WILLIE NORRIS WORKSHOP is the creative practice and commercial imprint through which independent and collaborative work by Willie Norris is produced and published. It is, indeed, whatever Willie Norris is workshopping at the moment.

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Since 2018, WILLIE NORRIS WORKSHOP has released work spanning clothing and accessories, products, texts, artworks, objects, experiences, and other projects. Described by The New York Times in their 2021 standalone profile as “a master of bringing together,” Willie’s work collectively embodies a direct, poetic, and communal style, permanently rooted in, and informed by, a queer and definitively DIY spirit.

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Across forms and contexts, Willie’s work offers everyday ways of way‑finding and provisional clarity through sustained engagement with themes of queerness, play, responsibility, yearning, dread, and intimacy. Text is the genesis and beating heart of Willie’s practice, functioning as a visual and conceptual through‑line that often appears without background, explanation, named voice, or known authority.

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References and eternal inspiration for the work include Gran Fury, ACT UP, Pippa Gardner, David Robilliard, QZAP, STH, Jenny Holzer, Queer Happened Here, Mark Pauline and RE/Search, Thierry Mugler, Leigh Bowery, Wild Things by Jack Halberstam, Miguel Andover, and termites.

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Branded partnerships have ranged from ready-to-wear fashion to sports and beauty, with collaborators including Away, Dieux, Helmut Lang, and Gotham FC. Community and institutional partnerships have included Performance Space New York, Planned Parenthood, Animal Cycling, Brooklyn Liberation, G.L.I.T.S., and MoMAPS1.

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Since 2018, projects developed through WILLIE NORRIS WORKSHOP have raised and redirected over $100K to a variety of causes—whether to local mutual aid efforts, such as a fundraiser t‑shirt created in collaboration with Legends of Drag that generated over $5K for medical care for drag icon Joan Jett Blakk, or through partner initiatives, including Dieux donating over $40K from the sales of the Dieux × WNWS Eyes Marks to G.L.I.T.S., and AWAY donating 100% of the purchase price from its collaboration with WILLIE NORRIS WORKSHOP to the IGLTA Foundation.

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Willie’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

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WORKSHOP CREATIVE is the creative direction function of WILLIE NORRIS WORKSHOP, encompassing conceptual development, visual strategy, talent curation, and creative leadership for a variety of client- and collaborator-driven projects. Clients have included Doll Invasion, QUEER|ART, tomboyx, Performance Space New York, Dieux, and Outlier.