Objects of Permanence, a special installation opening on Thursday curated by Mellány Sánchez and presented during New York Fashion Week, seeks to spotlight the rich histories of the Puerto Rican and other migrant community labor forces in New York City’s garment industry. This installation marks the first collaboration between cultural institutions the Tenement Museum and Abrons Arts Center and is on view through September 14, 2023.

This show spotlights the Lower East Side (LES) as a pioneering capital of the garment industry in the mid-20th century. Objects in the form of artifacts, both real and imagined, work to preserve and tell the story of LES residents of the past and present, whose labor was integral to the development of New York City as a fashion capital. Simultaneously, it unites these voices of the past to the direct descendants and beneficiaries of their legacy—today’s fashion designers.

It invited CFDA members Emily Adams Bode Aujla from BODE, Christopher John Rogers, Tremaine Emory from Denim Tears, Elena Velez, Rio Uribe from Gypsy Sport, Willy Chavarria, Maria Cornejo from Zero + Maria Cornejo, and other designers including Kim Shui, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane, and Procell (amongst others) to create imagined artifacts for an archive devoted to the life of a garment worker.

In addition, contributions from local community collaborators with ties to the garment industry are also on display. As a nod to the Tenement Museum’s exhibition Saez Velez Family Story of matriarch and seamstress Ramonita, the installation also features historical objects, such as shears, photographs and more, on loan from the Tenement Museum, the first time a large trove of objects have been lent outside the institution.

“Looking back at the pieces from Ramonita’s home and career as well as the artifacts of many other honorable Lower East Side garment workers, we start to understand how objects become narrative conduits, vessels of legacy, and proof of a life lived,” said curator Mellány Sánchez. “Framing these historically charged fragments next to contemporary fabrications, Objects of Permanence proposes how garments, relics, and images weave our personal stories into a historical and cultural chronology.”