In the robustly expanding realm of artist-brand collaborations, Sky Gellatly, at 44, has operated as a best-kept secret. Style and art world insiders may credit him as a canny go-between for artists and fashion brands keen to exploit potentially lucrative partnerships. But he has, up to now, stayed mostly under the radar.
Eight years ago Gellatly and his longtime associate Nikle Guzijan founded ICNCLST, a New York agency that forges relationships between high-profile brands — including Nike, Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, Comme des Garçons, Louis Vuitton and the late Virgil Abloh — and art world luminaries, like Takashi Murakami and the graffiti artist Leonard McGurr, better known as Futura.
Recent deals include a capsule fashion collection by Air Jordan, the MoMA Design store and the artist Nina Chanel Abney; a collaboration between Moncler, the Italian luxury outerwear brand, and the artist Rostarr (Romon Kimin Yang); and not least, an LVMH sneaker-in-residence exhibition that Gellatly curated.
This fall he teamed with Jacobs to conceptualize “Just Like Heaven” a group show highlighting the work of some of Jacobs’s longtime collaborators: Sofia Coppola, Marilyn Minter, Damien Hirst and their high-wattage like, at Control, the Los Angeles gallery of which Gellatly is a partner.
In the works this year are a collaborative print between Futura and the Japanese artist/fashion designer Verdy, to be sold online; a partnership with the artist Devon Turnbull, the creator of the audio company Ojas, for a listening room in Detroit; and several collaborations with Nike centered on the 2026 World Cup.
Gellatly has seemed content for the most part to let his clients flex their star power while he works behind the scenes. He followed that pattern with Futura, producing artist collaborations with Louis Vuitton, the New York Mets, Comme des Garçons, Beats by Dre and Noguchi, as well as projects at Miami Art Basel last month.
Visitors at Basel may have recognized Futura, who is the subject of “Futura 2000: Breaking Out,” a retrospective running through March 30 at the Bronx Museum. They were less likely to pick out Gellatly as he roamed the crowd at the freshly installed Art Basel Gift shop at the Miami Convention Center. He had turned up to celebrate the introduction of the FL-001 Mini Pointman, a toy-size replica of Futura’s most recognizable large-scale sculpture, an alien-like figure with a menacing mien.
Visitors surged toward Futura, but Gellatly maintained a shadowy presence. He wore a Uniqlo black tailored jacket and trousers, the studiedly low-key uniform of a self-professed outlier.
And that’s the way he likes it.
“I’m an introvert,” Gellatly said in an interview late last fall. He was seated at a conference table at his studio in TriBeCa, a space devoid of clutter save for souvenirs of collaborations with Kaws, Krink, Abney and others, clustered throughout. He wore a sweatshirt with the logo of Columbia University, where he is an adjunct assistant professor in the Graduate School of Architecture.
In the interview below, which has been edited and condensed, Gellatly talked about a formative Oprah moment, “fighting the good fight for artists” and more.
You seem to have kept an intentionally low profile throughout your career. Why is that?
I’m not strictly a sales guy. I think of myself and my team as mirrors to the creatives we work with. We want to reflect back to them potential that they have — and keep them on task. Sure, I bring them opportunities. But we’re looking out for projects that for me strike a personal chord.
You’ve chosen an unconventional path into the worlds of art and high-end branding. What moved you in that direction?
I grew up in Hopewell Junction in upstate New York, on top of a mountain ridge, surrounded by woods. We were an artistically inclined household. My dad aspired to a career in the arts but went on to work in York Harbor as a coastal tanker captain. My mom was a teacher. In her 30s she had a kiln in the house and made pottery.
We had Shaker furniture and Noguchi lamps at home, and a Keith Haring print that my parents bought in the ’80s. I feel like a lot of what I’m doing is in some way a continuation of the things they were interested in, the things I grew up around.
What turned you into a fashion fan?
My mom had a subscription to Interview magazine. She did a lot of sewing — she made some of my clothes when I was growing up. On Saturday mornings we would watch fashion shows on television. Those things were imprinted on my mind.
Later, after I graduated college, I was at home watching Oprah with her. A segment on the show cut to Marc Jacobs’s studio. At that point, I had maybe bought a pair of Marc sneakers or a T-shirt. And I thought, “Oh, this is what a creative person’s studio looks like.” That left an impression.
You’ve spent the earliest phases of your career at the junction of editorial and marketing, working at Complex magazine and in editorial at MTV and Details magazine. You directed marketing at Hypebeast. How did that background influence you?
I saw that the “high culture” of print media suddenly had to coexist with digital media. I felt we would soon be living in an era where unrelenting intersection would become the new norm. Everything would need to become a new narrative or dialogic versus a clever catchphrase in a press release.
What tells you that a collaboration may have legs?
It comes down to shared passions. A brand like Nike will want to create a performance shoe with a functional benefit. But Nike will take a holistic view of a prospective partner, realizing, for instance, that the artist may be both a creative and a runner — he might, for that matter, also be a D.J. The product stands to succeed when a brand offers a platform or narrative that reflects something of the artist’s human side, something not well known.
An example is Futura. As a New Yorker, he’s been a lifelong Mets fan — he had a season ticket to the games. He told me it would be a dream for him to work with the Mets.
He ended up making a collaborative baseball hat for the Mets in jersey, and a Bobblehead. He was psyched to throw out the first pitch of a game with his son. With that, he was telling his fans, “I love baseball just like you. I listen to the Mets on the radio when I paint.”
Who is the likely consumer for these kinds of goods?
My 14-year-old son, for one. For his generation, art and brand partnerships are effectively the norm. From a young person’s perspective, why shouldn’t an artist have his intellectual property on a video game, and at the same time on a sneaker?
You’ve cultivated long-term relationships with artists and designers including the surf-wear creator Shawn Stussy, Murakami and Abloh, a friend and frequent collaborator at Louis Vuitton. What, besides the obvious hype, is in it for you?
I’m mostly drawn to people who I think of as having created a movement. Some are friends. Some have been mentors to me. My interest is in sharing a life moment with them.
On of my most transformative experiences was the first time I went to Takashi’s studio a couple of years ago in Japan. It’s in an old car building factory that had been gutted. You can’t even fathom the immense scale of the place, the level of organization and creativity. It’s almost like Walt Disney.
My friendship with Takashi has been especially inspiring. He’s given me
a couple of mentor kind of talks.
Why would an artist of that stature be comfortable working with you?
For a long time, established artists were discouraged from taking on commercial projects, cautioned that it might diminish their value or prestige. Some of them have told me, “Sure, a lot of brands reached out to me but my gallery, without telling me, said no.”
Some of our artists are more about working in an egalitarian world. They want to make products that appeal to a kid, someone who reminds them of themselves as a teenager. From a social media perspective, they also may like that a brand partnership can provide them a larger megaphone.
Do you see yourself as some kind of benefactor?
I think of us as fighting the good fight for artists. Historically there has been this concept that a gallery owns an artist. Half of what the artist earns goes back to the gallery. That’s a disproportionate amount.
What’s in it for the brand?
There is a shared prestige or acknowledgment that the brand and the artist or art institution are leaders in their fields. Three months ago we launched a set of Nike socks with the MoMA and Nike logo. That item signaled mutual respect between the partners, a metaphorical shaking of hands. The socks, thousands of pairs, sold out.
How large a staff does it take to pull off a deal like that?
We have about 20 people in New York and another 20 in Los Angeles. We’re aiming to become the first fully, vertically integrated agency for artists, going from licensing to curatorial work. A lot of these kinds of support have been commonplace for actors, athletes and musicians forever. But for artists, this is new.
