After visiting with designer Jason Wu before his presentation at Houston’s Elizabeth Anthony store, I might surmise that he and American painter Robert Rauschenberg are soulmates of a kind who never met. The late American artist (Rauschenberg passed away in 2008) is the 43-year-old Taiwan-born designer’s favorite. Rauschenberg’s talent for fashion mirrored Wu’s as seen in the artist’s creation of gowns for friends and family and his costume design work for renowned choreographers.
Now Wu has partnered with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation for his Spring/Summer 2026 Collage Collection, the fashions that Julie Roberts and her Elizabeth Anthony team introduced to a score of clients at a sophisticated tea party in her Uptown Park boutique.
The foundation had tapped Wu to create a special collection as part of its centennial celebration of Rauschenberg’s life. The artist was born in Beaumont in 1925.
“We have become very good friends with nonprofits,” Wu says. “We have very similar discipline when it comes to how we perceive creatives and creativity in art.”
Wu notes that 30 percent of the collection is based directly on Rauschenberg prints while the remainder “is using his discipline in my way of executing it without using his art work at all in a literal way.
“I took fabrics from archives, watches, and really had fun collaging clothes. And by using archival fabric that’s another wink at my own history.”
Wu designs for the longterm, noting that “Clothes are not merch. Clothes are not drops. Clothes are not disposable.”
His focus is on the significance of longevity “that is something of a discipline much more with art than in fashion. It’s kept differently. I really want to merge those worlds. So it’s important to do a collaboration in line with the Robert Rauschenberg that we show the art history behind fashion.”
Serendipitously, Wu’s trunk show and tea at the luxe boutique coincided with The Menil Collection’s Robert Rauschenberg: Fabrics of the1970s exhibition. Among those attending this vibrant afternoon were Menil Collection director Rebecca Rabinow, curator Michelle White, and board members Barbara Gamson and Isabel Lummis. In from New York for the Wu adventure was Robert Rauschenberg Foundation director Courtney Martin.
Martin and White queried Wu on his collection in a fireside-style chat while models wearing pieces from the Collage line sauntered through the setting.
The following day, Rabinow and White escorted Wu, Martin and Elizabeth Anthony shoppers on a tour of The Menil exhibition, which closes this Sunday, March 1.
Wu and Martin allow that they have become close friends during the process of nailing a fashion collection that gave a serious nod to Rauschenberg.
“When I am trying to tell the larger story about who this person was I note that he was a painter,” Martin says. “He was a sculptor and he went to the Kansas Art Institute to study fashion design.
“When he left that program and went to Paris he took a sewing machine on which his mother had taught him how to sew. While he may not have stayed a designer, it was still within the work that he was making. He made a prom dress for his sister. He made a wedding dress for a friend. And he made various costumes for (choreographers) Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Trish Brown.”