{"id":619399,"date":"2026-09-09T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619399\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T15:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T15:00:18","slug":"charles-harbison-and-the-hickory-museum-bring-art-and-fashion-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619399\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Harbison and the Hickory Museum Bring Art and Fashion Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt is uncommon for a living fashion<\/a> designer to receive a solo exhibition<\/a> heralding their body of work while they are still developing it. American designer Charles Harbison has received that honor with his first solo exhibition<\/a>, \u201cThe Women by Charles Harbison,\u201d on view through Jan. 31 at the Hickory Museum of Art<\/a> in North Carolina. The exhibition is the first of its kind at the museum and reopens its newly renovated space, making the moment especially significant for Harbison, who is also a native of the area.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Saturday, Harbison and Score 3 Ventures invited Women\u2019s Wear Daily to a virtual sneak peek of the exhibition. Across three floors, works from the museum\u2019s permanent collection by Roy Lichtenstein, Selma Burke and Alexander Calder are placed in conversation with Harbison\u2019s archival and red carpet pieces. Four newly commissioned works, inspired by the paintings: \u201cThe Aerialist,\u201d \u201cGirl in a Field,\u201d \u201cMickey in Her Wedding Dress\u201d and \u201cIndian Girl,\u201d explore his approach to the body through fashion as art<\/a>. These works bring to life his theory that fashion is both \u201cprotective armor and narrative canvas.\u201d They showcase his love for saturated color, signature gold hardware, flowers, sculptural shapes and movement \u2014 motifs that evoke family, aspiration, joy, childhood, home, cultural history and possibility, and, as he noted, \u201creflect my practice as an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Hickory<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHickory Museum of Art, \u201cThe Women by Charles Harbison\u201d exhibition display. Courtesy Harbison Studio.<\/p>\n

\n\tConnecting home and memory, the exhibition\u2019s emotional center is a projected black-and-white image of the women in Harbison\u2019s family gathered on the North Carolina porch. \u201cThese are the women who raised me and continue to inspire me.\u201d he said. Presented as an exhibition piece, the porch becomes an allegory for his origin story, a first runway and a place where fashion<\/a>, storytelling and community convene.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the end, \u201cThe Women\u201d feels less like a static display than a walk through the designer\u2019s layered memory, training and process \u2014 an argument for fashion as fine art and a statement of Harbison\u2019s growing place within the American fashion canon. It also recalls Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s landmark 1983 \u2014 1984 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s Costume Institute, the first time the institution devoted an exhibition to a living couturier. While not a comparison or suggestion that the two careers are identical, it places Harbison within a rare museum tradition: honoring a designer\u2019s work while he is still actively evolving it.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Charles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCharles Harbison 2026, commissioned piece paired with Lorenzo Scott\u2019s, \u201cGirl in a Field of Flowers\u201d at the Hickory Museum of Art. Courtesy Harbison Studio and Hickory Museum of Art<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThem, emphasizing me in this way was important to me and to this community,\u201d Harbison said. \u201cI am a fine arts boy first.\u201d Curating the exhibition with the museum offered a welcome reminder to acknowledge his process and an opportunity to understand the artist and designer not as separate, but as one.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Charles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tCharles Harbison and guest attend the 2025 WWD Style Awards, and Megan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex in custom Harbison Studio at the 2026 Fifteen Precent Pledge gala in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\n\tHarbison made his debut in 2013, closed his label in 2015, was recognized by the CFDA Fashion Trust USA in 2021, moved his studio to Los Angeles and opened Harbison Studio in 2022. It was in Los Angeles where he found success as a designer who \u201cdresses the body.\u201d His work has appeared on a growing A-list of celebrities including Beyonc\u00e9 Knowles-Carter, Meghan Markle, Mindy Kaling and Audra McDonald.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked what\u2019s next, Harbison reflected on Tom Ford\u2019s desire \u201cto create vintage.\u201d In turn, he said he also wants to create \u201cvintage\u201d clothes that are auctionable, accessible and collectible \u2014 pieces worn by women and men and collected by art and fashion patrons around the globe. With a likely return to New York Fashion Week in 2027, the exhibition positions him for the next chapter of his evolving practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is uncommon for a living fashion designer to receive a solo exhibition heralding their body of work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[2273,307,304,305,306,308,217485,93,21942,1424,61,60],"class_list":["post-619399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-designer-brands","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibition","tag-fashion","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}