The Sky High Farm Workwear brand is expanding its team on the heels of four new collaborations.
Sky High Farm Workwear — founded by artist Dan Colen to support a nonprofit that works to alleviate food insecurity — has added veteran fashion publicist Kate Mester as its new head of programming and fundraising. Mester most recently worked as Loewe’s head of global VIP relations and held senior positions at PR Consulting.
Quil Lemons — a photographer whose clients include Valentino, Ssense and Coach — has also joined as contributing artistic director.
These appointments follow a March announcement that longtime Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons communications executive Daphne Seybold had joined Colen as Sky High Farm Workwear’s co-chief executive officer. She is a cofounder of the label as well as founding board member and treasurer of the Sky High Farm 501(c)(3).
“Attracting the best and unlocking their passions and potential in service of a greater end — food sovereignty — is beyond exciting and we know their contributions will be many,” Seybold said of Mester and Lemons’ hiring.
Sky High Farm Workwear and Sky High Farm 501(c)3 operate as separate entities. Colen first founded the nonprofit in 2011 on a farm in Ancramdale, New York, that donates its produce and meat yields to food pantries across the wider tri-state area.
Sky High Farm Workwear came later, last February, as part of Dover Street Market’s brand incubator program — envisioned as a line of emotional and stylish products that would help fund the nonprofit’s operations.
Since its establishment, Sky High Farm Workwear has teamed up with fashion insiders as a means to expand its creative practice. Recent collaborations include Denim Tears’ Tremaine Emory and Converse. The brand’s logo was designed by illustrator Joanna Avillez.
Four new mico-capsule collections will be shown in Paris this week as part of Sky High Farm Workwear’s wider fall 2023 collection. The label has teamed with stylist and i-D magazine editor Alastair McKimm, Harper’s Bazaar U.S. editor Samira Nasr, costume designer Heidi Bivens and artist Shana Sadeghi-Ray on limited-edition products within its core collection.
Designs, which are expected in stores this August, are riffs on Sky High Farm Workwear’s classics like chore coats, hand-knit cardigan, zip-ups, parkas — all with unique graphics created in collaboration with the label’s latest round of creative partners.
Seybold said of the move: “Sky High Farm Workwear has been the beneficiary of the creative largesse of so many since its inception. Alastair McKimm, Samira Nasr, Heidi Bivens and Shana Sadeghi-Ray are leaders working at the absolute apex of their professions; to have their individual imprints on our collection is a total honor but also epitomizes the spirit of beneficence that governs our brand.”
Source: WWD