Thoughts and Pictures from the Dress Mess

Our Indyish Monthly Mess remains messy, and is especially tricksy when we convert a non-venue into a venue for one night, but it always seems to manage a magic, diversity and glow that I love in it’s every manifestation.

This month, Feb 29 2008, we returned to the private loft Studio 300 for some class, and Dressed up. We hosted bands who styled themselves and looked super fly (with some hair help from the resident Fashion editor, Serah-Marie of Worn) bands that are near and dear to our Team Indyish hearts - Nightwood, Brave Radar and the Darling Demaes, and we got to show a sneak peak of the Darling Demaes first ever music video, by director Lorne Hiltser. The video is fun, with 2 professional swing dancers bound and bounding manically to an exclusive performance of A Couple of Schizophrenics in a lovely red theatre. The song is from their first album, which is available here!

We had some fascinating fashion insights from Worn Journal’s writers and, thanks to Worn’s coordination, from the audience and the audience’s moms. These were read aloud by our funny bashful host Miss Gina, who also tried on the Moly Kulte creation on display, and looked frankly fetching in it. Eco Design collective and non-profit boutique La Gaillarde showed a sweet mini retro fashion show while talking bilingually about environmentalism, the ethics of recycled dress, and buying locally made. I like to look at hot outfits while learning, turns out.

Quick story about the Moly Kulte piece made uniquely for the occasion: The Moly Kulte designers, who also run an awesome eco-chic design boutique on St Denis, when I contacted them about being in the show, told me that they wanted to do it but didn’t want to talk. Fair enough. We brainstormed a bit, and I mentioned we had bags of materials left over from our Indyish Launch Weekend Consistent Variable Design Project. They thought I said we had leftover handbags they could work with and joyfully agreed to work with the materials we’d supply and bring their creation to the show. Elran and I dropped off the bag of materials with the sales person at the Moly Kulte store so we weren’t there to see their surprise, but apparently they laughed hard (the bags contained enormous mens underwear, among other new, unused, odd, unwanted things) and shared the joke with their customers while working with the materials in their workshop/boutique the 2 weeks before the show. They also came up with a print, to decorate the dress they made with saucy wit: skid marks. Yep. Stylin. =)

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Thanks to Marilis Cardinal for the photos!!