What Yayoi Kusama is to polka dots, Alia Penner is to multicolor anything. Not to oversimplify her talent, but everything she touches turns to rainbows. Or stripes or concentric squares or whatever else fits the surface.
In the time I’ve know her, Alia has painted on an old schoolbus as a background for an H&M campaign, created a teenage-girl’s-bedroom-set for a Vans event, flown to Paris to help create an installation at Colette and designed a one-night environment at the Standard Hotel in LA (where she lives). Her graphic design is uniquely hers; a mixture of Peter Blake-meets-Haight-Ashbury with beautiful, friendly hand type. Her non-commissioned art is currently (literally) going through a growth spurt: “It’s getting bigger and more abstract,” she explains,” And hopefully at some point I can fill up an entire room. No, make that a whole house.“

You know how, sometimes, when you’ve seen a really great movie, you keep thinking about it for a couple of days after the fact? That’s what happened to me when Alia walked in on the day I took her portrait. She was wearing such a terrific dress that I had to keep talking about for a couple of days. I felt like I had seen a really great dress. You can see the dress in the portrait.
When we got together later to work on a little interview, I couldn’t help myself:

TG: So you came in wearing this crazy, amazing dress. What do you know about it?
AP: (laughs) It’s Diane Freis. I don’t know a whole lot about it; I just know that she made crazy dresses in the eighties. And some designs were exclusive to Neiman Marcus, and I think her sister worked with her in the company.

TG: Where did you get it?
AP: I found my first one at my favorite lady who sells dresses at the flea market.

TG: I love the LA fleas. Which one is she at?
AP: Oooh, I’m not telling! She’s my dress source. She sells at pretty much all the flea markets in and around LA, and every single time that I go to her stall, she’ll have this one dress, that’s, like, for me.

TG: And this dress was one of those?
AP: Yeah, the minute I saw it I was like oh-my-god-I-need-this-dress! And it’s not like she’s stocking her inventory with me in mind, but there’s just always one dress that says “Alia! buy me, buy me”.

TG: How do people react to your Freis dress?
AP: People, strangers, tell me that it makes them happy. Or I get “Oh my god that’s so colorful!” I think that people here, in New York, take a lot of risks clothing wise, but not so much with color. There’s not a lot of color out there. I definitely like to wear a lot of color (laughs).

TG: Are you obsessing on getting more Freis now?
AP: Yes, I am looking for more stuff by her for sure. But I’m also in the process of making my own dresses right now, for a show at Colette. I’m working with my friend Katy Casey, who’s a stylist, and we’re printing two of my favorite collages on chiffon. It’s an edition of ten long, long sleeved dresses. I’m really excited—especially because I’m getting one of each dress made for me! Seriously, I think that wearing my own art is a totally awesome, ideal situation.

TG: Did you bring THE dress to New York during this trip?
AP: No, I didn’t. I brought other ones that a bought right after. Not by Freis though. I went to Amarcord in SoHo–my friend works there–and she actually had a couple of them. But sometimes her dresses get too eighties. Too “muumuu gown”, with squares and squiggles and stuff. She did have something else though, with a bodice, same vibe. It is by Victor Costa, and it’s also from Neiman Marcus, which makes me think about how weird it is that Neiman’s was so cool and colorful in the eighties. And I don’t really shop at Saks or Neiman Marcus, so I don’t know what’s going on in there now, but I can’t imagine its anything like this.

Right after I was wearing that dress all day in New York, after you took the portrait, somebody stopped me outside of the drugstore and asked me “How many colors are you wearing?” And I said “I don’t know, I just try to wear as many colors as possible in one outfit.“ Which I guess is a bit of an exaggeration, but then again, if I had a dress with every possible color in it, I’d wear it. You can count on that.

Links:
>Alia Penner
>The dresses Alia designs have their own site and tumblr: Mombi