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How Babylon Built a Brand Around Community

LOS ANGELES — Lee Spielman is nothing if not efficient.
He’s direct and doesn’t waste time on formalities, and that’s no surprise given how busy he is with Babylon. That’s the Los Angeles label he started with Garrett Stevenson some three-and-a-half years ago. The two have a steady flow of collaborations in the works, going as far ahead as 2020, and plans to reopen a store in the L.A. area next year.
They recently wrapped a pop-up at Undefeated on La Brea Avenue, doing a collaboration with Venice brand Born x Raised. Past collaborations for the brand have ranged from Off-White to skate brand Spitfire. This places it in the enviable position of sitting alongside Maison Margiela in some stores and F—ing Awesome, a core label, in others. Distribution is discerning, with some 25 accounts globally, doing business with accounts it sees eye-to-eye with, Spielman said.
“It’s finding the common thread [as to] why that all makes sense,” Spielman said. “So Virgil [Abloh], he’d actually come to the shop and pull up and talk with kids….We definitely live in a wild place where we sell clothes to fashion kids and we sell clothes to dirty kids at the skate park, which is a

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The Met Breuer Plans First Major Survey of Lucio Fontana’s Work in New York in More Than 40 Years

The work of artist Lucio Fontana will be back in New York next month — 58 years after the late artist made his only visit to the city.
When “Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold” bows at the Met Breuer Jan. 23, it will be the first major survey of his work in more than 40 years. The show will examine his work including sculptures, paintings, drawings and environments. Creator of the art movement Spatialism, Fontana’s slashed paintings became symbols of the postwar era. The Met’s show, which runs through April 14, will include examples of this series, known as “Cuts,” or “Tagli.”

The catalogue references Fontana’s own take on the work. “When I sit down in front of one of my Tagli [Cuts], to contemplate it, I suddenly feel a great expansion of the spirit,” he explained in 1961. “I feel like a man liberated from the slavery of the material, like a man who belongs to the vastness of the present and the future.”

The artist’s oeuvre is admired by some leading members of the fashion crowd, including Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli. The pair showcase Fontana’s work among the artists on view in the Fondazione Prada. Fontana’s work has attracted the

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Selena Gomez Designs First Full Collection for Puma

STRONG GIRL: Selena Gomez has been tapped by Puma to design a collection of shoes, apparel and accessories, launching Dec. 12.
The American starlet, who has one of the highest Instagram communities with 144 million followers, had already teamed with Puma to design two sneakers, the Phenom Lux in March and the DEFY in September, but it’s her first try at creating apparel for the brand.
Named “Strong Girl,” a riff on the singer’s initials, the collection is made up of sports pieces with a nod to the Nineties — Gomez was born in 1992. Striped leggings, a crop top with mesh details, button-up skirts and a PVC tracksuit set are delivered in black, white and gray, with occasional pops of red.
Gomez also designed a new sneaker, the SG Runner, a hybrid between the classic Puma court shoe and a running sneaker.
Additionally, the singer-turned-designer came up with a revamped version of the DEFY sneaker. The DEFY Mid x SG training shoe features a black metal buckle and a rose-gold plated chain with a textured knitted upper.
The collection was unveiled via a video posted on Puma’s Instagram account, in which Gomez and five of her close friends state the keywords that inspired the collaboration.
“I

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