WRAP SKIRT, RUN 5 1997

Susan Cianciolo’s participatory practice blurs the boundaries between art, fashion, and daily life. Drawing on craft and domesticity, her sculptures, drawings, and garments transform everyday materials into poetic ephemera.

Since the mid-1990s, Cianciolo has approached art-making with the same spirit that defined her pioneering fashion label, RUN (1995–2001), through which she created 11 collections of handmade garments. Her shows fused fashion, music, film, performance, and food, emphasizing collaboration and community over commerce.

Born in 1969 in Providence, Rhode Island, Cianciolo lives and works in New York. She has taught at Städelschule, Parsons, Yale, and NYU, and has been Assistant Professor of Fashion Design at Pratt Institute since 2013. Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at Modern Art, London (2024); The Community Centre, Pantin (2022); the Lumber Room, Portland (2021); South London Gallery (2019); and Yale Union (2016). In the 2017 Whitney Biennial, she reimagined her RUN Restaurant as Run Restaurant Untitled, a three-day installation and dining experience.

Vintage collector, filmmaker, and author Liz Goldwyn is selling select pieces from New York designer and artist Susan Cianciolo’s 1990s–early 2000s anti-fashion archive. Between 1995 and 2001, Cianciolo created eleven RUN collections—one-of-a-kind, handcrafted works made collaboratively with friends and family in New York’s downtown art scene. Her unconventional shows unfolded in streets and galleries, blending film, zines, live music, and performance. Goldwyn, who met Cianciolo in 1996 while working in costume conservation at Sotheby’s, went on to assemble the largest private collection of Cianciolo’s garments.

Red and blue patterned wrap skirt with metallic detailing and red stitching details.