Designer Christian Siriano and artist Ashley Longshore connect with fans at Westport event
It is a truth universally acknowledged, as Jane Austen might put it, that creative, glamorous, fun careers are not always well-paying. This has been especially true for artists and designers, who have often struggled to find their place in a world that values the useful and the quantitative above all else.
But mixed-media Pop artist Ashley Longshore and fashion and interior designer Christian Siriano have upended the traditional business model by crossing over into other sectors and bypassing the middleman to deal with potential clients directly.
The friends teamed in September 2019, with Longshore helping to inspire and appearing in Siriano’s spring-summer 2020 collection and again in January 2020 for episode seven of “Project Runway’s” 18th season, during which Siriano – the youngest winner of the Bravo fashion reality series – served as a mentor, introducing guest judge Longshore and her bold prints.
They joined forces again on Wednesday, July 31, for the “Christian Siriano X Ashley Longshore” art pop-up at The Collective West, Siriano’s store in Westport, where he lives.
Longshore has been dubbed “the feminist Andy Warhol,” but a more accurate description of her work is what might have transpired had the Mexican Surrealist Frida Kahlo and the puckish Pop artist had a baby. You can see the influence of Warhol’s jewel-colored, Byzantine-style portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor as well as Kahlo’s self-portraits, flowers seemingly springing from her dark hair, in Longshore’s “Roar! A Collection of Mighty Women,” featuring riotously colored paintings of Vice President Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift and the late U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to name a few. (It’s one of three books Longshore has published with Rizzoli, including “Giving the Bird: Bird Stories,” out Sept. 17.)
These paintings and books – which a well-heeled Westport crowd snapped up at the event, along with ceramic trinket boxes, napkin sets, tea towels and plates with naughty sayings that can’t be reprinted in a family newspaper – teem with color, pattern and life, really.
But where the Warhol comparison really kicks in is in Longshore’s marketing know-how. With a promotional style worthy of performance art and social media savvy – her publicist said it was important to link her Instagram and website in this story – she has worked with such companies as Chloé, Gucci, Maybelline, Porsche and Judith Lieber, designing a new handbag for Lieber that will also be out this fall; and sold her works to Pound Ridge movie star couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds; former New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning; actresses Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek; singer Pink; designer Diane von Furstenberg; and Wall Street executives. In January 2018, Longshore became the first woman artist in Bergdorf Goodman’s then 119-year history to have a solo exhibit in its Fifth Avenue windows and seventh-floor gallery, returning six months later as the store’s artist in residence to style its Palette restaurant.
Her versatile marketing drive is fueled by a fierce independence.
“I didn’t have a rich daddy,” Longshore said with a Southern sass and lilt that reflected her Montgomery, Alabama, roots. “And I didn’t want to marry a rich man and have to say, ‘Can I have money to buy a purse?’” Here she imitated such an encounter, her voice softening, and her vibrant manner turning coy.
Her family was, however, well off enough – her father, Spencer Longshore III, was president and CEO of Time and Space Inc., an advertising sales company – for her to have arts lessons and attend boarding school. She graduated from the University of Montana with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature, taking a semester off to paint. (Longshore is self-taught.) She showed her work around but said, “I didn’t want a gallery taking 50% of my earnings.”
Instead, in the 2010s, she harnessed the power of still-nascent Instagram, selling more than $1 million worth of art in 2015. The secret of her success? Hard work, she said, adding that it has taken her 30 years to achieve her dream gallery at 43 Crosby St. in SoHo, with two levels of showroom space and a studio. (Longshore had a gallery in New Orleans from 2018 to 2023, the year she opened the Ashley Longshore Studio Gallery in Manhattan.) And she’s already looking to her legacy with The Ashley Longshore Charitable Trust to ensure her works survive her.
While Longshore worked the room of The Collective West – whirling and twirling in a short, magenta, kaftan-style dress by Siriano, studded with blossoms – the designer quietly sketched for a waiting line of admirers. But his eyes crinkled in excitement as he talked with us about his collaboration with the Greenwich Hospitality Group, owner of the Delamar Hotel Collection, transforming three “Siriano Suites’ – including the 3,000-square-foot presidential suite – and the lobby of the former Westport Inn as it becomes the Delamar Westport later this year.
“I wanted to do something in Westport as I live here, and the store’s here,” he said.
Born and raised in Annapolis, Maryland, Siriano was educated at the Baltimore School for the Arts and American InterContinental University in London, where he would go on to intern for Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen before freelancing in New York and auditioning for “Project Runway.” Within five years of winning “Runway’s” fourth season (2007-08), he had sold $5 million worth of couture. For Siriano, success is measured in connections, whether those are with the Delamar or the fans who buy the sketches, books, clothing, accessories, paintings, photographs and furnishings in his elegantly curated store. It’s why, he said, he likes to sell directly to clients.
But he noted that passion is equally important. He called what he does “an obsession,” quickly adding with a smile, “but in a healthy way.”
For more on “Christian Siriano X Ashley Longshore,” check out Westfair’s Instagram account.
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