Horacio Silva
Willi Smith’s genuine desire to work across formats and disciplines extended to forming WilliWear Productions with Laurie Mallet, whose remit was to collaborate with contemporary artists they admired. The division’s lead-off collection of accessible, artist-designed T-shirts—debuted at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in 1984, where they were presented on cardboard wrapped in cellophane like poster prints in one extra-large size and sold for $37 a pop—created the template for similar efforts today by the likes of Supreme, Uniqlo, and Comme des Garçons. No one seems to have the final count of artists ultimately commissioned to create T-shirts between 1983 and 1987, and only a few examples survive. The launch press release included the following biographies and quotes from participating artists, celebrating and complicating the marriage of art and industry.