The quickened version of Moon River transitioned us from pre-show reverie to the eclectic melange that was “urban” night of Portland fashion week. Urban here meant jeans and t-shirts with Naomi Ellis’ line Naomi Raquel thrown in for good measure. But Sha Montana’s bags stole the show. Montana uses all manner of skin, hide, and (vintage) fur black-whipstitched into belts and envelope bags, clutches, totes in varying sizes. Her work ranged form a pearly pale green croc shoulder bag to a big brown deep fur tote and a little stingray and hot pink leather bag. The whipstitched construction toughens the simple shapes up in a very good way.
Amy Bauman showed a Louise Jeans collection she’d shown before. The designer is at her best with her long lean jeans in dark and medium washes. She also showed cropped jeans trimmed with oversized cuffs of an incongruously perky vertically striped satin and skinny denim long shorts with pink fuzzy Hello Kitty-esque trim.
Tyler Segel of Segel Clothing printed t-shirts, thermals, and army surplus jackets with graphics including an interesting bird and a double motorcycle The Elusive Collection showed handpainted t-shirts (by Hussein) in an expressionist style with microphones and plays on the word “elusive.”
Our overall takeaway from the t’s was a flood of images that scream of cultural-appropriation run amok with Segel showing a Native American in feathered headdress (actually the image was more “dimestore Indian,” than proud chief), Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls, glowing blessed virgin Mary, and Elusive showing t’s with the Eye of Ra and a word that could have been Arabic, but was moving pretty fast under a jacket. Cross my culture (-alism) and hope to….
The best shirt was almost too heavily painted to wear, covered in a rainbow pile of books. We liked this Elusive t so much because it was paired with a white Nike Air also painted in a more intricate and refined version of the same book pile.
Naomi Raquel showed a collection that ranged through a number of spring possibilities (and impossibilities like a dotted-mesh “dress”) hitting high notes with a cream satin sleeveless shirt dress and an interesting v-neck top with horizontally pleated sleeves (that for some reason looked familiar…have we seen this before?). There may not have been a traceable throughline here, but many of the individual pieces were good from a bronze metallic fine knit dress to a peach raw-edged fluttersleeve top shown with white banded satin shorts.
updated Tuesday October 24 2006 0:55
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