The most highbrow of designers this spring season have relegated to safe, ready-to-wear styles nudged by consumer demand for affordability. Fashionistas are strapped for cash and hesitant to splurge on luxuries such as that gray wool felt Takashimaya jacket by Yeohlee. Now that Michelle Obama has endorsed little known designers and mid-priced J.Crew and shoppers milk the sale racks from Zara to Berdorf Goodman, it seems sartorial frugality has become in vogue. After all, fashion is an industry about trendsetting and keeping up with trends. So tell me why “Recessionista Must Haves” couldn’t be more perfect for this season’s theme?
This Friday, brace yourself for collections pulled and recycled from independent designers and retailers to suit the strapped palates of the average — non-size zero — woman (and man) at Madison’s spring Fashion Friday, a showcase with “stylista” undercurrent, neophyte designers, professional stylists and stunning models.
“Madison Fashion Week is not industry based at all. It’s more of a fun consumer series of events trying to make fashion accessible and to really spur growth in our industry here locally,” said Kristi Moe, producer of Madison Fashion Week. “It’s saying fashion is for me.”
Two of five collections will extract radical inspiration from the current distressed state of the economy — namely “Paper Plastic,” by Rosa Lee, a Madison-based stylist, and a collaborative collection by freshman Jonathan Brice?o, freshman Caillie Paur and sophomore Renee McDonald of newspaper and magazine pieces (one of which is designed entirely from recycled Badger Herald newspapers).
“It speaks a lot to the economy that if things get really dire and you have absolutely no money there is still no excuse for you not to be able to express yourself with something as fabulous as newspapers or garbage bags,” Moe said.
Rue the day celebrities pose in a Phillip Lim New York Times newspaper dress or a Giorgio Armani garbage bag dress for red carpet events — although those desperate times would be highly unlikely.
Preview photos provided by its designers, Jonathan Brice?o and Caillie Paur, models senior Lena Song hugged by a seersucker bodice of a rainbow hued two piece cocktail dress reminiscent of layered cupcake wrappers, paired with a neutral toned black and white empire waist skirt that falls above the knee — the black and white complement fabricating an illusion of gray — and accessorized with a wide charcoal black belt and petite pinwheel chapeau.
It’s hard to believe that this “Project Runway”-inspired look is fashioned in its entirety from the ripped pages of Vogue and Elle.
“Instead of buying the dress out of the pages of Vogue, you make a dress with Vogue. It’s really turning fashion on its head,” Moe said.
The dress’ bodice, a palette of blood red, magenta lime green, baby blue, makes a quiet statement for Madison’s bubbling fashion potential, welcoming anti-highbrow creative flirts, stimulated by our media-saturated society.
Wading through throngs of tasteless Uggs and Northface — status symbols, not stylish wear — Moe singlehandedly seeks to dissuade sharp quips pertaining to Madison’s fashion vacuum and fashion’s highbrow reputation. “People have a bad stigma that when they hear about something going on pertaining to fashion, they get intimidated by that because they think fashion needs to be for the ultra thin, ultra tall, ultra beautiful, or the rich and young, but fashion is for everyone,” Moe said.
Moe’s ambition is infectious, but she exudes a rebellious attitude having founded an epitomized anti-New York Fashion Week.
“Fashion Friday is all focused on current season looks so it’s not like New York Fashion Week where they do it a season in advance, because our whole focus are the consumers as the buyer, not the department stores,” Moe said. “We’re not a New York City wannabe.”
And only three seasons in, Fashion Fridays have enticed editors of Madison lifestyle magazines, boutique owners, fashion enthusiasts and boasted Tim Gunn (“Project Runway”) during November’s women’s expo.
“Tim Gunn thinks what I’m doing is fabulous,” Moe gushed.
Props to her.
Fashion Friday will open its doors at the Cardinal Bar, Feb. 20 at 9 p.m., followed by an after party with DJ Nick Nice.
