MoSex X Zana Bayne

The installation, in the basement of the museum, is a web of leather evocative of her signature harnesses, a collaboration between Bayne and her partner, Todd Pendu. 'The Chrystie Street Collection' seems to epitomize the brand's goal— creating a series of accessories that redefine fetish gear, decontextualizing the traditional settings, clientelle, and seamlessly inviting fetish to be a part of everyday fashion.

The launch of this capsule collection was held in the dungeon-y basement, friends and fiends alike showed up, many already geared up and ready to go— others trying on the new line. Leather laced around us, dim lighting, pictures of Lady Gaga on the walls, it was definitely a night to be remembered... unless, of course, you went for one of the boob-shaped Jell-O shots.

Museum of Sex Partners with Zana Bayne is open July 7, 2017 – October 2017.
A MoSex x Zana Bayne capsule collection is available at the MoSex gift store + e-shop, for a limited time only.
A 3-Weekend pop-up store, featuring the current "Chrystie Street Collection" will be set alongside the basement install.

Culture

Wahter x Bonesoda Party at Silencio Caps Off PFW Mens

For those who partake, Men’s Paris Fashion Week is generally perceived as less stressful, more casual and oftentimes more fun than Women’s. With sneaker and tech-wear brands ruling over much of the collaborations and their accompanying launch activations surrounding and supporting many of the runways, those in the industry may happily forgo their less forgiving garments for those more appropriate to sustaining such a demanding calendar—especially through Paris’s ceaseless freezing-rain.

That being said, it still requires an impressive mental and physical endurance to fully maintain one’s wellbeing for the duration of the schedule. At hearing that the global agency Wahter Studio was teaming up with Bonesoda for a party to cap off the week—and at our late Mr. David Lynch’s Silencio no less—the Office team was ready to throw in what was left of our sanity and celebrate one last evening of fashion, and well-groomed, attractive men.

Backstage during the event we caught up with Freddie W, one of Wahter’s founders and Creative Director to chat about the celebratory night, when the agency’s team met at Silencio after being denied entry and building a multi-city creative community.

Paige Silveria

Wahter’s a team of four right? How’d you all meet?

Freddie W

Yeah, it’s myself and I’m from New York, but based in Paris; our Director of Graphic Design, Romain David, who’s from Paris; and Prosper (Lead Cultural Researcher) and Bruno (Image Director) who are both from London. We all met in 2019 during Men’s Fashion Week—after getting rejected from Silencio.

No way.

We were just walking around when we noticed Bruno and Prosper sitting outside. We were like, “Y’all didn’t get in either?” So, in a way, this feels like a full-circle moment for us.

Haha yeah I bet. So what is Wahter?

It’s a studio that was founded with the idea of creating a fluid, borderless space for cultural storytelling. We come from different backgrounds—fashion, design, fine arts, and research—but share a common vision: to shape cultural moments that feel organic yet intentional, without pretension. Our approach is deeply rooted in community, authenticity and creative exchange. Every event is a family affair.

I love that. Tell us about tonight. Such a good lineup.

Every artist we booked is someone we admire, not just musically but for the energy they bring. Mowa is someone who embodies both fashion and community in a way that’s disruptive. HiTech is family now, super infectious, and raw in a way that can’t be replicated. Broodoo Ramses is a dear friend of ours, we can’t do a party without him. He has this unique ability to command a room and get everyone moving, same with Dylan who we love so much.

Yeah Dylan’s our girl.

Bamo Yende is always pushing new sounds that excite us, and Zillions is just unearthly in terms of energy and technical skills. It wasn’t about booking names—it was about curating a moment.

That’s definitely coming across tonight. And a party with Bonesoda is always a great time.

We’ve been tapped in with Bonesoda for a while. We played a DJ set from them back in 2023 and have been in sync ever since, but have been attending their events since forever. We really consider them a heritage brand in this little community of ours. They’re a movement in their own right. It made sense for us to come together cause we share the ability to bring people together, especially at the intersection of nightlife and fashion. It just felt so natural because we both prioritize creating spaces that feel real and unfiltered. It wasn’t a partnership for the sake of it; it was about building something meaningful together.

Why Paris?

