Ella Slater reports from the art fair frontlines at Art Basel Miami Beach. This is the first iteration of a column consisting of art scene style reports, published by Beautiful Gowns in collaboration with Elephant. All images author’s own.
Miami has a lot in common with Cheshire, which is where I grew up. Both have new money, a copious amount of plastic surgeons, and a Real Housewives franchise. It makes sense, therefore, that I would love Miami Beach. Though I cosplay as a dissociative-pouting, Tabi-wearing art baddie on the streets of East London, I have never been able to totally escape the part of me that adores overpriced Pilates classes and a tan.
The Miami Beach iteration of Art Basel is known for its debauchery and its fabulous parties, so despite rumours of a “quieter year” – with numerous galleries pulling out of the fair, and a few cancelled stalwart events – I was excited. In particular, I was looking forward to jet-lagged 6 am mornings spent under a thirty degrees Celsius mid-December sun, and smoking indoors at Mac’s Club Deuce, Miami’s infamous dive bar.
My expectations for the outfits at Art Basel were high, but the reality consisted of very little – not necessarily in quality, but definitely in fabric surface area. I saw more perfect pairs of tits in one week than the entire twenty-five years of my life. I came away resolving to wear shorter dresses and higher heels, because why not? Everyone looked totally fabulous.
The preview days were predictably demure. Since I was sitting on a booth all day, I technically had eight hours to people-watch; when day two rolled around, and all I’d seen were a sea of padded Chanel bags and expensive suits, I was a bit anxious. I began to think that the art fair circuit might be comprised of the same people transposed to different cities. Tonight I’d have to brave the jet lag and hit the strip. I shovelled down some tacos, got drunk off half a pint-sized margarita, and jumped in a taxi to the Pérez Art Museum Miami – referred to by locals, quite chicly, as PAMM.
The bashment party was in full swing under Patrick Blanc-designed phallic hedges – rumour had it that Bob Marley’s kids were playing. Wine was very sweet and free. Tate Lates could borrow some of this energy. It was fun.
I was joined by Dora and Ada Densham-Bond, sisters in style and rainbow hair, which attracted lots of attention. Dora had just covered the Sukeban Japanese female wrestling league for Plaster and had been dressed in head-to-toe Lucila Safdie. Tonight, Ada wore a Niihai sunset bodycon, the same pink shade as her hair, which she’d dyed in her hotel room earlier that day.
On the way out, we met some gorgeous girls who had cracked the Miami dress code and made it high fashion. Kirsten Chen, a self-described “fashion and fetish consultant”, had just styled the aforementioned Sukeban wrestlers (dream gig), and Mani Mekala had performed at the Whitney Review’s packed-out launch party the night before. They had both flown over from New York for the week, as – it seems – had the entirety of the NYC art and fashion gang. Since I am obsessed with underwear-as-outerwear, a la Kinderwhore and corsets, I thought that they both looked divine. Babydolls and neon bras forever.
Back at the fair the next day, I decided to take a break from the booth and actually look at some art.
Nadia Lee Cohen’s divine and spectacularly shiny sculpture – titled soul for sale and shown with Jeffrey Deitch – obviously takes first place here. I love Cohen’s Essex accent and LA glamour. She’s very Lynchian. Her resin nude looks like a mantlepiece ceramic from the seventies – though her wider practice is distinctly modern, inasmuch as it unashamedly melds art with commerciality; authenticity with plasticity. I liked the entire Jeffrey Deitch booth almost as much as I like his website, which I like a lot. There was a ‘Great American Nude’ theme going on, of which other standouts were this enigmatic portrait of Cher in The Witches of Eastwick by Sam McKinniss, and a creepy chimeric painting by Aleksandra Waliszewska.
On the other side of the tent, I tried to take a look at the coin-sized Frida Kahlo self-portrait but a crowd had already gathered. Instead, I fell in love with the flash of hip in this weird Leonor Fini, and the crushed velvet frame on Jess (Collins)’s Moonset at Sunrise (1963), an enigmatic painting of a woman and a crescent moon.
After a while, I tucked my exhibitor badge into my shirt to stop people asking me where the robots were, by which they meant the uncanny mechanical dogs fitted with the hyper-realistic heads of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. For those interested, I spotted their creator, Beeple: he was wearing rimless glasses and some very skinny trousers. Over a cigarette that evening, some Miami tech bros tried to mansplain NFT minting and James Howells’s lost Bitcoin fortune to me. These guys had made their money online, and now they had their own Mezcal brand/crypto-rave company. They struck me as school nerds who’d found their crowd in the party boys, which was quite touching.
On Friday, I went to the Perrotin x Silencio party at the Miami Edition, where The Hellp and The Dare were playing. The only outfits I can remark on here were the ubiquitous black suits and mod haircuts worn by the musicians; everyone else was drenched in sweat and red strobe lights.
Art Basel, however, came into its own over the weekend. The crowd felt younger than at other fairs I’ve been to, which was fun. I’m British, so I felt really weird about asking people if I could take photos of them, but everyone was friendly. Miami natives Tanna, Daphne, and Keenan worked across art and AI. Daphne’s very diverse selection of tattoos first caught my eye: she has Yoshitomo Nara’s Harmless Kitty on one arm and Doré’s ‘Adam and Eve in Paradise’ (from Milton’s Paradise Lost) on the other. Adalena, Gabriella and Evan were the sweetest girls – I wish I’d dressed as fabulously as this at their age, but alas, my style secrets consisted solely of matching my braces to my Jack Wills leggings.
On my final day in Miami, I planned to go thrifting until I determined that I’d rather make the most of what would probably be my last glimpse of sunlight until at least March next year. I went to one overpriced vintage store and talked myself out of buying a $90 polyester skirt. I spent $90 in Brandy Melville instead, where I was stared down by a bunch of fourteen-year-old girls who were all taller than me. Then I lay on the beach for the remainder of the day, reading East of Eden and listening to Addison Rae until the tropical rainclouds closed in.
On the redeye back home, manic and contemplative in the way that only plane insomnia can render you, I thought about what I’d learnt in the place that Lenny Bruce says ‘neon goes to die’. Neon, actually, had been very much in abundance: splashed across canvases and on the walls of dive bars. As soon as I landed, I bought some bright pink ballet flats on Vinted. My search history also consisted of: real fur coats, Agent Provocateur, and some Miu Miu kitten heels. I might switch silver for gold jewellery too, who knows.
In Miami, I learnt that tackiness and taste can go hand in hand, that the sun makes everyone sexier, and that we should all dress up a bit more, because why the hell not? I learnt that there is glamour to be found anywhere, even in the tech crowd, and that an aversion to excess isn’t always a marker of moral superiority. Actually, excess can be very liberatory. I will always love getting dolled up. I’m glad other people do too.
