Victoire Bourgois’s Motherhood Canvases and E.M. Reitz’s Pleats

By Grace Kim

Laura Regensdorf reports for T Magazine that E.M. Reitz’s Nocturne shirts start at $750. Violet Conroy reports for T Magazine that Victoire Bourgois’s “Bathing by Moonlight” will show 15 works at Entrance gallery on New York’s Lower East Side from Nov. 18 through Dec. 19.

E.M. Reitz: from sculpture to shirting

Regensdorf’s “Wear This” recommendation centers on E.M. Reitz, a shirting label she describes as having “the nimbleness of an evolving art project.” Erin Reitz and her husband, the restaurateur Brooks Reitz, founded it in Charleston, S.C., in 2022.

Regensdorf reports that Erin studied fashion and sculpture before working as a design director for Alabama Chanin, a sustainability-focused label, and the outdoor outfitter Eddie Bauer. Her division of labor with Brooks is blunt: “I’m the shapes and he’s the words,” she said.

Regensdorf reports that the couple’s button-ups were first cut for the female form, and a men’s line was added in 2025. Over the years, Erin drew on Isamu Noguchi’s Akari light sculptures, Balenciaga’s 1950s egg silhouettes and a costume detail in an Agnès Varda film.

The new collection grew from Erin’s fascination with folded-paper tessellations (repeating geometric patterns), which occupied her studio on weekends. Regensdorf says those honeycomb-like forms led Erin to Tom’s Sons International Pleating, a nearly century-old family firm in New York’s garment district and an in-the-know resource for fashion houses such as Dior and the Row.

There, Erin worked with fifth-generation owner George Kalajian to develop two hand-pleated styles. Regensdorf notes that each style comes in black or white.

What does Nocturne change for the wearer?

Regensdorf’s descriptions show three distinct approaches to volume and movement. The change lies in where each shirt places structure: outside the body, across the chest and back, or along the arm and side.

• Nocturne No. 1: A halter with a discreet button-front closure. Its crisp pleats splay at the waist, creating a balletic silhouette.
• Nocturne No. 2: A pullover shirt with three-quarter sleeves and a frieze (horizontal decorative band) of interlocking folds across the breastplate and back.
• Nocturne No. 3: A long-sleeved shirt made in E.M. Reitz’s nearby workshops. Fabric-covered buttons and a diamond gusset (shaped fabric insert) running from elbow to underarm to waist offer freer movement.

Brooks Reitz summarized the specialist construction this way: “These are lost-art shirtmaking details.” Regensdorf lists the range from $750 at emreitz.com.

Care becomes the subject

Conroy’s “See This” recommendation returns to Victoire Bourgois. After giving birth to her daughter in 2021, Bourgois began painting small-scale canvases depicting the peculiarity and fleeting beauty of early motherhood. Entrance gallery lists the exhibition at entrance.nyc.

Conroy describes the results as quotidian domestic scenes, largely drained of color. Within them, the ever-shifting cycles of desire, pregnancy, birth and the need for sustenance acquire arresting stillness and psychological depth.

Among the 15 works, Conroy identifies the ecstatic final throes of labor and Bourgois’s young daughter amid a snowy backdrop flecked with white paint. In the text accompanying the show, Bourgois writes: “In a revolt against the loneliness of caretaking, a slow-motion mutiny, I got to work.”

The exhibition text also includes two quotes on love from Hilton Als and Maggie Nelson. Conroy describes literature and painting as a constant dialogue in Bourgois’s world. She is currently at work on her own book about art and motherhood, while her Instagram posts place poetic captions beside her paintings.

In one caption addressed to her daughter, Bourgois writes: “Taking care of you is mundane and holy at the same time, just like painting, I feel.” The line joins physical care to painting without turning either into a slogan. Both depend on repetition, attention and the decision to keep working.

T Magazine’s newsletter also teases suggestive chocolates, a restaurant with a mythical owner and other recommendations, but gives no further specifics in this roundup. The book remains the next test: it would move Bourgois’s argument from 15 canvases and Instagram fragments into sustained writing on art and motherhood.