What's this?

this is the archives of my old blog. Follow me at http://martinrouge.blogspot.com/ whenever I post!

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The accidental fashionista

Having been on my ass for nearly three months has been strangely good. The medical issues surrounding the break are very slowly dealing themselves out (very slowly) but at the very least my creative drive is back. While I'm not back to full capacity, especially in the writing department, the cooking is strong as hell and some furniture rebuilt got done. An unexpected side effect has been the development of my latent fashion genes.

Now, that doesn't mean that I'm buying into designer threads, or that I'm now the height of the latest mass-market fashion; rather I've rediscovered that designing clothes is both fun and possibly a way out of my predicament. It began around a month ago: my girlfriend and I were discussing the state of Gothic fashion, and quite frankly, our dissatisfaction with what was available. Its especially deplorable if you're a man, and even worse if you have a job. PVC is well and fine for when you go clubbing, or school, but what about groceries? The office? Its very sad that we cant really dress nice all the time, simply because PVC and strong detergents don't mix well.

So began our journey into fashion. Being thrifty and creative, we've always haunted the local thrift shops, looking for interesting pieces of mundane clothing; and then we stumbled on Wave Gothik Treffen. Holy crap. Them Germans do so make us North Americans look like the very poor cousins. take a look around the pics and the most dressed down folks there would be overdressed here. It was a bit of an eye-opener. Not much Hot Topic or Lip Service either. With some discussion with our more mature darkened friends, it became pretty clear to us that there lied an opportunity.

And the creativity went into overdrive. Now we shop, not for buying but for ideas. We look at the way things are done and how we can adapt or make it ourselves. The experiments have begun. Woe to the world of fashion!

If all goes well (and it does look that way) we might be able to open our store in two year's time. Thrift and one-offs, custom work and recycled items. And that's just the beginning. I've found the school programs we'll need to acquire the skills, I've discovered that I was pretty handy with a sewing machine after all and we have gone nuts with fabric and hardware.

Its all just a matter of time and patience now.

1 comment:

  1. can't wait to see the end result!

    if i may, a couple of decent designers to check for inspiration are junya watanabe/ comme des garcons , marithe francois girbaud and, as always, vivienne westwood...

    ReplyDelete