Vanity Fair’s Best-Dressed List Is Full of Art-World Power Players This Year. Here’s Who They Are

It probably has something to do with jurors Thelma Golden and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn.

Guests at the Vanity Fair 2018 Best-Dressed List party. Photo by Jared Siskin/Getty Images for Vanity Fair/Saks Fifth Avenue.

Vanity Fair has released its annual best-dressed list and, while it includes standard celebrity suspects such as Miuccia Prada, Jay-Z, and Meghan Markle, there was also a surprisingly large contingent from the art world this year. This is thanks, no doubt, to the jury’s inclusion of Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum Harlem, art entrepreneur Alexander Gilkes, and New York gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn.

Here are the art world figures who were recognized for their fashion savvy by the magazine.

Louise Neri

Louise Neri. Photo by A. De Vos, ©Patrick McMullan.

Louise Neri. Photo by A. De Vos, ©Patrick McMullan.

A director at Gagosian since 2006, Neri has also worked as a magazine editor and curator. Asked to pick her favorite designers, Neri named Duro Olowu (who happens to be Golden’s husband), Phoebe Philo, Stefano Pilati, and Junya Watanabe.

 

David Adjaye

David Adjaye. Courtesy Nicholas Hunt | Getty Images.

David Adjaye. Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images For Soho House & Co.

Adjaye, the go-to architect to art stars, was recently tapped to design the new Princeton University Art Museum, reported that his favorite designers are Virgil Abloh and Carlo Brandelli, and that his favorite accessory is beads from Ghana, where he was born.

David Hockney

David Hockney at the opening of "David Hockney: Something New in Painting (and Photography) [and even Printing]" at Pace Gallery in New York. Photo by Max Lakner/BFA, courtesy of Pace Gallery.

David Hockney at the opening of “David Hockney: Something New in Painting (and Photography) [and even Printing]” at Pace Gallery. Photo by Max Lakner/BFA, courtesy of Pace Gallery.

The octogenarian artist has long been recognized for his cardigans and newsboy caps, but now he is receiving explicit praise for this sartorial commitment. “Hockney has always sported colorful, foppish style, topped off with his round-rimmed glasses,” said Vanity Fair jury member Alexander Gilkes.

 

Nathalie de Gunzburg

Nathalie de Gunzburg. Photo by Benjamin Lozovsky/BFA.

Nathalie de Gunzburg. Photo by Benjamin Lozovsky/BFA.

The chairman of the board of the Dia Art Foundation got the nod from New York dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who noted that “with her exquisite jewelry collection, de Gunzburg is an unusual colorist of gem tones.”

 

Yayoi Kusama

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama. Photo ©Yayoi Kusama, courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore/Shanghai; David Zwirner, New York and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.

The eccentric Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, unmissable in her neon red wigs and polka-dotted outfits, “is the embodiment of her artistic style—a walking spotty canvas,” said Gilkes of the 89-year-old artist.

 

Shanay Jhaveri

Shanay Jhaveri. Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for <em>Vanity Fair</em>/Saks Fifth Avenue.

Shanay Jhaveri. Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images for Vanity Fair/Saks Fifth Avenue.

The Mumbai-born Jhaveri, an assistant curator of South Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum, tells the magazine that his favorite wardrobe item is “white cotton pajamas made by my tailor in India, a version of which I have been wearing since I was two.”

 

Carla Sozzani

Carla Sozzani. Photo by Billy Farrell, ©Patrick McMullan.

Carla Sozzani. Photo by Billy Farrell, ©Patrick McMullan.

Sozzani has led a glamorous life, from working at Vogue Italia to founding an eponymous art gallery and the fashion complex 10 Corso Como in Milan. “Carla and [her late sister Franca], the blonde Italians, broke the mold—very chic, more Italian bohemian,” said jury member and jewelry designer Lisa Eisner.

 

Duro Olowu

Thelma Golden, Duro Olowu. Photo by Sylvain Gaboury, ©Patrick McMullan.

Thelma Golden and Duro Olowu. Photo by Sylvain Gaboury, ©Patrick McMullan.

Olowu, a fashion designer, is married to Thelma Golden—no wonder he made the list!—and the art world also apparently has a big influence on his style. He told Vanity Fair that his biggest style icon is artist David Hammons. His favorite item in his closet, meanwhile, is his “vintage French workman’s jackets.” (How very Bill Cunningham of him!)

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