Nili Lotan and musician Alison Mosshart’s collaboration began as many great friendships do: at the Chateau Marmont.
“We had the most hysterically funny dinner,” says Mosshart of meeting the designer last fall. “We just basically giggled and laughed so much that we cried for four hours. That’s how we met.”
Later this month, Mosshart, one half of rock duo The Kills, will debut a solo exhibition of paintings at the Nili Lotan flagship boutique in Tribeca. A few weeks out from the opening, Mosshart is still discovering what the exhibition is going to look like.
“I’m just painting and painting and working on a bunch of different things, and then I’ll decide what the show is,” says Mosshart from her home in Nashville. The show marks her first major solo exhibition of artwork since 2018.
“I hadn’t been home to paint in so long. So [the inspiration] was kind of everything around me — photographs and my niece and music. My whole studio is full of stuff,” she says. “And so I’m going into the exploring phase, which I don’t think that I’m going to get out of before this show. I think that this is the beginning of something else — and it’ll be a sneak peek of some place I’m headed.”
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While Mosshart is in a generative mindset, the exhibition has also allowed her to rediscover older, never-before-shown artwork. During a recent trip to L.A., she came across a stack of paintings that she made in 2008 using expired makeup.
“I was gonna throw all of this stuff away, and then I was like — no way, man, this is the most expensive paint in the world,” she says. “I originally made 12, but people had come over and seen them and bought them right off the floor. And then I just stuck them in a folder and totally forgot about them since 2008,” she adds. “I thought they were so beautiful, and they kind of felt like flowers to me. They felt really energetic.”
Those makeup paintings inspired the title for the upcoming exhibition, “No Slow Songs,” which will debut on March 28 during International Women’s Month. To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, Lotan will also release a shirt to benefit music nonprofit She Is the Music.
“With Alison, it was a very spontaneous connection,” says Lotan from Paris, where she’s showcasing her fall 2025 collection and unveiling her first handbag line. “I’m drawn to the kind of personality that Alison has, where it’s just free spirit and cool and no rules to any game.”
The designer, who rooted her most recent collection in rock ‘n’ roll and is heavily influenced by music, will also dress Mosshart later this month for a Patti Smith tribute concert at Carnegie Hall.
”We are just enjoying a certain moment together and that’s what it’s all about: celebrating each other’s creativity,” says Lotan. “Enjoying her free spirit and mine, and inviting other people to be part of it.”
