Katherine Bernhardt and Saint Louis Fashion Fund (SLFF) have formed a unique partnership to produce a limited-edition box of three t-shirts featuring images from the artists' Supermodel paintings, produced in the 2000s.  Each of the 100 boxes will be signed by the artist, and are available now to collectors and fans of fashion/art in St Louis and around the world.

"I am excited to work with Saint Louis Fashion Fund, and am happy to help raise funds through this unique collaboration," says Bernhardt. "I particularly admire the Fashion Fund's support of emerging fashion designers as I understand how important it is to help artists and designers who want to work and build their businesses right here in St. Louis!"

Saint Louis Fashion Fund Board Chair Susan Sherman visited Bernhardt at one of her three studio/gallery spaces in St. Louis a year ago, where she discovered that several paintings in storage featured fashion content. "Something clicked," says Sherman. "And then when I saw that Katherine had worked with the likes of Chanel and Marc Jacobs and then painted ‘The Supers,’ I just knew we had to work together."

Each KB x SLFF box, designed by St. Louis-based Cheree Berry Paper and Design, will hold three t-shirts featuring Supermodels Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Gisele Bundchen. The shirts themselves will be produced by House of Vision, a hub for' young creatives on St. Louis' North Side which is a project of Dream Builders 4 Equity.

KB X SLFF “The Supers” boxes are for sale on the Fashion Fund’s website: saintlouisfashionfund.org/kb2024. Each box is $500, with proceeds benefitting the Fashion Fund's work with emerging designers and independent brands who help make up St. Louis' $7.7 billion dollar fashion eco-system.

Chairs of the KB x SLFF fundraising effort include Ronnie Vinton of Cool Stuff Period, Cheree Berry of Cheree Berry Paper and Design, Ted Wight of Dielmann Sotheby's, SLFF’s Susan Sherman, and Annie Brahler and Charles Smith, owners of the internationally recognized St. Louis-based interior design firm, Euro Trash, INC.

About Katherine Bernhardt

Katherine Bernhardt’s (b. 1975) boundless visual appetite has established her as one of the most energetic painters working today. Her trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants, and the democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. With Bernhardt’s blunt yet lyrical approach, each painting has the feel of a complete thought that engages rich and raucous free association.

Bernhardt was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, in 2000.

In 2018, the solo exhibition Katherine Bernhardt: Watermelon Worldwas on view at the Mario Testino Museum (MATE) in Lima, Peru. In 2017, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, presented FOCUS: Katherine Bernhardt. In the same year, the artist painted a sixty-foot-long mural entitled XXL Superflat Pancake for the St. Louis Contemporary Art Museum. Bernhardt has created a permanent installation for Club Caribe, Cidra, Puerto Rico, and a pool painting at the Nautilus South Beach, Miami Beach (both 2015).

Her work has also been included in significant group exhibitions, such as We Fight to Build a Free World: An Exhibition by Jonathan Horowitz, Jewish Museum, New York (2020); Animal Farm, an exhibition curated by Sadie Laska at The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut (2017); NO MAN’S LAND: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, Rubell Museum, Miami (2015; traveled to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, through 2017); and Bad Touch, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago (2002).

In 2023, David Zwirner’s Hong Kong location presented a solo exhibition of new works by Bernhardt. In 2022, the artist’s work was on view in Katherine Bernhardt: Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? at the gallery’s London location.

Work by the artist is found in prominent public and museum collections worldwide, including The Brant Foundation, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Knoxville Museum of Art, Tennessee; Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Rubell Museum, Miami; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas. Bernhardt lives and works in St. Louis. She is represented by David Zwirner Gallery,

About Saint Louis Fashion Fund

Saint Louis Fashion Fund is a nonprofit organization and serves as the leading voice and advocate for more than 800 fashion-related businesses and supports students, designers, emerging and established brands who generate fashion’s more than $7.7 billion annually to the region’s ecosystem. Its mission is to help promote job creation and economic growth by: Active mentorships of local creatives; Partnerships with key funding organizations to boost fashion entrepreneurship/scholarships and apprenticeships for aspiring fashion designers; Continuation of the Fund's "Speaking of Fashion Speaker Series" featuring global fashion icons such as Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg, and the late Andre Talley who in turn share the vibrancy of the St. Louis fashion ecosystem into the national conversation; Ongoing focus of the Fund's dedication to bringing the business of fashion back to St. Louis and regaining its status as a fashion capital. www.saintlouisfashionfund.org