Who designed the building you’re in right now? While many of us here at AD obsess over such details, attendees of New York Fashion Week shows don’t typically concern themselves with matters of Frank Gehry and Frank Lloyd Wright. Presumably, the guests at an event celebrating Dion Lee’s SS24 show were invited to its IAC Building venue to appreciate some art of the sartorial variety, so most were understandably unable to respond in the affirmative when asked by someone creating lighthearted social content for the brand: “Do you know who Frank Gehry is?” Among those questioned were rapper Ice Spice, fresh off her Best New Artist win at the VMAs, Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, and Bottoms actor Rachel Sennott. The TikTok video cuts together a number of responses from the ambushed fashion fans, none of whom appeared to be aware of the fact that the architect designed the edifice in which they were standing.
Formally known as the InterActiveCorp headquarters, IAC was the legendary Canadian-born architect’s first Manhattan building. The nine-story construction in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood was completed in 2007 and also marked Gehry’s first major glass building, which required crews to bend material on site in order to fully realize the dynamic effects of Gehry’s sailboat-like design. The AD100 designer is also responsible for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA and the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain.
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While no one was able to readily call up Gehry’s name at the Dion Lee event, the question did make for some interesting answers. Spice noted that she does know a thing or two about architecture and named the pyramids as her favorite work. Stylist to the stars and frequent Zendaya-collaborator Law Roach—known widely for his formal title as an image architect—responded in the negative when asked if he happened to know who Gehry was. When the interviewer informed Roach that Gehry was an architect, Roach, possibly sensing a certain spiritual kinship between their respective roles, exclaimed, “I love him!”
Perhaps if the event were held at New York Architecture Week, such a prompt would yield more accurate (though likely less amusing) responses.
