CR‘s Class of 2020

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bernhard

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Many feelings arrive with the start of a new year—celebration, reflection, motivation for change—but most of all there is excitement for what’s to come. In the midst of award season and ahead of the start of fashion month, CR presents our class of 2020: a group of young creatives that span fashion, music, entertainment, and the arts. And while each has certainly come a long way on his or her respective paths, this next year is only looking brighter.

Simone Bodmer-Turner, Sculptor

Even in her former, albeit brief, life on Wall Street, Simone Bodmer-Turner, 30, had an interest in working with her hands. She had taken informal drawing and illustration workshops previously, but it wasn’t until after she discovered ceramics—and eventually swapped her finance 9-5 for an apprenticeship with a master potter in Oaxaca, Mexico and a residency in Japan—that she realized her true craft. Today the Berkeley, California-native operates out of her own studio in Brooklyn, for which she funded and built out through Kickstarter. Her work has been exhibited internationally—at Salone Mobile in Milan, for instance—and ranges from hand constructed clay pieces to non-clay object and furniture design (a recent development for the artist) using wood, glass, and metal. The latter is part of the artist’s newest venture: a showroom by appointment where everything from side tables to chairs, ottomans, candelabras, and her Insta-famous clay vessels will be available.

Gabriel Pitan Garcia, Painter

Born in São Paulo, Brazil but now based in Barcelona, Spain, 25-year-old Gabriel Pitan Garcia spent nearly his entire childhood doodling (“I didn’t play video games or watch TV, all I did was draw in notebooks,” he tells CR, “I had hundreds of them”), but by the time he entered puberty, he says the fire waned. It wasn’t until college, while studying architecture, that the calling naturally returned. “I realized that architecture design was not for me, but through my observational classes, the passion came back.” When not traveling to go-sees and photoshoots as a male model—a new interest inspired by his mother’s former modeling career—Pitan Garcia creates enigmatically severe paintings. Draped in charcoal, the artist’s work challenges everything from the Brazilian political climate to the art system at large.

Raphaelle, Musician

Performing live might very well be Raphaelle’s favorite thing to do. Born in Paris as Alison Raphaelle Gieske, the singer/songwriter spent the first chapter of her life in the suburbs of Houston, Texas before moving back to the French capital at the age of 13. Even without listening to her music, the geography lines alone speak to Raphaelle’s masterful balance of soft tenderness and brutal intervention. She spent those next, formative not still a girl, not yet a women years in New York City, which was her home until recently. Having, as she assures, recorded hundreds of demos in her time—including a critically lauded debut EP, Post Modern, in 2016—Raphaelle’s recent-ish Los Angeles relocation was the key step to the long awaited prize: her first studio-produced record, set to come out later this year.

Louisa Ballou, Fashion designer

Louisa Ballou, 27, never planned on making a career out of swim suits. As a child in Charleston, South Carolina, she was always somewhere underwater—surfing, swimming, you name it. Years later, while preparing for her thesis at London’s prestigious fashion design school Central Saint Martins (she followed all of her favorite designers), an idea hit her: why not look to what she knows best? Her resulting swim collection was so well received that even people from outside of the program would ask for personal order. After a few years interning at Loewe in London and men’s surf brand Vissla in California, Ballou returned to Charleston to launch her eponymous line. At just over a year today, the brand, as its founder explains, “sits between swimwear and ready-to-wear—it can’t be one without the other.” Originally launched at Opening Ceremony, Louisa Ballou the brand has become a favorite of the likes of Bella Hadid and Megan Thee Stallion. And as for Louisa Ballou the person, there’s far more on the horizon: “I’ve also been collaborating on so many other projects, which I am so excited to share.”

Robert Alfons, Musician

On one hand Robert Alfons, the musician behind the dark electro-pop outfit TR/ST, is obsessed with being on the road, and on the other he cannot wait for the second that it ends. “There’s so much crazy shit going on the world right now, it’s just so hard to be able to stay centered,” says Alfons. “It makes me more affected—the highs and the lows.” It’s the last day of his world tour for TR/ST’s recent, two album release The Destroyer (Part 1) and (Part 2)—the project’s first in five years. “It was very special to put out,” says Alfons. “I had been sitting on a lot of the songs for some time, so it was nice to go out and connect with people through them. It sounds really simple, but that’s all it takes.” With the conclusion of that phase, is another half a decade to be expected for the next? Alfons isn’t there just yet, but he does have a plan for 2020: “I can’t wait to shake it up and play around.”

Martine Ali, Jeweler

Martine Ali has fond memories of going to her local craft store in Chicago, Illinois as a toddler. When she was in kindergarten, she started fashioning eclectically beaded necklaces together through the encouragement of her then babysitter. Ali’s mother would wear the DIY jewelry to her work, and—to both their surprise—people would ask for accessories of their own. Years later, while studying at Fordham University and interning at DKNY in New York, Ali would wear her handmade pieces around the office. This time they caught the attention of Donna Karan herself, who hired the young designer to spearhead the brand’s runway jewelry and accessories. When Ali founded her unisex jewelry line five years later, she was commuting from a cheap share in the Bronx to a tiny studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. (“It was three trains each way,” remembers Ali. “That was… a particular time.”) These days, it’s safe to say that times have changed. She’s also, recently expanded her offering into handbags. While the rapper Kendrick Lamar made Ali’s pieces—which stylishly favor silver over gold—famous, it’s those like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and even designer Matthew Adams Dolan that have kept the jewelry maker at the tip of cultural pertinency.

