Every Supermodel Stopped by Gagosian to Celebrate Richard Avedon’s Centenary
Since all of the art and fashion cognoscenti were already gathered in New York City for the 2023 Met Gala, it only made sense to keep the party going. At Gagosian art gallery in downtown Manhattan, the premiere of the Avedon 100 exhibition and book launch commemorating Richard Avedon’s centenary drew a high-fashion crowd with a line snaking around the block to get in.
2023 marks 100 years since photographer Richard Avedon was born in New York City. His storied career took him to Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and The New Yorker, as well as countless advertising and personal projects, before he passed away in 2004. Behind the lens, Avedon had a remarkable capability to capture movement, personality, and a spectrum of emotions.
To commemorate his centenary, Gagosian invited 150 artists, designers, musicians, writers, and creatives to curate an Avedon photograph meaningful to them. Contributors included Hillary Clinton, Cindy Crawford, Elton John, Kim Kardashian, and more. Each participant selected a photograph, which was then published in the new Gagosian book Avedon 100 as well as displayed at Gagosian in Chelsea.
The Avedon 100 exhibition, on view through the end of June, features much of Avedon’s iconic oeuvre. The black and white photographs include celebrity portraiture, scenes from the American West, snapshots from the Civil Rights movement, and fashion images of models. Celebrities photographed in the exhibit include Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Prince, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Photographed models include Claudia Schiffer, Veruschka, Naomi Campbell, Donyale Luna, and more.
The exhibition was co-curated by Kara Vander Weg and Derek Blasberg. For Blasberg, working on Avedon 100 has been a full-circle moment. He grew up in St. Louis, admiring Avedon’s photography in magazines, a lens for him into the world of fashion and celebrity. He later moved to New York City, where he met Avedon twice. “This exhibition is full of the pictures that made me fall in love with him, to begin with,” he told Vogue.
The crowded party drew creatives from across the art and fashion worlds. Notably, many of the top global supermodels attended, including Gigi Hadid wearing Thom Browne, Iman, Liya Kebede, Precious Lee, Lauren Hutton, Pat Cleveland, and Karlie Kloss. Kloss, who wore a floor-length black dress with cutouts, told Vogue, “As a model, I studied the movement in his imagery. There’s such an awareness of both the models and Avedon. There must have been a special relationship between the two. By looking at a ton of his images, I learned a lot.”
There were also several attendees at the party who themselves were subjects of the displayed photographs, such as Patti Smith and Pat Cleveland. Cleveland shared with Vogue fond memories of working with Avedon. “I love that he could keep up with me when I was jumping across a room. When he started doing those moving jumping pictures, I was one of the first. He had a quick finger. He and his assistant would jump with me. We were all jumping like gazelles across the room.”
Fashion designers in attendance included Vera Wang, Tory Burch, Jack McCollough, Lazaro Hernandez, Wes Gordon, and Victor Glemaud. Other notable attendees included Sofia Coppola, Lauren Santo Domingo, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Eve Jobs, Kate Young, and Owen Wilson. For Wilson, the exhibition was particularly special, as his mother Laura Wilson was a photographer who worked closely with Avedon.
As the gallery party came to a close, guests wandered a few blocks south to the Top of the Standard, where Harley Viera-Newton and B.Mills DJ’d musical sets under the disco balls. Partygoers included Patti Smith, Vogue’s Grace Coddington, and Tyler Mitchell. Mitchell, who wore a black embellished Bode jacket, told Vogue, “What inspires me about Avedon’s exhibition is that he asserted himself as someone who loved fashion and people, but he also loved to present his work as art. This exhibition is really about unearthing his body of work through all of the things that he is: an amazing portraitist, an amazing lover of fashion and people, and an artist.” Gagosian’s Avedon 100 book and exhibit, along with Tyler Mitchell, who at just 28 years old is already inspiring the subsequent generation of photographers, further cements Richard Avedon’s lasting influence.
Ben Rosser/BFA.com1/28Patti Smith
Ben Rosser/BFA.com2/28Karlie Kloss
