Field Hearts Haring

fashion review by Shardae Jobson

Regardless if you're a resident or a visitor to the always culturally relevant Bowery/Chinatown area of New York City, hopefully you've already made a necessary pit stop to the famed fashion free for all emporium Patricia Field, to see her newest collection of clothes and accessories featuring the graffiti inspired designs of art icon, the late amiable Keith Haring. You may not recognize the name, but you're surely seen his creations of solid colored, blocky figures and dogs, their characteristics not shown through face but movements of dance and surprise. His work was super vibrant and super fun and was especially prevalent AIDS awareness in the '80s, and he even ventured towards mainstream products like Coca-Cola. He was known to show his concerns and support for issues in communities through his simplistic artwork, and while he died of AIDS in 1990, his designs continue to reappear every so often as a part of our art and popular culture periscope. As most recently Madonna (who knew Haring personally) used his figures as the background set for a segments of her classic decade of greed songs on her Sticky & Sweet Tour, and can even be seen in a black and white scene in Rihanna's return to dance hall roots mega-hit "Rude Boy".

The Keith Haring by Patricia Field collection is a homage to the man who became synonymous with the New York City art scene of the '80s that included the prodigal Jean-Michel Basquait, and with Andy Warhol as the self-appointed godfather of pop art. Up until 2005, The Pop Shop that Haring opened in 1985, exclusively carried merchandise barring his images, and was the pivotal place to learn all that was great about his artwork. It's quite dejecting that The Pop Shop is no more, but thanks to Patricia Field, an icon herself as the ultimate costume designer who's made some of the kookiest but fabulous outfits we've seen for Sex and The City and Ugly Betty, is here to keep the legacy alive. Once you see the collection at her store, it's like as if The Pop Shop never missed a keytar beat.

The clothes of his solid friends are profusely frolic. The jeans, hats, tote bags just simply scream "we love Haring!" and are perfectly attention getting for the current wave of this ADD generation. The collection is great and sometimes the material of Haring's creations are scratchy, giving it an authentic feel that it was made in 1986. Though it is clear the designs are from another era, the appeal is timeless for its versatility and amusement, and every piece can fit into any kind of style of dress too. If you're more of a conservative dresser, rock a T-shirt with the crawling, stunned baby underneath your sharp blazer and Louboutins. If you're slightly more capricious all day, every day...by all means...you got to wear the awesome patchwork jeans. Some of the highlights of the collection including the jeans, are the plastic clutches, denim vest, brilliantly sequined black biker chick jacket, gold and black snake print embellishments, and scarf dresses (that look very Gianni Versace meets Haring by way of Patricia Field).

Patricia Field, being something of an unexpected matriarch of eccentric fashion in the tradition of Vivienne Westwood and Betsey Johnson, her ode to Haring is a perfect match, and all the more real in a culturally round way due to both of their connections of 1980s New York City, than say an established big fashion house suddenly calling upon Haring for insight. Close by the store in 2008, around the corner was a community painted mural that replicated Haring's artwork in tribute on the Bowery. That same year, an massively thick introspective book chronicling his career and life in New York City was published simply titled Haring. It contains hundreds of valuable photos from his art shows, with friends, and even the artist himself at work, as well as never before seen drawings and journal entries, and his other creations (four words: Grace Jones Body Painting). It is definitely a beautiful book that allows fans of yesteryear and today to feel closer to the visionary, as his artiste (and social activist) influence since moving to New York at the age of nineteen is undeniable and lasting.

The Patricia Field store is already a place of many sensational items, by carrying Haring in their store for a limited time, with purchase though, you'll be taking home some really vivid pieces to add to your wardrobe; and the fact that it'll feature one of the most unpretentious and greatly talented contemporary artists of the 20th century, it's a pretty sweet deal. Rock on, Haring.

Visit the Patricia Field store in NYC at 302 Bowery