“Button-Up, Button-Down” is the latest contemporary art installation at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago.
Courtesy of Village of Rosemont

You’d expect there to be all sorts of buttons sewn to the shirts, dresses, coats, pants and other clothes for sale within most of the 130 stores at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago.

But tons of the tiny fasteners also can be found in the corridors of the Rosemont mall — part of a new art exhibition unveiled this week.

Button-Up, Button-Down is the latest contemporary art installation on level two of the indoor mall, on display now through April 2025. It’s the creation of artist Beau McCall, who was proclaimed by American Craft magazine as “The Button Man” for his art pieces of hand-sewn buttons onto upcycled fabrics, materials and objects.

Artist Beau McCall’s button-centric art installation is on display at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago through April 2025.
Courtesy of Village of Rosemont

“In most minds, buttons are simple, utilitarian objects used to fasten one’s clothes, but I reimagine buttons to create wearable and visual art,” McCall said in an announcement of the installation’s opening Wednesday. “As a hub for its own kind of wearable art, Fashion Outlets of Chicago is the perfect backdrop for this exhibition.”

Within three large display cases in the mall are select pieces from McCall’s wearable art portfolio, including button-embellished vests, yokes, aprons, jewelry, a headdress and a cape, along with jars of buttons. The works address themes of beauty, nature and Black pride, officials say.

Three display cases on the second floor of the Fashion Outlets of Chicago showcase Beau McCall’s “Button-Up, Button-Down.”
Courtesy of Village of Rosemont

McCall debuted his first retrospective and exhibition catalog earlier this year at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts. His works are also featured at the Museum of Arts and Design and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The new rotating exhibition comes on the heels of the reveal of a permanent commission last month: contemporary artist Hebru Brantley’s Midnight Blue, a painting and sculpture piece at the shopping center’s central escalator.

It’s among 25 permanent large-scale installations in THE COLLECTION: Where Art Meets Fashion, the mall’s contemporary art program.

Artist Beau McCall creates art pieces by hand-sewing clothing buttons onto upcycled fabrics and materials.
Courtesy of Village of Rosemont