Game Changers

An interview with Ilya Parkins, author of "Poiret, Dior and Schiaparelli: Fashion, Feminity and Modernity"

By: Megan Patterson

Ilya Parkins is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of British Columbia, where much of her research has focused on the changing fashion and beauty more of the early 20th century. Her latest book, Poiret, Dior and Schiaparelli: Fashion, Feminity and Modernity, takes a look at this era by looking at the lives and work of these three prominent designers, and how their work highlighted the ambivalent role of women at this time as either glamourous, ultra modern style setters, to conservatives stuck in the past.

WORN is proud to announce that we will be holding a book launch and author talk for Poiret, Dior and Schiaparelli on December 10th from 7-9pm at TYPE Books (883 Queen Street West). Facebook event at this link for more details.

What made you decide to focus on gender studies and fashion?
I realized, when I started working on fashion about fifteen years ago, early in my graduate studies, that it was a fantastic way of thinking about the join between individual and social. Of course, some notion of the relationship between people and the social world is what informs all feminist inquiry, and this struck me as a wonderfully rich way to get at that. Importantly, it is also material, which attracted me; I was interested in thinking about the relationship between people and things of all sorts – things are part of the social world, too. I also wanted to counter the trivialization of this feminized art form, because I thought it could open up dimensions of various questions – about modern life, about consumption, about sexuality, identity, and everything I could think of – and because, frankly, writing off feminized phenomena as trivial is misogynist – and boring and predictable! That has been my project for fifteen years, and it not only led to this book but to a book I co-edited, that came out last year, called Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion. I actually saw it as a political imperative to foreground fashion – that’s how I see that edited book, especially.

What is it about the early 20th century’s fashion that you find so compelling as a subject?
One of the things that’s really fascinating and significant is the widespread recognition of the importance of fashion, among social critics and theorists. People – journalists and critics, and thinkers like Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin – used fashion as a kind of metaphor for modern life. Not only does that counter the trivialization and dismissal of fashion, but it also inadvertently places women and femininity at the centre of the modern. It is also a great way to get at the sense, in the early twentieth century, of living the new. It helped me to get at what people thought it “felt like” to be modern, because fashion was seen to embody the modern in a whole host of ways. In the early twentieth century, the obsession with newness, with modernity, wasn’t just a theoretical concern. It was also lived, quite intimately – often via their clothing.

Did you always want to write about Poiret, Dior and Schiaperelli specifically? Why do these designers stand out in regards to changing notions of women’s clothing and roles?
I wasn’t always interested in any designers specifically. I’d been interested in Poiret for quite a while, and then I read his main memoir. (He actually has three, though two aren’t available outside France, and were obscure and printed in just one edition even there.) Of course, he had a reputation as a vanguardist – as a “revolutionary,” as odd a word as that is in this context. So I decided that I wanted to read the memoirs of other designers who were considered revolutionary in some sense. Not all designers have a major memoir – Chanel doesn’t, for instance – and so in the end, Schiaparelli and Dior were the others I settled on.

How did you go about writing this book?
I began by reading Poiret’s memoir. Then I decided on Dior and Schiaparelli, and I thought that it was important to work on more than just their autobiographical books, but that I wanted to investigate all the writing they did – and much of the writing that others did – in creating their public images. I began by using library press resources in Toronto, where I was still spending a lot of time, but that only got me so far. Once I’d started my current position at UBC, I was lucky enough to get a couple of grants – including a major, three-year one – that allowed me to do research overseas. So I spent a total of about three months in Paris over a couple of years, reading Poiret’s other memoirs and anything I could dig up by and about the designers at the national library and the fashion museum libraries there. I got tripped up with Schiaparelli – she was an enigma who left relatively few traces – and ended up doing some research on her at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Dilys Blum, who works in the costume department there, has an incredibly extensive collection of her press clippings. And I wrote the book as I went, to some extent. I was caught out at the very end of writing the manuscript – around the time I was shopping around for a publisher – by John Galliano’s anti-Semitic outburst in February 2011. All of a sudden the House of Dior and its history were in the news, and I needed to address this history and the question of a possible collaboration of Dior and Nazis. I spent some unexpected weeks digging around in WWII French collaboration history, and added a section to my chapter on Dior. I think the book is much better for it.

What other designers would you say were influential in changing the way women dressed at this time?
There’s no question that Chanel had a massive influence. That’s real, it’s not a myth – you feel it in the press from the period. I also think that Mariano Fortuny had an influence that was quite important; he was crucial in the “orientalist” turn in the early twentieth century, and that appropriation of design elements from various so-called “Eastern” cultures was taken up all over the place.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the Strand magazine article from 1883 where they tried to predict the coming century’s fashion trends, but it’s pretty off the market (apparently they thought the future would be like Alice in Wonderland). Why do you think they were so wrong?
Hmmm! I haven’t seen this gem. I think they were so wrong because they seemed to forget about the principle of innovation. That is, certainly, fashion borrows from and often really recycles the past. But it does so in its own idiom. It’s not like a historical costume. What’s so interesting is that it combines elements of the past with elements of the present. The article about future fashion forgets that this is the innovation structure of fashion, this kind of hybrid of past and present, and seems to just imagine some kind of historical play-acting with hilarious elements for good measure, which looks silly.

What’s your favourite Dior/Schiaperelli/Poiret collection?
I don’t actually have a single favourite collection, I wouldn’t say. Of the three, I really love Poiret’s clothing the best. His pre-WWI work, especially, is stunning. It’s really kind to bodies, that clothing. And the richness, the luxuriousness of it – the colour, the layers, the draping… (This dress on slide 12? Come on! Sooo gorgeous.)

