Paul Piers design

Paul Piers design

The window read "CHANEL" but almost obscuring the merchandise inside was Duke Riley's large drawing of a burning Greenpoint shoreline crowned with a huge cloud of smoke. Inside White Box the night of August 17 Riley was introducing his own line of upscale, burnt-look fashion under the brand "Paul Piers".

The crowd was wonderful, and wonderfully appreciative, I think, of both their own hip and the show's smooth rips.

Juan Puntes, the show's co-curator and with Judith Souriau the director of the non-profit space which hosted it, seems to agree with Riley that Chelsea has waited far too long for the arrival of the boutique phase in the timeline of the gallery district phenomenon. Now, with the dramatic and suspicious disappearance of its own most interesting and historic commercial building stock (including warehouses storing tons of old clothes) the Greenpoint neighborhood may have missed it altogether - and hastened the arrival of the successor stage, "luxury highrise condominiums".

Riley's art is built on the East River and the historical relics of New York real estate.

history (and fashion) up in smoke

the charred warehouse remains

gathering around the cinders

crowd scene

crowd seeing

the artist checking his own tag