Paris is where so many cultural currents intersect. There’s an undeniable energy, especially during Fashion Week, that makes it the perfect place to bring different creative worlds together. There’s so much happening here right now; it's a really important moment. But we’re not tied to one city. Everywhere feels like home—Berlin, London, Tokyo, and even cities like Dakar and Lagos are on our radar. We’re interested in places where culture is shifting in real-time. We believe in creative globalization.

Yes invite me to the African events! What are some of your other favorite projects?

We hold all of our projects incredibly close to heart—whether it’s for our close friends at Air Afrique for Bottega, Versace, introducing Axel Arigato to New York or our first DIY exhibition in Carroll Gardens at At Peace Gallery. Every time a project comes to life, it feels surreal—seeing people come together and the energy that unfolds. I think the common thread across all our projects is the lasting connections people have that continue years later. Our event tonight with Bonesoda carries this same feeling. It really tested how far we could push the balance between music, fashion and cultural energy. It isn’t just about throwing a party; it was really about capturing a feeling, something electric. Our work with emerging artists and brands has been defining for us—building from scratch, experimenting and learning along the way. A lot of our projects challenge our instincts and force us to rethink what’s possible.

How do you like Men’s Fashion Week? I feel like it’s the much more relaxed counterpart to Women’s. The parties can be more easy-going.

Both schedules have such unique energies, Men’s is organized chaos and Women’s has a certain freedom to it. People are less concerned with spectacle and more focused on the culture surrounding the shows. But both are really exciting in their own way.

Do you have anything coming up that we should be excited about?

Definitely—without giving too much away, we’re working on something for Women’s Fashion Week that will have its own distinct energy! A different pace, and a new set of collaborators, but the same kind of experiences we love to create—raw, immersive, and unexpected.

Culture

Making an Impact: Joey Bada$$

January 16, 2025

The past few months have been big for Joey Bada$$. Between music, acting, fatherhood and recently being announced as the Artist-In-Residence for NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, the Brooklyn native has still continued his long tradition of supporting community, social impact, and philanthropy. Having been a mentor for Unlock Her Potential, a program founded by author and friend Sophia Chang that provides free mentorship for women of color, Joey knew he wanted to create ImpactMENtorship, a similar program for men of color who could benefit from the wisdom and experience of industry experts.

Launched at just 28 years old, Joey founded the program to create opportunities for all men of color across the country, providing guidance at every stage of life and career to help them ascend to the top levels of business. Setting the stage for mentees to come together and build meaningful connections across diverse industries, including music, fashion, culinary arts, sports, and activism, the program also addresses systemic challenges typically faced by men of color, such as high unemployment rates and underrepresentation in leadership roles. Amongst some of this year’s mentors are Denzel Curry, Ev Bravado, Cordae, Ghetto Gastro’s Jon Gray, Will Welch, and Kidsuper’s Colm Dillane.

To celebrate the program’s second year, we joined some of the mentors, mentees, and other special guests for dinner, after which we caught up with Joey to hear more about how he is leveraging his 12 years in the industry to uplift the next generation and beyond.

By Dylan Andrews
Photos by Spencer Stovell

Joey, how was your holiday?

Good, man. Happy New Year to you as well.

Happy New Year. And congratulations on everything you're doing with the program. I think it's so good to see people giving back.

Word up. Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

I feel like even from the start, in the early days, you guys were putting out positivity, spirituality, political awareness, but I also feel like we see so many people get to a point similar to where you are and kind of lose sight of where they came from. How do you keep your humility amongst everything you have going on?

Man, I got to give a lot of credit to the village around me, to the council, you know what I'm saying? They keep me grounded. They keep me in that state of mind where I'm able to be reminded of who I am every day, so I got to attribute a lot of that to them. But also, just my heart. These things aren't forced. These are just matters at the heart, things that I feel like are right and that should be done. I'm not doing this because I think everybody should do it. I'm doing it just because I think that I have the opportunity and that I should. That's it.

Do you feel a responsibility to give back?

I won't call it a responsibility, but I do feel an inclination. I don't think it's my responsibility to do for anyone. I don't think any one of us necessarily has a responsibility to people outside of our families. However, I do think that if you are in a position where you can help and you have the bandwidth, then you should absolutely do that. But yeah, I obviously would love to see more artists do it, but I don't think that we're necessarily obligated.

