design: Genevieve Dellinger. photo: Richard Schemmerer
The stylish hundred or so who gathered on the sidewalk in front of 811 E Burnside as the clouds finally broke the heat Saturday evening witnessed a Great Leap Forward for both designers Genevieve Dellinger and Hazel Cox and Portland fashion. We have a handful of designers who make bold-face statements, giving us a window on what fashion’s future can be. Dellinger is one of our best, and her move into menswear made a memorable show referencing streetwear staples, but with details and fabrics that significantly upped the ante. These are clothes for a new breed of dandy who do a studied casual, demanding and appreciating the kinds of details that make standards extraordinary.
The biggest surprise of Dellinger’s collection was her fabric choices. On the sidewalk in front of their shop where the menswear (excepting Adam Arnold’s work) has skewed toward the t-shirt and sweatshirt, Dellinger showed looks in sublime linen and paper-thin jersey (some of it silk!). When the “sweatpant” did show up, it was in a matched tracksuit in dove grey or in lemon yellow, brilliantly constructed with oval patch pockets. The hoodie was aqua blue linen with grey cuffs, one green t-shirt had an ivory “tuxedo-front,” and she did pieced tanks (with yellow accents) and a cream and white t-shirt with a diagonal inset that played off her previous pieced monochromatic jersey pants.
design: Genevieve Dellinger. necklace: Hazel Cox. photo: Richard Schemmerer.
The styling mattered as much as the individual pieces, her paperbag waist pants held up with braided brown braces, the loose white racerback tank tipped in black layered over another pieced tank, the herringbone vest over a wide-necked t. But this is just the kind of messing-around with pieces to make an individual look that the male counterpart of a Dellinger or a Hazel Cox will dig into fiercely.
design: Genevieve Dellinger. money clip necklace: Hazel Cox. photo: Richard Schemmerer.
How to choose favorites? Dellinger’s BBQ shorts were olive green bermuda-length flat-front shorts with ivory piping on the curved front pockets. Her white linen pants had grey-lined front pockets and banded bottoms making what would otherwise be a summer staple of the country club set criminally modern. It takes guts even to suggest white linen pants in this context. And it’s that kind of lead rather than follow that’s going to, with collections like this, spread the word on Dellinger’s work far beyond the rivers.
“Money” and wishbone necklaces: Hazel Cox. photo: Richard Schemmerer
We feel the same way about Hazel Cox. Whatever jewelry and accessories designer Hazel Cox is doing next, and she is constantly on the move, it always makes all other jewelry look like ten-years-ago. She brilliantly seeks out and incorporates new inspirations and materials (copper, brass, steel, snakeskin), frequently juxtaposing opposing feels, somehow always maintaining her crisp vision so that a piece by Hazel is always instantly recognizable.
Hazel Cox took time afterward to talk about some of her pieces, many of which have typically idiosyncratic Coxian backstories. The laminated knives that hung from a ring on a belt Adam Arnold wore are color photos of various wood-handled knives from a page in the NY Times Magazine…article called the “Gay Blade.”Cox’s “bandana” is an abbreviated triangle of silk peau de soie fastened behind the neck with a leather strap and buckle. Her other black bandana is made from a piece of cloth a retired seamstress gave her when she went into a convalescent home, making Cox promise to sew from it the tuxedo for her future groom.
The details in Hazel’s work reveal themselves as you handle a piece and look at it closely (is that a miniature vertebrae? yes.): a drawstring pouch is encased in an octagonal piece of leather cut with slits that are pulled open by gravity when the bag is worn to make an openwork pattern. She makes the links on one of her unisex necklaces with snakeskin on the outside and US Dollars on the inside. The ropes we’ve admired on her brass-end belt-clips and necklaces are hand-twisted cotton.
Although it’s hard to choose, it’s the pieces that incorporate rope (like the belt-clip that etched itself on our memory) that are the most compelling, with nautical overtones implied by their rope and brass and a refusal to be easily categorized. We loved Cox’s snakeskin money clip necklace, ironically putting on display the wearer’s cash. Her hammered steel chain with its teardrop-shaped links is a tour de force, begging to be layered with other Cox pieces.
design: Genevieve Dellinger and Adam Arnold. photo: Richard Schemmerer
Adam Arnold modeled his own sexy, high-waisted jeans that were surprisingly wearable-looking, and not just because Arnold looked great in them. We felt (not for the first time in the evening) that we were glimpsing a future here, Arnold perhaps painting a picture of the next 10 years of men’s trousers. His jeans were paired with Dellinger’s superb “tuxedo-front” t-shirt (that we could see being huge for Dellinger in various colorways) and one of the caps he made for the evening (available at Denwave).
These are clothes and accessories that, yes, are made for the boys, but you can bet that the ladies will be snapping them up. As the models walked, it took little imagination to see Dellinger and Cox donning pieces of these menswear collections, mixing, matching, and styling.
Afterward, the crowd that lingered included PICA’s Kristan Kennedy, designers Kerry Ann Kimbrell, Diana Lang, Gretchen Jones, Nathaniel Crissman and Rachel Turk of Church & State, as well as AI student David Rafn whose recent men’s collection is kindred in adventurous spirit to Dellinger’s work.
More:
Additional photos are here and detail shots are here.
WHAT TO DO NOW?