From a top-earning model who’s teaching girls to code to a fashion entrepreneur who shouldered his family’s business at age 19, to the Ethiopian-born artist who doesn’t want to be known for his arresting photo of a pregnant Beyoncé, the 2018 Forbes Art & Style 30 Under 30 list highlights young superstars across the worlds of fine arts, commercial design and fashion.
Our featured pick this year, Adam Vanunu, 28, had to take over his family’s business when his Israeli father died suddenly of cancer in 2009. Their Los Angeles-based company, American Dye House, treated garments for billion-dollar brands like J. Crew and Calvin Klein. After employees embezzled more than $2 million, Vanunu got the business back on track and in 2012 he launched Cotton Citizen, a line of high-end t-shirts and sweats in saturated solids that’s a hit with Gigi Hadid and Kourtney Kardashian.
Karlie Kloss, 25, the subject of a cover story by my colleague Natalie Robehmed, topped Forbes’ highest-paid models list in 2016, earning $10 million. She’s had contracts with Swarovski, Express and L’Oreal. Lately she’s been focused on Kode with Klossy, a non-profit that’s taught 500 young women to code through summer camps and scholarships.
Artist Awol Erizku, 29, took one of the year’s most-viewed photos, of Beyoncé revealing she was pregnant with twins. Kneeling against a backdrop of multicolored roses and ferns, she cradles her bare, swelling midriff between blue satin panties and a gauzy black bra, a diaphanous lime green veil draped over her head. But Erizku doesn’t want the picture to define him. “I just recently started acknowledging that I took the photo,” he says. “It overshadows what I’m doing.” That includes critically acclaimed photographs challenging the dominant white aesthetic, where he restages famous paintings by artists like Vermeer and Caravaggio with black models. He’s had solo shows in New York, London, Brussels, Los Angeles and Miami.
In addition to Erizku, our 2018 fine artist picks include several who have exhibited in museums, a rare achievement for artists under 30. Bunny Rogers, 27, had a solo show at the Whitney this fall of installations inspired by pop culture and tragedy like the 1999 Columbine mass shooting. The work of Martine Syms, 29, incorporates live performance, video, lectures and essays that explore themes like the surveillance of African-Americans. She had a solo show at MoMA this year and at the Institute for Contemporary Art in London in 2016, as well as pieces in group shows in four other museums. Minimalist sculptor Diamond Stingily has a solo show slated for 2018 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.
We also have three art dealers, including Joseph Nahmad, 27, scion of the billionaire Nahmad art dealing family, who has shown what he calls “challenging” work by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Prince at his gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and 22-year-old Ben Milstein, who made more than $300,000 in cannabis stocks before buying and selling elaborate bongs as artworks. Chelsea Neman Nassib, 29, runs Tappan, an online gallery and ecommerce platform specializing in emerging talent, and she brokers commissions for her artists with commercial clients like sweetgreens restaurants.
In fashion, we found an eclectic group this year, from Ashley Nell Tipton, 26, the first plus-sized designer to win Project Runway, to Sandy Liang, also 26, a New York City native who is inspired by grandmothers in Chinatown, where her father owns a restaurant. Her own grandmother has modeled Liang’s signature oversized outerwear on Liang’s website, including a black patent leather jacket trimmed with white shearling. Models Jourdan Dunn, 27, and Lauren Wasser, 29, have blazed a trail for models of color and those with physical disabilities.
A standout this year is Maryellis Bunn, creator of the hit Instagram-ready Museum of Ice Cream. Less a traditional museum than a whimsical venue where visitors can shoot pictures of themselves interacting with installations like a pool filled with multicolored plastic pellets meant to look like sugary sprinkles, Bunn has staged the attraction in temporary spaces in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The $29 tickets have sold out immediately, attracting Gwyneth Paltrow, Katy Perry, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z, who visited on Mother’s Day with their daughter and posted a shot on Instagram that has 1.4 million likes. Revenue from ticket sales has topped $6 million.
This year for the first time we’ve included a CEO, Rocco Basilico, who at 28 is running Luxottica eyewear’s $70 million (revenue) brand Oliver Peoples after helping to expand its North American retail footprint from 14 to 30 stores. He’s also reworking the retail strategy for Ray Ban.
I’ve only run through 16 of our 30 names. Click here for the complete list.
To put together our list, we spend the year compiling names. Starting in late summer, we ask the advice of multiple sources, including art and design schools like RISD and Parsons, and dealers and collectors who track young artists. This year we also evaluated more than 100 online nominations.
We found great nominees, and picked our final 30, with the help of three judges, two of whom have appeared on past Forbes 30 Under 30 lists in our category. Ashley Graham, 30, became the first plus-sized model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue in 2016. She calls herself a “body activist,” advocating for the more than 50% of American women who wear a size 14 or larger. Since featuring her on our 2016 list, she’s published a memoir, A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like. Michael Xufu Huang, 23, on the list last year, is a Chinese-born art collector who cofounded a Beijing modern and contemporary art museum, M Woods, in 2014 when he was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. Since graduating in May, he’s been investing his own capital in startups like ARTA, a New York-based company aimed at streamlining the art shipping process. He's also advising startups on their China strategy. Our third judge, Cynthia Rowley, 59, founded her own New York-based fashion house and lifestyle brand, which includes apparel, eyewear, handbags, fragrance, office supplies, home furnishings and tech accessories. Together with her art dealer husband Bill Powers, she also runs Exhibition A, an ecommerce site for signed, limited-edition artworks.
At Forbes, our Art & Style list editorial team includes our sage and seasoned lifestyle editor Michael Solomon, and Samantha Sharf, who covers real estate and has a keen interest in all things art and style. Senior Editor Caroline Howard supervises the entire 30 Under 30 project, and oversees our list, and Randall Lane, the editor of Forbes magazine, makes the final call on the featured call-outs in each category.
What do you think of the list? Join the conversation on Twitter with #30under30
