Latest news with #Mschf
Fast Company
a day ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Mschf to corporate America: Don't sue us, pay us
The Brooklyn-based art collective has spent the past five years commandeering the internet's attention through product drops like Satan Shoes (Nike Air Maxes filled with blood) and Big Red Boots, alongside community experiments like turning Venmo into a game of Survivor. Mschf's 30ish-person team regularly ruffles the feathers of brands, products, culture, and even its own investors. Over the years, Mschf has faced cease-and-desist orders and lawsuits from the likes of Nike and VF Corp. for turning their products into creative clay. But now Mschf has decided to stop poking fun at brands—at least some of the time—to do business with them. It's launching a creative consultancy, called Applied Mschf, to offer services to between 5 and 10 brands a year, and restructuring its business entirely to support this project. The collective has previously collaborated with companies on one-off products: For Tiffany it made a participation trophy for being rich; for Mattel, it produced a rusted jalopy with 'Wash Me' on the window. But Applied Mschf is a much more ambitious and far-reaching effort. Mschf is codifying its services—including marketing, industrial design, digital design, and even architecture—as a full-on creative consultancy.
Fast Company
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
Mschf's $100,000 baby sculpture will be sold by the slice
In 2020, the art collective Mschf cut up a $30,0000 Damien Hirst print into pieces. Hirst's 88 colorful dots were individually sold for $480, as part of Mschf Severed Spots project that explored themes of ownership and exclusivity in the art world. Now, the Brooklyn-based group is looking to chop into a new piece, but this time it's their own foam sculpture of a giant baby. Based on the biblical story of King Solomon cutting a baby in half for two grieving mothers, King Solomon's Baby will quite literally be cut into pieces, with the number of deli-like slices being determined by the amount of online buyers. Ultimately, it's a new approach to how large-scale sculptures can be observed and obtained. Anywhere from one to 1,000 people can purchase a randomized piece of the baby, with each buyer bringing the price down as the number of baby slices go up. The first person to put in their card to buy a piece of the sculpture could receive the entirety of the 15 foot-long baby for $100,000, or pay as little as $100 for a sliver of its toe, or somewhere in between—all with no control of the end result. 'Part of the problem with artwork and for us is that whenever we want to make a singular object, we realize that the way that you can interact with a piece like that is very limited,' Wiesner says. 'It doesn't translate particularly well to a mass audience and people on their phones. This [Soloman's baby] is a mechanism that at least scales the experience—[possibly] a thousand times. All of those people then become participants in the overall life trajectory of what this sculpture is.' The baby isn't meant to have one singular meaning, but rather it's supposed to open up discussion for what ownership and division can mean to the individual viewer and buyer. As the piece gets cut, it becomes less of a three-dimensional sculpture, and more of a two-dimensional wall ornament meant for 'public consumption.' According to the group, this isn't a new idea, but rather a coexisting example of how we visually interpret the world around us. 'You don't you don't know what a thing means until a bunch of people have interacted with it,' Wiesner said. 'I mean, you see it really in on-the-nose stuff, like the Cybertruck. We didn't necessarily know what that car was going to mean when it was first released, and now it has a very particular cultural meaning that is entirely created by its audience.' The experimental piece will be displayed at Pioneer Works, a nonprofit arts and cultural center in Brooklyn, New York on July 10, with a ceremonial 'slicing' of the baby down its middle. Following the sale period, the sculpture will be performatively cut into its sold pieces, which will be viewable in-person and via livestream. The final slicings' of King Solomon's Baby will remain on view at Pioneer Works through their Second Sunday's event, before each piece is shipped off to its new owner. The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mschf Challenges Copyright Norms With New Blurberry, Blucci and Blendi Bags
Mschf, a Brooklyn-based collective known for its viral products that often challenge consumerist culture, is targeting designer bags with its latest release. The group unveiled on Thursday its Blur bags, a continuation of the GSCT — Global Supply Chain Telephone — bag series featuring three prototypes of blurred monograms: Blurberry, Blucci and Blendi. The idea behind the release is to challenge 'the questions around copyright infringement as well as the spectrum of creative labor that the factory performs,' according to a statement from Mschf. More from WWD Robert Pattinson's Got a Brand New Bag in Dior Icons Line Spring Campaign Gigi Hadid Gets Painterly Retouch in New Miu Miu Ad Campaign EXCLUSIVE: Stoney Clover Lane Launches First Leather Category Priced at $650, the Blurberry, Blucci and Blendi bags are crafted from leather with twill interior and feature a detachable shoulder strap. The bags notably borrow inspiration from monogrammed patterns of Burberry, Gucci and Fendi. 'I think we can safely say that fashion is referential, and it continues to be even in this factory, first creative process,' Kevin Wiesner, chief creative officer at Mschf, told WWD via email. Mschf debuted the GSCT in 2024. The bag served as a social experiment for the collective, which highlighted the creative labor from four factories — in Peru, Portugal, India and China — as part of the design process, giving different prompts to each one, creating a telephone chain of labor. 'GSCT set out to protagonize that labor, to design a bag that uses solely factory decision-making as its design process,' Wiesner said. 'We tried different types of prompts to the various factories, some quite abstract — 'complicate' the previous factory's prototype, 'feminize' it, 'masculinize' it — and some much more concrete — we have this prototype, but we wish it was a little more like this other bag. That latter telephone chain in particular yielded the most compelling result, in that each of the stages of iteration are clearly evidenced in the final object.' 'You could read the final bag as a metaphor for how globalized design operates — but more than that, it's just being honest about how the bag was made. It's not about a design vision or name on the product. It's about supply chain gymnastics. That's what luxury really is now,' said Lukas Bentel, chief creative officer at Mschf. The bags will be available for a limited time from Thursday throughout the weekend at Mschf's pop-up installation at 48 Ludlow Street in New York City and at Started in 2016 and reincorporated in 2019 by Gabriel Whaley, Daniel Greenberg, Stephen Tetreault, Wiesner and Bentel, Mschf has built its fame by releasing provocative products, including the 'Jesus Shoes' and 'Satan Shoes,' made from Nike Air Max 97s, and the cartoon-ish Big Red Boots. In 2023, Mschf released a 3D-printed, microscopic handbag, based on Louis Vuitton's OnTheGo tote. The bag was made available through auction house Joopiter for an estimated $15,000. View Gallery Launch Gallery: Mschf Releases Blur Bags: Blurberry, Blucci and Blendi [PHOTOS] Best of WWD Lunar New Year Collections to Know: Details on Fashion, Jewelry and More Brands Embracing the Year of the Snake Valentine's Day Collections to Know: Details on Fashion, Makeup, Jewelry and More Brands Giving Products a Touch of Love, Live Updates Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami: Everything to Know About the Collaboration Ahead of Its 2025 Re-edition