At the dinner, Cordae mentioned the importance of prioritizing community over competition. What does community mean to you, and do you also see importance in competition as well?

Yeah, I think both are important, and I think we could even have competition in the community, you know, healthy competition. I think competition is healthy because it challenges us, and as men especially, we're motivated by challenge. That fuels our growth a lot. But as far as community, I mean, community is just really a matter of having that tribe of like-minded individuals that you connect with. Because that's the other way that you grow, is by being in the presence of others who have similar intentions, similar motivations, desires, beliefs, dreams. You know what I'm saying? And it's very important to be in an ecosystem that could feed you internally.

These things aren't forced. These are just matters at the heart, things that I feel like are right and that should be done.

I feel like you're kind of separating yourself from being seen as just an entertainer. Is that something you intentionally want to do, pull away from just being someone that's on TV and making music?

I don't think I necessarily set my intention for that. I think I'm just more acting upon impulse of things that I think I should do or things that I think that are right. I don't think I really looked at it as like, Hey, I want to separate myself from just being an entertainer. I think it is more so, I have this ability, I have this platform, I'm in this unique position where I'm able to do X, Y, Z, and just having the willpower and the bandwidth to actually carry it out.

How has fatherhood changed your mindset when it comes to providing opportunities such as the mentorship program?

Fatherhood has matured me greatly. Fatherhood has done wonders for me, man. It's awesome. It also gives you a lot of structure to your life. Like, who knows where I'd be if it wasn't for fatherhood? I mean, I damn sure don't think I'd be in New York. I think I would've definitely left or whatever. But it has definitely given me a lot of structure and it has forced me to find a particular balance in my life that I wasn't privy to before it. Even when the pandemic hit, that was the first time in my adult life that I just sat in one space for six months and I was able to really just put things in perspective. Because when you on the move and when you on the go, you miss a lot of shit. You know what I'm saying? You miss a lot of details, and I think fatherhood has given me that anchor where I'm able to be grounded on a weekly basis. For a moment where I'm able to slow down and really put things into perspective, but also to be a leader and a role model. Because it's one thing in the eyes of the world, but it's another thing when it comes to your kids.

There's such a wide range of mentors in the program from so many different disciplines and crafts. Knowing that you did acting in school and then having succeeded in music, you're back acting, I wanted to ask what the approach is with mentees in terms of either encouraging them to take one route or explore different avenues?

Well... that's a good question, and that's one of the main reasons why we don't have a ceiling for age in our program. You could literally be 75 and apply for ImpactMENtorship, and the reason why that was important to me is because people change professions, right, or sometimes people work for a long time in one direction, but maybe they were always feeling like an internal pull, a magnetic pull to a different direction, or maybe in 10 years they just feel inspired to go another way. So we definitely wanted to provide the opportunity for those type of people. Because there’s a beauty in being a baby at something, and a lot of the time we need that confidence, just like with a baby, right? Mom and daddy are encouraging the baby to take those steps. It's like, he starts crawling and then he stands up and it's like there's all this excitement, but he might get discouraged without it. You know what I'm saying? And you need those people around you who's cheering you on, like, “Nah, you could do it. Keep going.” And that's pretty much what ImpactMENtorship is.

In what ways do you see the program growing and evolving and possibly even changing over time?

Man, my vision is in 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now, to be able to look back and to see leaders of tomorrow, pioneers of the future, to have been direct descendants out of this program. To see somebody on the New York Knicks like, ‘Oh, he was an Impact.’ Or to see somebody on the hottest TV show or to see somebody opening up the hottest restaurant. That's really the mission, just creating pathways for more people who look like us. It's like, once we make it over the fence, I think it's extremely important for us to find ways to pull more people up.

Culture

Dimes Square by Matthew Gasda

January 08, 2025

Dimes Square had its first run in 2022. An “underground hit,” according to The Times. Vulture dubbed its playwright, Matthew Gasda, "Dramatist of the Scene." The performance marked, to some, the return of indie theater, as young New Yorkers snapped up seats in a friend of the playwright’s Greenpoint loft.