James Turlington, Model

With a last name like Turlington, it’s hard to imagine a life not in front of the fashion lens. But for 25-year-old James—the nephew and near-perfect male replica of Christy—it almost was. The California native was born in SoCal but raised in the north—there is a distinction—and spent nearly his entire life playing baseball. While studying sociology at UC Santa Barbara he played for minor league teams, and then in 2016 he was drafted to the Los Angeles Dodgers. But all that came to a halt this past summer when Turlington announced his retirement from the sport due to an elbow injury. Luckily, the runway was calling. Starting with Rag & Bone’s Spring/Summer 2020 runway show, this past fall marked Turlington’s first season as a professional model, and he soared through all the major names: Dior, Bottega Veneta, Etro, etc. As far as words of wisdom for the future, his aunt had but one thing to say when told of his career swap: “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Anna Herrera, Model

“I arrived to New York just a few hours ago—at seven in the morning today,” says Anna Herrera, almost out of breath. She has just returned from LA, where she was for a week for a job, and moments from now will run to her Big Apple apartment, drop off her luggage, shower, repack, and head back to JFK for a flight to Europe. “Recently, it’s been like, non-stop.” Indeed, it has for the young model, who is just coming off a year-long exclusive contact with Saint Laurent (and even opened opened the Parisian house’s Fall/Winter 2019 runway show). The sky’s the limit for the 25-year-old, who claims her now-signature haircut began as a random idea while visiting Japan but became a turning point in her career. Other than the runway—for which, she’s since walked for Tom Ford, Givenchy, and Versace—the model is interested in the other side of the camera. Herrera just recently filmed her first documentary, a short about the colonization of her homecountry of Brazil, and hopes to continue to make more this year.

Andrew Burnap, Actor

Twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Burnap is a second time New Yorker. The Rhode Island-born and educated actor moved to the city after finishing Yale’s School of Drama graduate program and, as he says, “hated it.” After a few Off-Broadway theatre pieces, the self-described “small towner” found himself in Los Angeles, where he would meet the playwright Matthew Lopez and end up moving to London to star in Lopez’s production of The Inheritance. Based of E. M. Forster’s historic novel Howards End, the two-part, six hour play examines the love between gay men in the generations after the AIDS epidemic, and in it Burnap stars as the painstakingly troubled lead, Toby Darling. “There’s a beautiful vulnerability with Toby in that he makes decisions that really hurt other people even though it’s not on purpose,” explains Burnap, “He’s just trying to figure out what’s what based off his own history. So I try my best not to ever judge Toby, and to treat him with care, love, and understanding.” After a largely successful run in 2018 at the Young Vic, the emotionally-loaded production brought Burnap back across the pond, opening in New York earlier this fall. “Once I do say goodbye to The Inheritance—which is something I can’t even fathom at the moment—I think I will be excited to be able to start all over again. That’s where the coolest stuff happens; when you enter a new process and you have no idea what’s going on.”

Fiffany Luu, Muse

Without knowing Fiffany Luu, it might be difficult to fully understand her. She models—for Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs, Fenty Beauty—but she isn’t a model. She hosts the most infamous parties in NYC, but she isn’t a party promoter. She’s been on Law and Order and in rappers’ music videos, but she isn’t an actress. She knows every good restaurant south of Delancey, but she isn’t a food critic. At 28, the Maryland-born, New York-dwelling It girl, is just, well, Fiffany. She’s one-third of Glam Collective, an art-slash-fashion-slash-food group Luu founded with her biological sister Kyle Luu and sister in arms Dese Escobar to push the boundaries of the expected. Together the trio have coopted everything from dinner to the runway and, of course, the afterparty, injecting a fearless sense of glamour into everything they touch.”Everyone is welcome at Club Glam [a monthly party Glam Collective hosts],” says Luu. “Glamour for me is just being confident; making anything work no matter what circumstances you’re under and just really having fun.”

Victor Barragán, Fashion designer

CFDA-nominated Victor Barragán, 28, began his fashion collection in his hometown of Mexico City while studying industrial design, but it wasn’t until he moved to Brooklyn, New York in 2015 that he started taking it seriously. First came the name change—from Ytinifninfinity (the word “infinity” spelled backward and forward) to Barragán—and then the operations, from opening up a studio to taking on a business partner. The eponymous brand, which is known for its subversive sexuality, has a close connection to the Brooklyn queer and nightlife communities, and in fact many of its collaborators are the designer’s own close friends. “We’re really pushing the idea of freedom of sex,” explains Barragán. “And the different ways you can present yourself.”

PHOTOGRAPHS: JON ERVIN
FASHION: DANIEL GAINES
TEXT: JOSHUA GLASS
MAKEUP: KIM WEBER & MARIKO ARAI
HAIR: SHIN ARIMA & TIM AYLWARD
NAILS: MEI KAWAJIRI & ELINA OGAWA
PRODUCTION: SASHA BAR-TUR FOR CR STUDIO


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