Sky Gellatly is a matchmaker between artists and brands, and his eye for deals has resulted in some flashy, and lucrative, collaborations.
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.
