Advanced Commercialism

March 1999 | Walking that tightrope between art and commerce

I love this piece I wrote last century (in 1999!) called “Advanced Commercialism” (see below). Throughout my crazy career, I’ve always been fascinated with the consequences of what happens when art and commerce collide. As you’ll read in my 26-year-old essay below, I’ve always leaned toward the uncommercial. Put me in a room with 100 billionaires and one artist, and I’ll find the artist in two minutes and talk to them the whole night. I’m a heat-seeking missile for art but a dumbbell at commerce. I’ve always felt that artists and big brands should never be allowed to talk to each other because they freak each other out so much. For example in the early eighties, we tried to raise money for years to start our little magazine called PAPER pitching to TONS of individuals and publishing companies, but everyone we approached always asked us what single category our magazine was. Was it a fashion magazine? (Not really). Was it an art magazine? (Not really). Was it a music magazine? (Not really). We explained it was a mix of all that creates CULTURE. So no one would invest and very few would advertise because we weren’t ONE THING.

Funny how some things never change. Forty years later, I tried for four full years to get my book STUFF published (yay finally out this March!). I was rejected by everyone. Why? The same reason we couldn’t get money for PAPER! They’d say to me, “What shelf will this book sit on? Is it a fashion book? (Not really). Is it an art book? (Not really). Is it a design book? (Not really).” One very reputable publishing house said to me, “What book have we published already that is the same or very similar to yours???” I was like OMG YOU ARE KIDDING ME??? Another one said to me when I proposed my book, STUFF, “ Oh no, we once published a book about a man who collected Italian glass and it didn’t sell” OY VEY. REALLY??? This is why I always end up doing shit myself. This is why my dear friend Karla Arria-Devoe and I started our own little imprint called AMAZING UNLIMITED. I’ve become accustomed after years of roadblocks to realizing if I don’t DIY then it won’t happen. Thank GOD I met with an amazing woman named Eleanora Pasqui from a small family publisher in Italy called Damiani, who came by one day, looked at my still unfinished book, and GOT IT. I rejoiced that finally someone got it!!! And so Damiani partnered with us to become our co-publisher.

Doing my career so stubbornly this way has definitely made me a misfit and an outsider. No one in the mainstream publishing world took PAPER seriously for a looong time. As the content I loved and covered in PAPER was also not defined as one thing, I was considered an outsider in every area. I loved fashion, art, design, and style, but I was never accepted inside any of these fields by the industry. I loved the high and the low. The yin and the yang. I loved Hermes, but I loved Screaming Mimis. I loved threeASFOUR, yet I loved Levi’s. I loved misfits, outsiders, and independents, but I also loved classics. So via my coverage of art, design, fashion, and style, I was considered an outsider to all those industries. What I learned was that having an outsider POV with no agenda in these various cultural industries made my coverage more brave, interesting, and more innovative. Oh, and more honest in my opinion, which sometimes got me labeled as a troublemaker (and probably still does).

Because of my outsider status, I rarely won any awards in my career which was OK with me. (Growing up my mom always used to tell me: “Kim, forget awards! That and a subway token will get you to 14th Street!”) Even our magazine PAPER which is now historically highly regarded, never won a single National Magazine Award. That’s why it came as a big surprise to learn a few weeks ago that I had won the prestigious Cooper Hewitt National Design Visionary Award for 2025. I knew I’d been nominated, but never in a million years did I think I would win this award. Because I am not technically in the design field, I am definitely not an insider in the design world, and the Cooper Hewitt is a design museum! Somehow being graced with this award this year gave me hope that perhaps folks are coming around to expanding their traditional rules of what is design, what is art, and what is fashion. Which is totally my wheelhouse! And that my life’s work of sideways thinking has validity, even though I’m not a member of any particular niche or club. So thank you, Cooper Hewitt!

I’ll close here with a speech I gave that ruffled more than a few feathers the only other time I won an award fifteen years ago. It was a fashion industry CFDA award which also came as a shock to me because I was such a fashion outsider. People still come up to me reminiscing about this acceptance speech I made that some people loved and others hated. Here’s a pared-down version of what I said that night (same shit different day!) in 2010 at the Lincoln Center ceremony packed with fashion insiders:

“Although I’m not the usual suspect for receiving a fashion award like this, I want to thank the CFDA for this honor and especially for recognizing that alternative thinking has value.

I’ve always been an outsider not only to the fashion industry, but in the other worlds I inhabit, from art to design to magazines. My passion is culture creation and this is what we do at PAPER, which we started 26 years ago at my kitchen table—and we’re still miraculously, “owner-operated” today.

My partner David Hershkovits always says that we at PAPER live in a parallel universe…and so we create our own little utopian business where conforming to standard operating procedures is not required. We’ve always approached most of what we do sideways and from outside the box—with a collective team of unique, dedicated and loyal talents… like-minded people that share our love and enthusiasm for exploring, discovering, and documenting that exciting cultural universe that bubbles below the radar.

