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It’s a support system. The concrete trust between pro skaters and their videographers

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It’s a support system. The concrete trust between pro skaters and their videographers

On a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, a group of longtime friends recorded a conversation on the side of the road at Grand Avenue and 3rd Street after a long day of skating around the city with legendary photographer Atiba Jefferson, who was heading home after shooting the crew. Lee Spielman, a California native and co-founder of Babylon L.A., a locally based skate and streetwear brand, has known this group for years. He sat down to talk with pro skater Na-Kel Smith, who’s now been skating for more than 20 years; 13-year-old Junior Gutierrez, who started skating at age 3; and filmmaker Davonte Jolly, another longtime skater. All three were born and raised in L.A. — the “mecca of skateboarding,” as Smith put it. “If you’re gonna get a clip here, it’s gotta be beast, because everything’s been skated.”

Lee Spielman: Na-Kel and Jolly, how did you guys meet each other?

Davonte Jolly: We first met in 2015 casually, and then we started skating together a little after that.

LS: When did you start creatively working on longer-form video projects together?

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DJ: The beginning of our relationship was literally just us hanging out at spots, like we wouldn’t even necessarily get clips, until that barrier was broken on the switch hard flip I filmed for the Adidas — Away Days video Nak was working on.

Davonte Jolly

LS: I don’t think people who watch skate videos always understand what goes into it. You press play and watch this crazy montage of people going off, but there’s a lot more that goes into it, both physically and emotionally, between the skater and the filmer. Is there a way to explain the trust involved in that? You’re about to try something that is absolutely insane, obviously unsafe, you have to be —

DJ: A support system.

Na-Kel Smith: You’ve got to build up the chemistry. You’ve got to be able to sit around somebody for hours. I skate with a lot of different filmers, but I have a different trust when it comes to Jolly because I know my clips are always gonna look good. I know that I can communicate with Jolly if I need to use it for something for one of my sponsors. He’s not gonna go missing on me. He is organized. He helps me keep track of my list of tricks while I’m working on parts. It’s really just all-around communication.

LS: And being able to see creatively eye to eye?

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NS: That’s where the trust comes in. I’m not necessarily too pressed on, “Yo, get this angle, do this.” Because I trust your angle, and that’s why I skate with you, so I don’t have to worry about that.

LS: What do you look for in a videographer?

NS: Off top, communication. And somebody that’s fun. If you’re not fun to be around, it ain’t no point …

Na-Kel Smith wears Louis Vuitton by Tyler, the Creator backpack, Hardies Hardware jacket, Levis pants, Adidas Superstars shoes, King Skateboards board.
Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.

Na-Kel Smith wears Louis Vuitton by Tyler, the Creator backpack, Hardies Hardware jacket, Levis pants, Adidas Superstars shoes, King Skateboards board.

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LS: Jolly, we’ve traveled the world together — from Europe to Japan and in between. I’ve seen it before, when you pull out the camera on a session, people try to get filmed by you. I bet your inbox is flooded with people asking to go skate. There are a ton of skaters out there, but you’ve chosen to focus on a select few. What’s always been cool about your videos, to me, is that it feels like a collective. What is it that you look for in a skater when you’re working on videos?

DJ: I think early on in my filming career, I did choose who I filmed more so on a trick basis, but through that process, I learned you have to be selective about who you choose to not only attach your work to but just work with in general. From that, a tree kind of formed. I’ll use Na-Kel as an example. We’ll go out, he’ll bring someone that he loves to film with, and then I’ll meet and build a genuine relationship with someone, like Ishod [Wair], and from that, chemistry is formed. I’m not necessarily on a scout for the next top skater to film. Every skater that I film, it organically happens from another person that I already film with.

LS: Atiba shot all the photos that are in this magazine. I think there’s something to touch upon with him sort of being the glue that holds all this together, right? It’s like we have the filmer, the skater, and then we need that photo. The photo for the mag. Let’s talk a bit about Atiba’s place in that — where does he come in for you guys?

NS: I think Atiba specifically is like our ancestral guide to this whole thing. Atiba’s been around so many eras of skating, shot so many people in general, not even just in the skate world but, like, Quincy Jones for example, who just passed away. He’s got a photo of Kobe, a photo of LeBron, like everybody. He’s really the guy. He really knows how to, I’m not gonna say pressure you, but he knows how to nudge you to keep going and try your trick. If you’re getting close to getting something that’s worth it, and Atiba says you should keep going, you know to keep going because it’s actually something there. He knows what a good photo looks like.

