In State of the Art, a column for Highsnobiety, Chris Erik Thomas untangles the crossover between fashion and art.

It was only a matter of time until Ralph Lauren found its way to Gee’s Bend. Nestled within a former cotton plantation on the Alabama River, the community of African American knitters has crafted geometrically inventive patchwork quilts for generations. For its next act: a beautifully considered collection of textile works and hand-painted ceramic tableware centering American folk craft, given a Ralph twist. 

There’s a thorny, uniquely American history to Gee’s Bend, which makes it a perfect pick for Polo Ralph Lauren’s fifth Artist in Residence series. The program, launched during America’s racial reckoning in 2020, has become a key outlet for uplifting previously underrecognized craftspeople, including seventh-generation Native American weaver Naiomi Glasses.

It would be easy, or even expected, for Lauren to coast on goodwill and strong sales — it just announced a 14% rise in Q1 sales — at this point in the brand’s legacy; next year will mark its 60th anniversary, and the designer’s own 87th birthday. The founder, after all, has been called the “Designer of the American Dream” for a reason. He’s spent decades spinning America’s sartorial history, from Ivy League to Old Money to westernwear, into supremely sellable clothing. 

But by turning the focus to Gee’s Bend, Lauren is bucking a trend towards sanitizing history and scaling back diversity. A trend, it should be noted, that goes all the way to the White House’s own executive orders. 

Instead, Lauren is leaning in by elevating African American textile arts to a place of high luxury. Polo’s Gee’s Bend Artist In Residence collection tapped Claudia Pettway Charley and Loretta Pettway Bennett — fourth- and fifth-generation Gee’s Bend residents, respectively — to create a series that centers the enclave’s traditional patternmaking. 

It’s not the first time the group has found itself in the spotlight. It was the landmark 2002 exhibition The Quilts of Gee's Bend, at the Whitney Museum in New York, that framed their work as more than just craft, but actual fine art. In the decades since, this attention has translated into collaborations with the likes of Chloé for its Fall/Winter 2022 collection and Lauren’s own nephew, Greg Lauren, for a Bergdorf Goodman collaboration. 

The collaboration with Lauren couldn’t come at a more apt time. Fashion is in the midst of a full-throated craft revival, uplifting visibly handmade wares as a rebuke to fast fashion. Carhartt has a “crafted” range of vintage reproductions, while brands like Kartik Research are using ancient Indian handicraft techniques to elevate shirts and trousers — and Indian designers writ large are producing a wave of fabric-focused, embroidery-heavy collections. 

Here, Lauren’s partnership with two prominent Gee’s Bend craftswomen hasn’t been folded into some general “heritage” narrative. Both Charley’s and Bennett’s names are prominently displayed on each piece, and the prices — ranging from $225 up to nearly $5,000 — show that the label knows the value of this key tenet of American craft history. 

By centering the legacy of Gee’s Bend, Lauren has shown that it's up to the challenge of reckoning with the complex history of America — thorns and all. 

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