I share this award with TEAM PAPER, but I’d also like to share it with other outsiders—independent thinkers who inspire me and are not the usual suspects either. Because they are the catalysts for breaking new ground in the inseparable culture of where design, art, fashion, and style come from, and come together.

I hope the fashion world continues to look beyond the usual suspects. Just because you’re cute, connected, rich, or famous, doesn’t necessarily mean you design great stuff. I also wouldn’t put too much stock into this “one day you’re in—the next day you’re out” business. How you can be a genius today but next year you’re not because you’re “off trend”?

That said, I may continue to be a slightly thorny guest in this industry, but I’ll always adore and celebrate great fashion and the tidal waves that precede and follow it, so thank you again for honoring me and inviting me to such a fun party.” K.H.

(Cover of Kevin Spacey)

Advanced Commercialism | March 1999

OVER TIME, I HAVE COME TO ACCEPT THE FACT THAT I AM NOT REALLY A COMMERCIAL ANIMAL. Nine times out of ten, that which I instinctively adore does not sell. In fact, I would be invaluable to some giant company, acting as a one woman focus group to help it accurately identify which of its products would be disastrously uncommercial. Just remove everything | lust after and they'll probably do fine. Although my attraction to the eccentric and the radical has often worked against me, I've also been able to use this skill to my advantage.

For years, I was always able to buy the most amazing, unique designer items by waiting patiently until the very end of the season, when the price of all the crazy pieces I coveted was inevitably slashed down to nothing. I always loved what no one else wanted, and soon learned that the greatest stuff just didn't sell. My favorite designers often went out of business. My favorite styles were often discontinued. But boy, in the meantime, would those prices go down! This is how I accumulated all my best stuff. In the ‘70s, I remember, a fairly conservative French leather shop uptown had among its brown leather purses a whole collection of ridiculous big shoulder bags made of brightly dyed shaggy fur (in lilac, yellow, emerald green, and orange!), as well as bags completely covered in glitter. They were fabulous and outrageous and, of course, the store didn’t sell a single one. (Too weird.) I eventually bought nine of them, marked down from $400 to $39 each. I still get stopped on the street today when I carry them.

That same year, before he had his own shop, the radical then-newcomer shoe designer Manolo Blahnik (an eccentric whom I adore) made pancake-flat jellybean-colored suede pumps, when everyone else was doing trashy disco platforms and spike heels. I coveted Blahnik's clowny flats, which were, of course, unsellable at the time. They had been marked down so low at Bloomingdale's that when I finally went to reel them in, they had been given up on and sent to Filene's Basement, in Boston! Believe it or not, I took a late-night train to Boston, where I grabbed five pairs for $19 each! When I first met Blahnik in London in the ‘70s, he was designing completely outrageous shoes. Although he loved to design off-trend, as most artists do, he eventually learned what he had to do to stay in business (as he couldn't make a living selling these to the kids who thought they were "art" for $19 a pair!). He successfully adjusted his outrageousness and walked that tightrope between art and commerce; learning how to give the ladies who lunch what they wanted, but not without slipping in little hints of his eccentricity. He became a huge success.

Blahnik discovered how to be advanced yet commercial. It’s tricky to broaden without selling out. True artists are emotional and not used to translating their ideas to a lower common denominator. Advanced Commercialism: Fashion designer Andre Walker coined this expression as he struggled to succeed in business with shocking and outrageous ideas. Walker is a genius fashion radical who has been trying in vain to figure out this puzzle of commerciality for years. His designs are way ahead of his time for sure, but as my mother always says, "That and a subway token will get you to 14th Street.”

Why is it so hard for the greatest creators of our society? The brilliant jewelry designer Ted Muehling recently fell victim to a huge knockoff machine that commercialized one of his most intimate and lyrical designs and distributed the shit out of it, until it ended up selling in Kmart for 99 cents. Why does this happen time and time again? Why is the great artist often exploited and rarely able to reap rewards from his or her great idea?

The longer I live and work, the more fascinated I become with this thing called commercialism—especially as we struggle with it daily at this very magazine. What kind of quality does it take to appeal to more people? What makes something a huge success, as opposed to an elite secret? Can something very smart and sophisticated appeal to a large number of people? Does it always have to change or be "dumbed down" to become popular with the mainstream? As frogdesign's creative director, Tucker Viemeister, says, "Leadership by its nature is lonely. When you are in front of the curve it's special, and that wave drives design forward." Yes, it's hard to be ahead of things, but perhaps this should all be looked at as sort of an "insider trading" advantage. If I hold out long enough, those polka-dot Manolo Blahnik flats I bought for 19 bucks at Filene's in the ‘70s may just sell at auction at Christie's this year for thousands!