A home office desk with Steelcase made sense. As did an ottoman with Inside Weather, an armchair with Cassina, and even a bath collection with Brizo. But the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s latest collaboration may surprise you.
Earlier this month, the foundation launched a limited number of sneakers created with none other than Ronnie Fieg, the founder of the cult favorite fashion brand Kith. Kith also designed two T-shirt, one with the foundation’s logo, another with a Wright-inspired sketch on the front. The sneakers, called New Balance Made in USA 998, were created for New Balance and are inspired by one of Wright’s most famous unbuilt projects, Broadacre City. They feature the same color palette as the architect’s sketches, namely a warm blend of taupes, reds, and greens.
The sneakers were priced at $220 a pair, though according to Stuart Graff, CEO and president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, they sold out online within 90 seconds, and the same day at Kith’s Tokyo store and a pop-up at Taliesin West. (Many of them are now selling on eBay, for as much as $695.)
This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of sharing a sidewalk with fretful Kith fans, starved for the brand’s next drop. But it may well stun the average Frank Lloyd Wright fan, who Graff describes as “a bit older,” and “better off than the average American financially.” Neither phrase describes Gen Z, of course, and that’s exactly the kind of audience Frank Lloyd Wright foundation wants to reach.
“We have been working for a number of years now at audience diversification,” Graff tells me. “And that’s always felt a bit at odds in connection with Wright’s efforts to democratize architecture.”
The partnership with Kith was born about 18 months ago via Jewel, the foundation’s licensing agency that vets all ideas before granting access to the foundation’s digitized archives. As Graff recalls, Fieg had also visited Taliesin West in Arizona for a product photo shoot. The two started brainstorming collaborations, and just like that: Broadacre City came up in conversation.
The thing about Broadacre City is that, despite being close to 100 years old, the concept still raises relevant questions today “about land use, consumption of land, densification of the urban environment,” says Graff. It’s through partnerships like the one with Kith that the foundation gets to tell a story about Wright’s groundbreaking vision and generate a bit of revenue in doing so. (The foundation got royalties from each pair of shoes sold, but Graff declined to share an exact number.)
This isn’t the foundation’s first foray into fashion. On the occasion of New York fashion week in 2015, it partnered with the fashion label Opening Ceremony to create a Wright-themed collection including basket weave dresses, asymmetrical tops, and Bonsai trees embroidered on silk dresses. And to celebrate the architect’s 150th birthday in 2017, the foundation teamed up with Chicago-based hatmaker Optimo to craft a limited-edition replica of the architect’s signature hat. Still, of all the brands the foundation has worked with, Kith undoubtedly carries the most clout among younger generations. And clout is synonymous with reach.
In its efforts to reach this new generation, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation pulled out all the stops, all the way down to the packaging: a sleek shoe box with a photo of Broadacre City model on the face of it, and sneakers wrapped in custom paper lining featuring one of Wright’s sketches. “Part of what we do in every aspect of our work is try to stimulate curiosity,” says Graff. “Because when you stimulate curiosity, you have an invitation to share more information.”
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