LS: Skate photos before video, that’s all there was. I still trip to this day. You’ll hop on the internet and there will be some throwback — Kareem Campbell, Guy Mariano, whoever it is — and it’s shot by Atiba. It’ll be shot medium format with a fish-eye lens all perfect — that alone is a craft in itself. That’s not necessarily around as much anymore.

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[Junior skates up.]

Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.

LS: Junior, who you are and where are you from?

Junior Gutierrez: I’m Junior. I’m from L.A.

LS: When did you start skating?

JG: I was 3.

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LS: How old are now?

JG: 13.

Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.
Junior Gutierrez wears Babylon LA shirt, Fuccuuwant undershirt, Guess Originals shorts, Air Jordan 5 Retro “Top 3” shoes

Junior Gutierrez wears Babylon LA shirt, Fuccuuwant undershirt, Guess Originals shorts, Air Jordan 5 Retro “Top 3” shoes, King Skateboards board.

LS: Coming up in skating, being out with a high-caliber photographer like Atiba and a notable filmer like Jolly, what does that make you want to do at the session?

JG: When I’m with Atiba and Jolly, I don’t feel pressured but I do feel that I gotta do better because legends are filming me, taking photos of me. It’s just more intense, because I have some of the best of both worlds taking photos and videos of me. It makes me want to push myself a little harder.

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NK: You’re crashin’ out when Atiba’s there! It’s time to go crazy!

LS: What is it that makes a good video to you?

JG: You gotta have a good relationship with your filmer, because if it’s not like that, it’s not gonna work out, because you have to deal with them 24/7 when you’re filming a video part. You just need the connection with a filmer.

Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.
Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.
Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.

NS: What I want to see out of a skate video is personality and character. I want to see style. I want to see who somebody is as a person, I want to be able to really get to know somebody through their video part, to see if I would actually like them as a person, somebody that you could aspire to be like. Just people with character and personality. It don’t even really be about the tricks.

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LS: I think skate videos give a lot of taste and character to the streets, they help kids find themselves. Jolly, what makes a good skate video for you? And also, the music — I feel like that influences kids and what they get into. Do you use specific music for that reason?

DJ: A lot of my music tastes came from skate videos growing up. So I consciously wanted to use a Black soundtrack for my video “Godspeed,” because I wanted to shed light on artists that wouldn’t get that shine in skate videos normally, and change some other kids’ music taste because they watched this video, and now they’re into Brent Faiyaz, or Baby Keem or whatever other artists I use in my videos. And what makes a good skate video to me is a lot of the points Na-Kel said: It’s seeing personality and character, and it’s also just about the care from the filmer and from the skater. When both sides care about what they’re creating together, it shows in the end product, and when they don’t, it also shows in the end product.

Davonte Jolly crouches by a curb while filming

Davonte Jolly wears Necessary Evil hat, Goodfellow & Co button-up, Race Service slacks, Air Jordan 4 Retro ‘Red Cement’ shoes.

Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.

LS: Junior, earlier we were talking about all the tricks you’ve done since you first started. I can search on my phone and type in “Hollywood High” and see you as a little 9-year-old skating an iconic spot. How do you feel when you look back at footage like that?

JG: It’s cool to be able to have these memorable moments on video so I can always look back and remember what I went through to film that specific part — or just how happy I was after I finally got the trick.

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LS: For you, Nak, when you look back at footage, is it a snapshot for you? Like damn, I remember that moment in Atlanta, or that trip to Paris was crazy. Or my life was in whatever place at that time, you know?

NS: Really, that’s the whole point in documenting all this s—. It’s really a timestamp. When we first started skating it felt like I needed to go get footage so I can get sponsored or just to showcase what I do, but now that I’m getting older, when you look at it, we were just so young back then, just trying to get to a certain level. And then you actually reach that level because you worked hard to get there and you’re like, damn, now I’m what I looked up to as a kid. I look at my skate videos the same way how I used to look at Bryan Herman’s skate videos, or Antwuan Dixon’s skate videos. Like, I’ll go look, and I’ll sit there and honestly get inspired and be like, “Dang, this is always what I wanted to do as a little kid.” I really always wanted to be a pro skater. And now I really am that in every aspect of it. I’m just so happy that it’s all been captured for reals.