The show I attended was staged in Tribeca—another high-ceilinged residence, big windows, paintings stacked in the corners. As he introduced it, Gasda said this move was to get closer to Dimes Square’s Manhattan origins. He cracked the window (“because there’s smoking in the play”), warned they hadn’t fully tested the lights nor the sound, and encouraged us to laugh at the jokes. The scrappiness gave off a kind of confidence.

Text by Morgan Becker
Photography by Nick Dove

The show has mostly shed its original cast, save for the literary critic Christian Lorentzen and writer-actor Bob Laine; they play a pair of aging novelists (Dave and Chris, respectively), welcomed with open arms by a group of downtown twentysomethings, mostly for their willingness to share a lot of coke. Dimes Square is anchored by its living-room set; the ensemble comes and goes—up to the roof, into an Uber, down to the bodega for a pack of cigarettes—but the couch and the coffee table stay put. Stefan (played by Dan Blick), a young, hot author with a Netflix deal, offers up the apartment as his circle’s home base. A constant stream of media types filter in to snort lines, talk shop, drink Fernet, monologue, flirt, gossip, and so on.

The other characters are Nate (Nick Walther), a recently-cancelled musician grappling with the dissolution of his relationship with Iris (Sadie Parker). Iris is perhaps an aspiring poet. Klay (Malcolm Callender) is a social-climbing, flirtatious magazine editor. Rosie (Anastasia Wolfe), a bisexual painter who feels above it all. Ashley (Colette Gsell) is Stefan’s undergrad girlfriend. Olivia (Cosima Gardey), his cousin and the daughter of a famous novelist. (Side note: On Dimes Square’s first run, Fernanda Amis took on this part—the daughter of Martin Amis.) Finally, there’s the filmmaking duo Bora (Asli Mumtas) and Terry (Sean Lynch), suffering from the legitimate success of their debut feature. Bora did the camera work; Terry wrote and directed.

Gasda joked that Dimes Square would transport us all the way back to 2021—a period piece, he called it, evoking recent history. The show’s debut coincided with the general moment people got sick of hearing about those few blocks between Allen Street and Seward Park. Too many thinkpieces! Clout-chasing in the name of art! Freeform made that scoffed-at TV show, The Come Up, following Gen Zers as they chased their dreams down Canal, protecting their dignity as best they could as they scanned for a seat outside Clandestino.

Whatever. Today, it’s just as cringe to hate Dimes Square as it is to really love it. Gasda’s play is cynical toward the scene in, I think, an original and generous way. He comes at it as an insider-outsider, but mostly as an insider: a writer who drinks Fernet and wears scarves inside, a contrarian amongst contrarians. Its comedy was solid—referential without going overboard, amusingly true-to-life—as was the flow of the dialogue, especially for rowdier scenes in which everyone spoke at once.

In 2022, the critical consensus was that Dimes Square dealt in the universal—and that rang true for this run, too. Though the characters (intentionally) verge on caricature, and though their era is niche and almost too recent to look back on even-handedly, it all comes together to paint a poignant, candid, relatable picture of “making it” as a young person in a city like New York, where optics get rewarded before passion. The bigger question than whether it held up, was why resuscitate it now?

“I wasn’t sure that I would ever do Dimes again,” answered Gasda. “But I was meeting so many people who said they moved to New York after the original run closed who wanted to see it. At first I dismissed it, but then I realized those requests were genuine, that the play was a phenomenon, that it’s part of the lore—and that people should get what they want, in a way. He went on:

I’m not directing a play that feels like it’s part of the scene anymore, but one that’s outside of it. One that we can approach artistically and professionally. I think Dimes Square should be assessed as a work of theater and not as a work of scene mythography.

Something Dimes Square has undoubtedly achieved: new dialogue about new theater. Gasda makes being an “audience-member” uniquely accessible, ushering the uninitiated toward his other plays (like the upcoming Vanya on Huron Street, which Laine and Mumtas star in) and toward the other artists he supports via BCTR, his dedicated performance space in Greenpoint. Beyond that, he casts from his own community. He makes art about right now, against an era of nostalgia. And at the end of every show, he leads the charge to a nearby bar, staff and cast and ticket-holders welcome. It’s an interesting contrast to the vapidity or the exclusiveness of the stereotypical scene—a pessimistic play, within an optimistic project.