Sky High Farm Universe fuses style, culture, and community to spotlight regenerative farming while nourishing those who need it most.
by JULIE GERSTEIN
/ DIRTY BOOTS SPR UT
The Next NEWMAN’S OWN
For inspiration, Seybold and Colen look to brands like food company Newman’s Own, which has donated more than $600 million to charity, and outdoor-apparel maker Patagonia, which donates its profits to fight climate change. “We realized the one thing we do have is a very committed community that can help tell a story around these concepts,” says Seybold. “We can essentially package it in a way that people actually want to engage with it.”
Take a walk around L.A. or New York City’s most stylish neighborhoods and you might notice a particular illustration adorning the chests of the young and beautiful: a cheery, beatific strawberry perched delicately on a smiling crescent moon. It’s the logo of Sky High Farm Universe, the lifestyle brand built to support the work of Sky High Farm, a nonprofit regenerative agriculture farm founded by artist Dan Colen that donates 100% of its crop and cattle yield to food banks in its upstate New York community. Colen bought the 40-acre Hudson Valley farm in 2010, after ascending to the white-hot center of New York City’s mid-aughts art scene (read our story on page 144). He launched Sky High Farm Universe almost a decade later. “I started it with very little planning or forethought,” he told W Magazine in 2020. “Luckily there were some people in my life that were able to help steer it in a good direction.” One of those people was James Gilchrist, the vice president of avant-garde design house Comme des Garçons USA and luxury retailer Dover Street Market USA. Gilchrist brought Sky High Farm Universe into its Dover Street Market incubator program, which helps emerging designers establish their brands. “The story behind the farm and the ambition that Dan had for it, together with the huge success of
LEFT: FOUNDER AND ARTIST DAN COLEN ON SKY HIGH FARM. BELOW: THE SKY
That’s why it pays to have friends in fashionable places. Take, for instance, Sky High Farm Universe’s 2022 collaboration with luxury provocateurs Balenciaga, known for creating a nearly $2,000 leather sack shaped like a garbage bag and selling a leather tote resembling an IKEA bag for even more. Sky High Farm Universe used some of the brand’s unsold backstock that would have otherwise “collected dust in the warehouse,” says Seybold. Each jacket and T-shirt was adorned with the strawberry- on-the-moon illustration by artist Joanna Avillez and a photo of Sky High Farm livestock taken by renowned photographer Ryan McGinley, who came up in the art world alongside Colen. The collection was sold at a relatively low rate — $500 to $800 apiece, compared with the more than $2,500 retail price of a typical Balenciaga cotton-canvas jacket. Since then, Sky High Farm Universe has collaborated with other influential artists, including Kara Walker, best-known for her cut-paper silhouettes, and the multidisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson. The brand has also worked with notable stylists and photographers, like Alistair McKimm and Quil Lemons, and collaborated with classic streetwear brands, including Nike and Converse, and up- and-coming ones like Denim Tears.
HIGH FARM UNIVERSE TEAM LOOKS TO THE CREATIVE COMMUNITY TO BUILD AWARENESS OF AGRICULTURE THROUGH COLLABORATIONS.
these initial projects, made it a no- brainer for us to partner,” Gilchrist tells The Rooted Journal. Following the incubator, Colen recruited Daphne Seybold, Comme des Garçons and Dover Street Market’s former head of communications and marketing, to serve as Sky High Farm Universe’s co-chief executive officer and chief marketing officer. Seybold was attracted to the concept of using commerce to support a cause. “It was really this idea that we could coalesce different brands, artists, individuals, and communities
around the farm’s work,” she says. “Traditional philanthropy is typically driven by donations and grants, and as we all know, those are really sort of hamstrung by people’s willingness to be continuously generous. So the idea of using merchandise and harnessing capitalism to that end seemed like an interesting concept.” Seybold is aware, though, of the difficulties lifestyle brands have in getting off the ground. “Starting a brand is such a massive undertaking. And it’s not lost on me what the success rate is,” she says.
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