LS: Jolly, you’ve filmed some of these people’s greatest times in their lives. How does that feel for you when you look back at those moments, whether it’s iconic tricks or trips? How does it feel for you to be in the driver’s seat of how those moments are presented to the world?

DJ: It’s one of the things that brings me joy in the world. The same way I would look at an old photo is the same feeling I get when I pull up an old video and I have the reference point of when it was filmed, but also what it even took to get the clip, or why we even made the video in the first place. So even today, when I was showing Junior old videos that I’ve made, it’s a quick reminder of not only how far you’ve come but, to Nak’s point, of where you wanted to go and being present in that feeling of, “Oh s—.” We are way further than I could have imagined when we were just making little YouTube videos.

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Davonte Jolly, “ghettobird,” 2024, featuring Na-Kel Smith, Junior Gutierrez, and Atiba Jefferson. Track: “Celine” by Na-kel Smith.

LS: If you had to describe your filming style to someone who has no idea what skating is, how would you describe it?

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DJ: I want whoever’s watching my footage to feel like they are there. That’s how I document skateboarding specifically.

LS: Na-Kel, you’re from Los Angeles. You grew up street skating in Los Angeles. What makes L.A. so unique as a city for skateboarding for you?

NS: The skateboarding roots are so deep in Los Angeles that it just always had a skate vibe to the whole city for real. When I was growing up, it was never too foreign to see people skating as it was in other places. Skating is how you learned transportation. It’s how you learned your city. When I was young, I went through way more of the city by myself and with my friends than a lot of my other friends who didn’t skate because we were really trekking around. We were on buses, trains, skating miles just to go to different spots and really just to go explore different areas. It’s just an adventure. It’s the home of skateboarding. The mecca of skateboarding.

LS: Nak, do you have any advice for a kid who wants to be a pro skater? And Jolly, what’s your bit of creative advice for any kids out there who are currently making videos with their friends and trying to showcase their community?

NS: My advice to any kid trying to be a pro skater, No. 1, is: Maintain the love in skating. It’s supposed to be fun. You’re supposed to want to push yourself. You’re supposed to want to get better, but you’re supposed to enjoy it. That’s the essence of it. My second piece of advice: Get in that field. You can get a little motion in the skate park, but it don’t really matter. Hop in that field and go hard, because it’s millions of people out there who want to be pro skateboarders, and some of them make it, some of them don’t make it at all, but you gotta go hard in that field if you want it. That’s my main piece of advice.

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Lee Spielman, second from right, wears Babylon LA hat and hoodie, BoTT vest, Guess Jeans pants, Nike Air Jordan 4 Retro

Lee Spielman, second from right, wears Babylon LA hat and hoodie, BoTT vest, Guess Jeans pants, Nike Air Jordan 4 Retro “Lightning” shoes, Carpet Company board.

DJ: My biggest advice, and I wish someone told me this when I was younger, is just stay curious and follow that curiosity, but also try as much as you can to keep like-minded people around you who also are pursuing those curiosities because the journey is a lot better once you are on it with your people, versus people who cause friction to your journey. Facilitate a group of people you trust and believe in. Understand that it’s going to change and evolve, but be open to that and stay curious.

LS: All right. Quick last words. Na-Kel, favorite skater?

NS: Tyshawn Jones.

LS: Jolly, favorite skate filmer?

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DJ: Spike Jonze.

LS: Junior, favorite skater?

JG: Vincent Nava.

Skater and videographer story for Image magazine December 2024 issue.

Producer Lee Spielman
Music “Celine” by Na-Kel Smith

Lee Spielman co-founder of Babylon L.A. and California punk band Trash Talk, has spent over two decades creating community-driven spaces by blending music, art and alternative culture through global collaborations that inspire creativity, self-expression and cultural connection.

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It Started with a Midnight Swim and a Kiss Under the Stars

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It Started with a Midnight Swim and a Kiss Under the Stars

When Marian Sherry Lurio and Jonathan Buffington Nguyen met at a mutual friend’s wedding at Higgins Lake, Mich., in July 2022, both felt an immediate chemistry. As the evening progressed, they sat on the shore of the lake in Adirondack chairs under the stars, where they had their first kiss before joining others for a midnight plunge.

