Lisa Eisner, Oliver Peoples, Pam & Gela tapped for Wear LACMA fall 2016 collection

Senior Features Writer

Sept. 23, 2016 5 AM PT

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced this week that its fall 2016 Wear LACMA collection will include wearable items inspired by Japanese ceramics, the street-lamp sculpture permanently installed in front of the museum and a 1959 painting by Jay DeFeo.

The art-meets-fashion mash-up, launched in 2012, recruits local design talent to create limited-edition items inspired by artwork in the museum’s permanent collection. The upcoming installment, which will be available to purchase in November, is set to include the following items:

Oliver Peoples has designed sunglasses inspired by Chris Burden’s “Urban Light” (2008) installation of street lamps. (We have yet to see the sunnies — photos will be forthcoming — but they’re described as “unisex sunglasses with amber gold-tone photocromic mineral lenses [and] clear frames.”) Burden’s popular display of lights also will be featured on the sunglasses case.

Pam & Gela, the newest endeavor by Juicy Couture founders Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, has created a mini-collection of women’s T-shirts and a jacket that features crane and blossom motifs plucked from 19^th and 20^th century ceramics found in the museum’s collection of Japanese art.

Each Wear LACMA offering includes jewelry. Past collections have included exquisite pieces by Jennifer Meyer (inspired by an Ed Ruscha painting), Irene Neuwirth (inspired by a jeweled mother of pearl snuffbox commissioned by Frederick the Great of Prussia) and Anita Ko (inspired by a reading table and porcelain bottle from Korea’s Joseon period).

This time it’s a suite of jewelry that includes necklaces, bracelets and earrings created by Lisa Eisner. The inspiration, fittingly, is “The Jewel,” a 1959 painting by DeFeo.

LACMA’s Sept. 20 announcement included a comment from Eisner about her inspiration: “Every time I visit LACMA, I pay homage to Jay DeFeo’s ‘The Jewel.’ This painting resonates with me in a spiritual way like when one goes into a beautiful church in Italy. The sculptural element of the work — the layers and layers of building up and breaking down, the sunburst middle and the rays beaming out to the edges — it completely moves me with its energy and beauty.”

Over the years, the Wear LACMA program has enlisted an impressive roster of local design talent, including George Esquivel, Monique Lhuillier, Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the Elder Statesman’s Greg Chait, Gregory Parkinson and Libertine’s Johnson Hartig.

Starting Nov. 7, the new Wear LACMA goods are set to hit the shelves of the museum’s store at 5905 Wilshire Blvd. and will be sold at lacmastore.org, with proceeds benefiting the museum and its programs.

For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me @ARTschorn.

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