( ENSPIRE Entertainment ) Kering, Phaidon, Saint Heron, and Christie’s Celebrate “WOMAN MADE: Great Women Designers” During Art Basel with Solange Knowles-Hosted Dinner Party in Miami Beach
ENSPIRE Contributor: LaShonda Thompson
On Monday, November 29th, Kering, Phaidon, Christie’s, and Saint Heron celebrated the women designers of WOMAN MADE: Great Women Designers, a comprehensive new book spotlighting women of the past, present, and future, and their contributions to furniture, textile, product, and lighting design with a VIP dinner hosted by Solange Knowles, Founder, Creative & Art Director of Saint Heron at Craig Robins and Jackie Soffer’s Miami Beach home. Featured designers in the book, Kering, Christie’s, Phaidon, and Saint Heron executives, and VIP members of the art, design, and fashion community gathered for cocktails and tunes by DJ Rashida before adjourning to dinner prepared to Michelle Bernstein Catering for the rest of the evening.
Solange Knowles:
“Saint Heron is driven to advance and explore the work of Black and Brown women designers. We honor the work of these craftswomen by foregrounding the process of making, to observe the art form of ceramics and its value from within. We are excited to partner with Phaidon and Kering who uplift vital voices in design, to push our initiative forward as a practice. We seek to continue to ground the intimate, ritualistic practice of ceramics through a series of workshops and the Saint Heron residency to spotlight
the journey of these important objects over time.
In addition to the publication of the new book, guests celebrated Kering and Phaidon’s collaboration on a multimedia online platform aimed to inspire and educate the next generation of designers. This exciting initiative will offer free content and resources on the newly developed platform: www.thewomanmade.com.
In alliance with their commitment to empowering women, Kering also highlighted the Women In Motion Design Scholarship, an award of up to $25,000 to support one outstanding undergraduate woman designer currently enrolled at an accredited university in the United States. The scholarship will benefit a student whose curriculum is centered around the product, furniture, textile, or lighting design, and will support their college tuition and fees for the 2022-2023 academic year.
Amidst the event, Solange Knowles, Founder, Creative & Art Director of Saint Heron, Laurent Claquin, President of Kering Americas, and Keith Fox, CEO of Phaidon, Bonnie Brennan, President of Christie’s Americas, all joined each other atop the David Adjaye-designed sculpture on the grounds of the estate for a speech honoring women in design, designers from the book in attendance, and highlighting the work of the Women in Motion non-profit women’s initiative spearheaded by Kering. The group also celebrated the future of Saint Heron’s social impact programmes. During the speeches, Solange Knowles made an impactful toast to announce a forthcoming Saint Heron programme – the Saint Heron Ceramics Artist Residency, backed by Kering’s Women in Motion, designed to promote creative innovation of Black and Brown Women practicing Ceramic Art. The residency is the first of many exciting Saint Heron projects to come in 2022.
VIP Guests Included: Solange Knowles, Derek Blasberg, Chloe Wise, Elle Macpherson, Daniel Arsham, Barbara Sturm, Charlie Sturm, Kerby Jean-Raymond, Aurora James, Raul Lopez, Mario Carbone, Amy Astley, Harmony & Rachel Korine, Ladka Lahore, Tracy Wilson Mourning, Monica Ahanonu, Josh Wyatt, Clemence Krzentowski, Chloe Buckley, Natasha Le Bel, Adriana Cisneros, Chanel and Jeremy Host, Stephanie Zamora, Reese Laflare, Vanessa Grout, Kinga & Edward Lampert, Michelle Soffer, Laura Kerar, and others. The night also included many designers featured in the book: Mimi Shodeinde, Latifa Saeed, Monling Lee, Carol Catalano, Lucia Soto & Andrea Flores.
About Women In Motion
Kering’s commitment to women is at the heart of the Group’s priorities, and through Women In Motion extends to the field of art and culture, where gender inequalities are still flagrant even though creation is one of the most powerful vectors for change.
In 2015, Kering launched Women In Motion at the Festival de Cannes with the aim of shining a light on women in cinema, both in front of and behind the camera. Since then, the program has been expanded to include the fields of photography, art, literature, choreography, and design. Through its Awards, the program recognizes both inspirational figures and talented young women, while its Talks provide an opportunity for leading personalities to share their views on the representation of women in their profession.
For the past seven years, Women In Motion has been a platform of choice for helping to change mindsets and reflect on women’s place and recognition across artistic fields.
About Kering
A global luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in fashion, leather goods, jewelry, and watches: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, Ulysse Nardin, Girard-Perregaux, as well as Kering Eyewear. By placing creativity at the heart of its strategy, Kering enables its Houses to set new limits in terms of their creative expression while crafting tomorrow’s Luxury in a sustainable and responsible way. We capture these beliefs in our signature: “Empowering Imagination”. In 2020, Kering had over 38,000 employees and a revenue of €13.1 billion.
About Phaidon
Phaidon is the premier global publisher of the creative arts with over 1,500 titles in print. They work with the world’s most influential artists, chefs, writers, and thinkers to produce innovative books on art, photography, design, architecture, fashion, food and travel, and illustrated books for children. Phaidon is headquartered in London and New York City.
About Christie’s
Founded in 1766, Christie’s is a world-leading art and luxury business. Renowned and trusted for its expert live and online auctions, as well as its bespoke private sales, Christie’s offers a full portfolio of global services to its clients, including art appraisal, art financing, international real estate and education. Christie’s has a physical presence in 46 countries, throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, with flagship international sales hubs in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris, and Geneva. It also is the only international auction house authorized to hold sales in mainland China (Shanghai).
Christie’s auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $200 to over $100 million. In recent years, Christie’s has achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction (Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvador Mundi, 2017), for a single collection sale (the Collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, 2018), and for a work by a living artist (Jeff Koons’ Rabbit, 2019). Christie’s Private Sales offers seamless service for buying and selling art, jewelry, and watches outside of the auction calendar, working exclusively with Christie’s specialists at a client’s individual pace.
Recent innovations at Christie’s include the groundbreaking sale of the first NFT for a digital work of art ever offered at a major auction house (Beeple’s Everydays, March 2021), with the unprecedented acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of payment. As an industry leader in digital innovation, Christie’s also continues to pioneer new technologies that are redefining the business of art, including the creation of viewing and bidding experiences that integrate augmented reality, global live streaming, buy-now channels, and hybrid sales formats.
Christie’s is dedicated to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide, including achieving sustainability through net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, and actively using its platform in the art world to amplify under-represented voices and support positive change. Browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at: www.christies.com or by downloading Christie’s apps.
About Saint Heron
Saint Heron is a multidisciplinary platform, studio, and creative agency with a mission to build spaces that engage radical conversation for thoughtful, original works that amplify vital voices, and conceptual imagining across art, design, architecture, fashion, and literature.
Established by Solange Knowles in 2013 as a call to community; creating a hub for music, arts, and cultural conversations of their own. The company built a legacy through the creation of special projects such as the release of an eponymous musical compilation, visionary content from creative talent, and thoughtfully curated events and art experiences in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Parsons School of Art & Design, The International Woolmark Prize 2021, Nike, Google
and Pitchfork.
For more information on the Solange Knowles initiative, check out the website HERE and on Instagram. For more information on ‘Woman Made’ check out the website HERE.
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