The two learned that the following weekend Ms. Lurio planned to attend a wedding in Philadelphia, where Mr. Nguyen lives, and before they had even exchanged numbers, they already had a first date on the books.

“I have a vivid memory of after we first met,” Mr. Nguyen said, “just feeling like I really better not screw this up.”

Before long, they were commuting between Philadelphia and New York City, where Ms. Lurio lives, spending weekends and the odd remote work days in one another’s apartments in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Within the first six months of dating, Mr. Nguyen joined Ms. Lurio’s family for Thanksgiving in Villanova, Pa., and, the following month, she met his family in Beavercreek, Ohio, at a surprise birthday party for Mr. Nguyen’s mother.

Ms. Lurio, 32, who grew up in Merion Station outside Philadelphia, works in investor relations administration at Flexpoint Ford, a private equity firm. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a bachelor’s degree in history and psychology.

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Mr. Nguyen, also 32, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., and raised in Beavercreek, Ohio, from the age of 7. He graduated from Haverford College with a bachelor’s degree in political science and is now a director at Doyle Real Estate Advisors in Philadelphia.

Their long-distance relationship continued for the next few years. There were dates in Manhattan, vacations and beach trips to the Jersey Shore. They attended sporting events and discovered their shared appreciation of the 2003 film, “Love Actually.”

One evening, Mr. Nguyen recalled looking around Ms. Lurio’s small New York studio — strewed with clothes and the takeout meal they had ordered — and feeling “so comfortable and safe.” “I knew that this was something different than just sort of a fling,” he said.

It was an open question when they would move in together. In 2024, Ms. Lurio began the process of moving into Mr. Nguyen’s home in Philadelphia — even bringing her cat, Scott — but her plans changed midway when an opportunity arose to expand her role with her current employer.

Mr. Nguyen was on board with her decision. “It almost feels like stolen valor to call it ‘long distance,’ because it’s so easy from Philadelphia to New York,” Mr. Nguyen said. “The joke is, it’s easier to get to Philly from New York than to get to some parts of Brooklyn from Manhattan, right?”

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In January 2025, Mr. Nguyen visited Ms. Lurio in New York with more up his sleeve than spending the weekend. Together they had discussed marriage and bespoke rings, but when Mr. Nguyen left Ms. Lurio and an unfinished cheese plate at the bar of the Chelsea Hotel that Friday evening, she had no idea what was coming next.

“I remember texting Jonathan,” Ms. Lurio said, bewildered: “‘You didn’t go toward the bathroom!’” When a Lobby Bar server came and asked her to come outside, Ms. Lurio still didn’t realize what was happening until she was standing in the hallway, where Mr. Nguyen stood recreating a key moment from the film “Love Actually,” in which one character silently professes his love for another in writing by flashing a series of cue cards. There, in the storied Chelsea Hotel hallway still festooned with Christmas decorations, Mr. Nguyen shared his last card that said, “Will you marry me?”

They wed on April 11 in front of 200 guests at the Pump House, a covered space on the banks of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River. Mr. Nguyen’s sister, the Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, who is ordained through the Unitarian Universalist Association, officiated.

Although formal attire was suggested, Ms. Lurio said that the ceremony was “pretty casual.” She and Jonathan got ready together, and their families served as their wedding parties.

“I said I wanted a five-minute wedding,” Ms. Lurio recalled, though the ceremony ended up lasting a little longer than that. During the ceremony, Ms. Nguyen read a homily and jokingly added that guests should not ask the bride and groom about their living arrangements, which will remain separate for the foreseeable future.

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While watching Ms. Lurio walk down the aisle, flanked by her parents, Mr. Nguyen said he remembered feeling at once grounded in the moment and also a sense of dazed joy: “Like, is this real? I felt very lucky in that moment — and also just excited for the party to start!”

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L.A. Affairs: I loved someone who felt he couldn’t be fully seen with me

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L.A. Affairs: I loved someone who felt he couldn’t be fully seen with me

He always texted when he was outside. No call, no knock. It was just a message and then the soft sound of my door opening. He moved like someone practiced in disappearing.

His name meant “complete” in Arabic, which is what I felt when we were together.

I met him the way you meet most things that matter in Los Angeles — without intending to. In our senior year at a college in eastern L.A. County, we were introduced through mutual friends, then thrown together by the particular gravity of people who recognized something in each other. He was a Muslim medical student, conservative and careful and funny in the dry, precise way of someone who has always had to choose his words. I was loud where he was quiet, messy where he was disciplined. I was out. He was not.

