The Sky High Farm Workwear brand is expanding its team after four new collaborations.
Sky High Farm Workwear — founded by artist Dan Colen to support a nonprofit working to reduce food insecurity — has added veteran fashion publicist Kate Mester as its new head of programming and fundraising. Mester most recently worked as Loewe’s Head of Global VIP Relations and held senior positions in PR Consulting.
Quil Lemons — a photographer whose clients include Valentino, Ssense and Coach — also joined as art director.
These appointments follow the announcement in March that longtime Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons communications executive Daphne Seybold has joined Colen as co-chief executive of Sky High Farm Workwear. She is the co-founder of the label as well as a founding member and treasurer of Sky High Farm 501(c)(3).
“Attracting the best and unleashing their passions and potential in the service of a greater cause — food sovereignty — is beyond exciting, and we know their contributions will be many,” Seybold said of the hiring of Mester and Lemons.
Sky High Farm Workwear and Sky High Farm 501(c)3 operate as separate entities. Colen first founded the nonprofit in 2011 at a farm in Ancramdale, New York, which donates its produce and meat offerings to food pantries throughout the greater tri-state area.
Sky High Farm workwear appeared later this past February as part of Dover Street Market’s Brand Incubator Program — envisioned as a line of emotive and stylish products that would help fund the nonprofit’s operations.
Since its inception, Sky High Farm Workwear has partnered with fashion insiders to expand its creative practice. Recent collaborations include Tremaine Emory and Converse by Denim Tears. The brand logo was designed by illustrator Joanna Avillez.
Four new mico-capsule collections will be shown in Paris this week as part of the wider Sky High Farm Workwear Fall 2023 collection. The label has teamed up with iD magazine stylist and editor Alastair McKimm, Harper’s Bazaar US editor Samira Nasr, costume designer Heidi Bivens and artist Shana Sadeghi-Ray on limited edition products within her core collection.
The designs, expected in stores this August, riff on Sky High Farm Workwear classics like house coats, hand-knit cardigans, zip-ups, parkas — all with unique graphics created in collaboration with the label’s latest round of creative partners.
Seybold said of the move, “Sky High Farm Workwear has benefited from the creative generosity of many since its inception. Alastair McKimm, Samira Nasr, Heidi Bivens and Shana Sadeghi-Ray are presenters working at the absolute pinnacle of their professions; to have their individual prints on our collection is a complete honor, but also embodies the spirit of philanthropy that drives our brand.”