehabilitation’ system is. Rehabilitation is not putting a person in a box for life. It is helping that person realize why they did what they did, who they harmed with their actions, and replacing those behaviors with prosocial thoughts and beliefs.”

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Tran painted a skewed version of Clinton’s presidential portrait, writing:

“I wanted to weave these ideas into President Clinton’s portrait, as he was instrumental in the passing of this law. I wanted the symbolism in the piece to be subtle, hence the three small cigars on his collar and intentional blurring of the American Flag, but once you realize them, you can’t look away.”

Not all pieces put the presidents in a seemingly negative light.

In a portrait by Brian Hindson, he contemplates on his complex feelings about Trump, who signed the First Step Act into law in 2018. This law, among many other things, lowered prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders.

Hindson, who at the time of finishing his painting spent 15 years in the federal prison system, writes after that law passed he saw that “people were leaving in droves” and that overcrowding in the federal prison system “was actually being addressed.”

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That leaves Hindson with contradictory feelings about Trump. He painted Trump’s face split and divided into different pieces, each painted a different color.

“As controversial, polarizing, and divisive as Trump was and can be, he’s the only President that did something that benefitted every federal inmate. The style I picked was my fractured art. All the pieces make him up. All the bad stuff too. Much like all of us, it’s pieces of us. All the pieces make the whole,” Hindson wrote.

A six-panel installation by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.

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A six-panel installation by artists Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette and Lezmond Mitchell depicts President Barack Obama.

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The exhibit’s largest piece is a 72-by-40-inch, six-panel installation that hangs in the center of the cottage’s sitting room wall.

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It’s an eye-catching portrait with an even more striking story.

The subject of the piece is obvious: former President Obama. Except his face is distorted with puzzle pieces missing from his face.

It reflects the three artists’ broken hopes of Obama reforming the criminal justice system and granting clemency to men on death row — a dream of the three men who painted it, they wrote.

The artists, Yuri Kadamov, Aquilla Barnette, and Lezmond Mitchell, managed to work together on this piece without ever sharing the same space. The three men slid canvases under the steel doors of their cells and handed it off to a fellow inmate who would pass the work on to the next collaborator.

The piece, however, was never fully finished.

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Mitchell, who was the only Native American on federal death row, was executed on Aug. 26, 2020, at the age of 38 for first-degree murder.

Callie Hawkins is the executive director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her team worked with Kivett on arranging and hanging the artwork in the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom.

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Callie Hawkins is the executive director at President Lincoln’s Cottage. Her team worked with Kivett on arranging and hanging the artwork in the president’s former library, dining room and bedroom.

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It’s significant given that this incomplete portrait sits in a building that represents what Hawkins calls “that unfinished work” of Lincoln’s legacy.

“[Lincoln] recognized in his own lifetime, that his role was just to push the boulder a little further up the hill, and there he was going to fall short, that others who came after him were going to fall short,” she said. “And then it was going to take everyone to continue this ideal, this promise.”

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The site of the cottage is at the highest point of Washington, D.C. It was the seasonal home of the 16th president and his family. While at the cottage in 1862 (then called the Soldiers Home), Lincoln developed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in an upstairs bedroom, Hawkins said.

This was “legally supposed to free slaves in America,” Ritter said.

“Mass incarceration in the U.S. has been referred to as the New Jim Crow. I think it’s such an interesting tension to have artwork created by folks who are still inside, who do slave labor, in the room where Lincoln quite literally wrote out his thoughts for freeing those people in America,” she said.

The Proclamation was enshrined in the 13th Amendment by 1865. It says that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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A portrait of President Abraham Lincoln sits on a mantel at Lincoln’s Cottage.

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Kivett said this amendment provides this “loophole” for those convicted of a crime. He said involuntary servitude is still legal for convicted felons, who when incarcerated, are forced into work that pays little to nothing in prisons across the country.

Hawkins said it was important for the cottage to be a part of this exhibit as it offered an important point to hold important conversations around rectifying injustice — a goal of the museum.

“It’s really important to [Lincoln’s Cottage] to not put Lincoln on a pedestal. To take him down, to interrogate him, his policies, and to really be honest about where that leaves us today,” she said.

For Kivett, the project and its themes are the embodiment of years of focus and passion on social justice issues while in prison.

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It’s part of what gives him purpose and goals for the future while inside, he said.

“The big picture of the project is to let people on the outside know that we are still people, and that we are still connected somehow in our humanity.”

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Street Style Look of the Week: Airy Beachy Clothes

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Street Style Look of the Week: Airy Beachy Clothes

“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.

Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.

Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.

His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.

Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.

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What are Angelenos giving away in one Buy Nothing group? All this treasured stuff

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What are Angelenos giving away in one Buy Nothing group? All this treasured stuff

In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.

From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.

Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.

Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.

Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.

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I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.

Tiny builders, big exchange

Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.

“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”

— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.

“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”

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— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.

Something borrowed

Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.

“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”

— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.

“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”

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— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.

1

2 Two women sit on steps with a fake owl.

1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.

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A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life

Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.

“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”

— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.

“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”

— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.

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Stuffed toys find a new purpose

Two women stand in front of a green plant holding stuffed dolls and a bag of ball pit balls.

Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.

(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)

Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.

“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”

— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.

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“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”

— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.

A second helping

Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.

“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.

“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”

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— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.

Two women stand by a gate at night holding cast iron pans.

Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.

(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)

“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”

— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.

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Next player up

A man poses next to a basketball hoop in front of his garage.

Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.

(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)

Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.

“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”

— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.

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Armani Goes Back to the Archive

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Armani Goes Back to the Archive

In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.

Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)

Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.

Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.

That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.

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It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.

If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.


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