R.A.W. photo: Pete Springer
The Big News? The Big Dress took the audience-appreciation prize for the second year in a row at the Mercury Fashion Show Sunday night. What does it mean? Are Portland fashion audiences secretly yearning for their Scarlett O’Hara moments? Is prom in the air? Are they voting by the yard? Is bigger truly better? Whatever the reason, it’s a good thing we’re not bookies because our handicapping was way off.
More than a dozen Portland fashion designers showed three looks each on the runway in front of a packed crowd at the Wonder Ballroom. Thematically appropriate band-with-fashion-designer-member (Liza Rietz), Tu Fawning, opened, and designer Adam Arnold was master of ceremonies.
The Big Dress is also a good example of how the Mercury’s chosen “installations+runway show” format can work very well. Rio Wren (R.A.W.) is first and foremost a textile artist. Wren’s Big Dress showcased these textiles in a hoop-supported skirt with tiers of ruffles. But before the fashion show when each designer had a display (installation) with live models (in many variations on a sitting room tableau mostly), there was someone on hand at R.A.W.’s display to show us a swatch book of the silks hand-dyed, hand-painted with vegetable dyes and with rust. All of this excellent info would be lost in a runway drive-by.
In Love & Memory. photo: Pete Springer
Themes of the night? Hotpants! Jumpsuits! Little dresses! If you dare wear short shorts, you have to find a way to get yourself into Frejya’s high-waist zip front shorts that begged for knee socks and low-pro roller skates. Rachel Mara’s super hot linen short jumpsuit could be your uniform with a capital U as soon as the grey lifts. While In Love & Memory’s black jumpsuit with black beaded detail nailed a kind of updated Studio 54 vibe. Yum.
Erhart. photo: Pete Springer
And for all the posturing (whee! it’s a fashion show, back that ass up), you might have missed that Chelsea Erhart’s bloomer-y hotpants are unbelievably fierce…fashion geeks unite and check the mini-pleats. Erhart collaborates with Eastside screenprint label Foyer to do jersey tops and bodycon dresses for girls as well as the only menswear of the eve, of the hoodie variety.
Aiguille et Fit. photo: Pete Springer
Lots of little dresses, but what variety. There was definitely a continued preoccupation with naif trend with little-girl details like ruffles and yokes. But Liz Spencer (Aiguille et Fil) used innovative construction to transform blocks of vintage fabrics into good little dresses (pockets!). Rachel Mara’s two did evening with an easy glamour that’s hard to come by, shifts in black satin and a beaded cream chiffon. And Julia Blackburn (Dust) did some adventurous ivory dresses textured with shredded strips hung vertically or gathered in ruffles.
Makool. photo: Pete Springer
The introduction to a dozen lines with three looks each has its benefits…like a tasting menu, you get a quick look, get a sense of what you want to see more of. And it does give the greatest number of designers the greatest exposure. That said, it’s often impossible to give a full sense of a label’s design direction with three pieces. With Frejya, you get it, jersey fringe on body-conscious pieces. You get Erhart pegged with her saucy streetwear. You get a sense of Rachel Mara’s refinement, Dust’s rawness, and Amai Unmei’s overt girliness. For some of the lines, though, you are left with disparate ideas (good ones) that you hope can coalesce into a unified statement. You cross your fingers that the more you see, the more you’ll like. Ruth Waddy’s pieces are a case in point, ideas so different they could have come from three designers, but with something so intriguing about the cut of those jeans (high-waist with diagonal seam halfway down the leg) and spiraling stand-up collar, you want to see how she brings it all together, what she does next. And that, I think, for a show like this, is precisely the point.
–Lisa Radon
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