I understood, or thought I did. I thought that I couldn’t get hurt if I was completely conscious throughout the endeavor. Los Angeles has a way of making you feel like the whole world shares your freedoms — until you realize the city is enormous, and not all of it belongs to you in the same way.

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For months, our world was confined to my apartment. He would slip in after dark, and we’d stay up late talking about his family in Iran, classical music and the particular pressure of being the son someone sacrificed everything to bring here. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone, and I believed him.

The orange glow from my Nesso lamp lit his face while the indigo sky pressed against the window behind him. In our small little world, we were safe. Outside was another matter.

On our first real date, I took him to the L.A. Phil’s “An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood” program. I told him they were cheap seats even though they were the first row on the terrace. He was thrilled in the way only someone who doesn’t expect to be delighted actually gets delighted — fully, without guarding it. I put my arm around his shoulders. At some point, I shifted and moved it, and he nudged it back. He was OK with PDA here.

I remember thinking that wealth is a great barrier to harm and then feeling silly for extrapolating my own experience once again. Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were just two people in love with the same music.

Outside was still another matter.

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In February, on Valentine’s Day, he took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Anaheim. We hovered over saffron tea surrounded by other young Southern Californians, and we looked like friends. Before we went in, we sat in the parking lot of the strip mall — signs in Arabic advertising bread, coffee, halal meats, the Little Arabia District — hand in hand. I leaned over to kiss him.

“Not here,” he said. His eyes shifted furtively. “Someone might see.”

I understood, or told myself I did, but I was saddened. Later, after the kind of reflection that only arrives in the wreckage, I would understand something harder: I had been unconsciously asking him to choose, over and over, between the people he loved and the person he loved. I had a long pattern of choosing unavailable men, telling myself it was because I could handle the complexity. The truth was more embarrassing. I thought that if someone like him chose me anyway — chose me over the weight of societal expectations — it would mean I was worth choosing. It took me a long time to see how unfair that was to him and to me.

We went to the Norton Simon Museum together in November, on the kind of gray Pasadena day when the 210 Freeway roars in the background like white noise. He studied for the MCAT while I wrote a paper on Persian rugs. In between practice problems, he translated ancient Arabic scripts for me. I thought, “We make a good team.” Afterward, we walked through the galleries and he didn’t let go of my arm.

That was the version of us I kept returning to — when the ending came during Ramadan. It arrived as a spiritual reflection of my own. I texted: “Does this end at graduation — whatever we are doing?”

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He thought I meant Ramadan. I did not mean Ramadan.

“I care about you,” he wrote, “but I don’t want you to think this could work out to anything more than just dating. I mean, of course, I’ve fantasized about marrying you. If I could live my life the way I wanted, of course I would continue. I’m just sad it’s not in this lifetime.”

I was in Mexico City when these texts were exchanged. That night I flew to Oaxaca to clear my head and then, after less than 24 hours, flew back to L.A. No amount of vacation would allow me to process what had just happened, so I threw myself back into work.

My therapist told me to use the conjunction “and” instead of “but.” It happened, and I am changed. The harm I caused and the love I felt. The beauty of what we made and the impossibility of where it could go. She gave me a knowing smile when I asked if it would stay with me forever. She didn’t answer, which was the answer.

I think about the freeways now, the way Joan Didion called them our only secular communion. When you’re on the ground in Los Angeles, the world narrows to the few blocks around you. Get on the freeway and you understand the whole body of the city at once: the arteries, the pulse, the scale of the thing.

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You understand that you are a single cell in something enormous and moving. It is all out of your control. I am in a lane. The lane shaped how I drive. He was simply in a different lane, and his lane shaped him, and those two facts can coexist without either of us being the villain of the sad story.

He came like a secret in the night, and he left the same way. What we made in between was real and complicated and mine to hold forever, hoping we find each other in the next life.

The author lives in Los Angeles.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.

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The Nerve Center of This Art Fair Isn’t Painting. It’s Couture.

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The Nerve Center of This Art Fair Isn’t Painting. It’s Couture.

The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.

When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.

Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.

“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.

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Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.

The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.

Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”

Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.

Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.

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Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.

More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.

The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.

“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”

Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”

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Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”

True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.

“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”

Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.

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