With a New Exhibition Daryl Kerrigan Brings Downtown Cool to Upstate New York

Daryl Kerrigan installing her new exhibition, “Daryl K I Am My Muse.” Photo: Courtesy of Daryl Kerrigan

“Daryl K I Am My Muse,” an exhibition at Verse Work in Red Hook—Dutchess County, not Brooklyn—transports the smoky, clubby downtown New York City vibes of the late ’90s to more bucolic environs. Organized by curator Nina Stritzler-Levine with Daryl Kerrigan and her partner Paul Leonard, the show pulls from the designer’s vast archives stretching back almost 35 years.

Kerrigan, who studied at the National College of Art and Design in her native Dublin, used her mother’s sewing machine to create designs that explored aesthetics outside of her standard Catholic school uniform. “Her first retail venture, writes Stritzler-Levine, “was selling dresses to the women on the streets of [her