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The Arts Intel Report

Dakota Transit: Sonic Couture by Andrea Aranow

A jacket from Andrea Aranow’s collection.

Oct 1 – Nov 17, 2024
516 NW 14th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209, United States

Diana Vreeland coined the term youthquake in 1965 to describe the impact of youth culture on music, fashion, and design. Think Mary Quant and Edie Sedgwick. Few excelled at this energetic movement like Andrea Aranow, the founder of Dakota Transit, the East Village clothing shop and Youthquake epicenter of the late 60s and early 70s. Her leather and snakeskin pieces were featured everywhere from the high-fashion pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to the counterculture epitomized by the East Village Other. The New York Times, in 1971, wrote that Aranow “achieved instant fame” for the custom pieces she made for Jimi Hendrix. For the first time in over 50 years, original garments from Dakota Transit will be on view at Textile Hive, a physical and digital textile center co-founded by Aranow’s son, Caleb Sayan, in Portland, Oregon. After shuttering Dakota Transit, Aranow traveled through Peru, where she was profoundly inspired by the region’s vibrant textiles and colors, a discovery that ignited her next era of creation and collection. Shortly after “Sonic Couture” opens, Textile Hive unveils Aranow’s private collection of Peruvian pieces, which include tapestries, dresses, embroideries, and field notes from her travels. —Lucy Horowitz