Community Craftsmanship: Acne Studios Repurposed FW22

Vince Patti, 29, and Mischa Langley, 26, live in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and work nearby, from their studio in Bushwick. They’ve been running Lesser Miracle for two years, an endeavor that has romantic roots. “Vince had a crush on me, and I wanted to use his table saw,” Langley says. “I had a crush on Mischa and an industrial table saw,” Patti says. Love and utility. Their favorite thing about their studio is that their truck fits through the building’s roll-up door—“so we can leave it in the studio when we go home for Christmas and skip alternate-side parking.”

For three years, Mike Ruiz Serra, 25, has been creating furniture and objects in Ridgewood. (He commutes from Williamsburg.) But his interest in construction and fabrication goes back further, to his time at Rhode Island School of Design. “I love the natural light and trees outside my studio,” he says. “It’s important for me to maintain a sense of tranquility and calm in my workspace.”

Throughout her life Dana Arbib has worked with different facets of design, but her glass design work began in 2020. An Italian national, she became friends with a man who owned a furnace in Venice and eventually discovered a deep family connection to this new practice. “While working on this project, it was revealed to me that my family has Libyan ancestors who owned a furnace in Venice in the early 1900s,” she says. At her home in New York, she plans her glass designs surrounded by her book collection. “I love collecting rare books that highlight ancient crafting techniques.”

In the first summer of the pandemic, Christian Moses, 26, decided to learn something new. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” he says, recalling his first class at the community ceramics studio in Prospect Heights, just a short walk from where he grew up in Fort Greene. His whim blossomed into expressive, whimsical work that connects him to his community. “It’s an incredible gift to be able to see how other people’s work develops over time alongside your own, strangers or friends,” he says. “Oftentimes a conversation about a new glaze or favorite tool turns into a room-wide debate about the Kardashians or algorithmic ceramics.”