Playing To The Gallery

Not street-style stars, and not quite It Girls either, the unsung heroines of the art world are quietly making their mark on style.

- Rachel Seville Tashjian

For the 1942 opening of her gallery Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim paired a custom-made white gown with earrings designed for the occasion: one by sculptor (and friend) Alexander Calder, one by painter (and friend) Yves Tanguy—a soigné demonstration of her commitment to the competing schools of abstract and surrealist art on view in her boundary-pushing new space in midtown Manhattan.

It’s easy to be a walking work of art in literal statement earrings when you’re a Guggenheim whose friends make MoMA-worthy sculpture one day and earrings for you the next. Today, though, it’s a woman further down the artworld food chain who has captured the imagination of fashion designers and young professional women alike. Enter the gallery girl—the brainy, uncommercial type known to both wear and inspire a specific genre of brainy, less-commercial designer, from low-key New York–based labels like Rachel Comey and A Détacher to Euro standbys like Dries Van Noten and Maison Margiela.

“These designers have a reference point in art,” says Esther Min, senior merchandise manager at Totokaelo, the Seattle-based store and website known for its artistic clientele. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of people who work within the art world or are creatively minded gravitate toward those designs.”