Show your ‘Stache

An interview with mustache expert Allan Peterkin

By: Mai Nguyen

November is here: a time that separates the boys from the boys who have gone through puberty. As you know, many folks are sprouting new follicles this month to raise money for prostate cancer research in a charity event known as Movember. Enter Allan Peterkin, an expert in all things facially hairy. In 2002, he wrote One Thousand Beards before going north of the pucker in his new book, One Thousand Mustaches. Just last week, Peterkin was a judge at the National Beard and Mustache Championship in Las Vegas.

Why was it important for you to write about this subject?
When I wrote One Thousand Beards, I really did it for fun, but then I got a media inquiry one or two times a month from places like the New York Times, Esquire, and the Wall Street Journal. I’ve become what I call a reluctant pogonologist. Even though it started out as a light, fun thing, what I realized is that it really shines a lamp on masculinity over time. I think a mustache is a performance of masculinity. It’s a way to say, “I’m not a corporate slave, I’m having fun.”

How come mustaches have so many different personalities? In your book, you list about 69 cultural references like the porn star, the dictator, the perpetual virgin…

Yes! In England, for example, there was what they called the three Fs. If you had a mustache you were a fop, an effeminate guy. Or you were a foreigner because Mediterreneans always wore mustaches. Or you were a fiend because cartoon villains always had a mustache. So you were a fop, foreigner, or a fiend. And then there came World War II and Hitler, and mustaches made you a fascist. Then in the ’60s you had the hippies. In the ’70s, gay men and swingers sexualized the ‘stache. But since the ’90s, most western cultures have grown really favourable towards facial hair.

Was the comeback sparked by any particular group or individual?
Everybody in the ’90s had a goatee. That really paved the way for men to be more playful with their facial hair. You could actually keep your job if you had facial hair, whereas our fathers couldn’t.

You were interviewed by Morgan Spurlock for his Mansome documentary on male vanity.
Men are much more conscious of their bodies than they used to be. Men are using facial hair cosmetically. Men use facial hair to look older, to look younger. If they start getting a double chin they can grow a beard and hide it. You can do sideburns that kind of lengthen the face or a big mustache to broaden the face.

The fact that there is even a Movember, that mustaches are somehow out of the ordinary, doesn’t that mean there’s still a stigma there?
This is what I think is so interesting. There’s a young guy I met, he and his buddy decided to grow a mustache just to see what the reaction would be and did a documentary on it called The Glorious Mustache Challenge. And what he’ll tell you is it’s always a conversation starter. You gotta be a little brave to wear a mustache because people are going say things like, “What? You wanna be a porn star?” or “Hey Saddam Hussein!” You gotta have guts to carry it off because you are going to stand out.
If I have facial hair, you’re going to be reading my face based on your associations. I said in my first book that with facial hair, you’re either Santa or Satan depending on who’s looking at you. There’s all this baggage with facial hair. The reason politicians and bankers will never have facial hair is they don’t want to take the chance that 50% of the population will think they’re Satan. Jack Layton had his trademark mustache, but in general, you just don’t see it.

So true. We had a photo shoot for WORN that used stick-on mustaches and we opted not to use the Hitler one because of its negative connotations.
Which is too bad because it was also Charlie Chaplin’s mustache. Same thing with John Galliano and John Waters. They both have this trademark mustache, but since Galliano was labeled an anti-Semite, people think of that now when they think of the pencil mustache.

That kind of sucks.
But you can kind of turn things on their head. I think John Waters evokes the elegant days of Hollywood. His movies are about tearing everything apart and putting it upside down. His early movies were totally counter culture so you can send mixed messages with your mustache.

Well that leads me to a really important question. Whose ‘stache would win in a fight: Waters’s or Galliano’s?
Oh, John Waters.

If you could grow any kind of mustache, what would it be?
There’s a baseball guy called Rollie Fingers. It’s like a really curly, really waxy handlebar. Really waxy.

Who are your favourite mustachioed men?
Martin Luther King, the political mustache.
Einstein, the intellectual mustache.
Clark Gable, the sophisticated mustached.
Freddie Mercury, the rockin’ queer ‘stache.
Edgar Allan Poe, the sad little mustache.
Salvador Dali, the creative mustache. He used to say that when he was a poor art student he actually dipped it as a brush.

Rocky, I Trust You

Crushing on hair stylist Rocky Handspiker and his Modern Lovers Hair Shop

By: Jenna Danchuk

A good hair stylist is hard to find. No one seemed to understand me: my hair, my style, or my interests.

Then I met Rocky.

Our styling chair discussions aren’t your typical salon banter. Among many topics, we’ve talked about how he spent a year working in a salon in Japan that specialized in creating black hair looks on Asian hair. I’ve walked into the salon to find Rocky hand threading a mustache for his costuming class he was taking “on the side” of running his own business and raising a child. Rocky is anything but boring, and that is why I trust him.

How long have you been cutting hair?
I started in 1982, just messing around with friends. People wanted punk, new wave, and hip hop inspired cuts, and I ended up being the guy to see. At the time, British punk style was fusing with NY break-dancing culture, and it seemed like taking scissors into our own hands (well, mine mostly) was the best way to get it.

Where did you learn?
I started with basic training at the Marvel School of Beauty, and then moved on to advanced training with various academies like Vidal Sassoon and Toni & Guy. On top of that, hands on experiences and other creative challenges really helped me to perfect my skills. Things like seminars for hairdressers, fashion shows, pageants, music videos, photo shoots, and hairstyling competitions. However, I’ve technically been working in salons since I was fourteen years old—around the same time I had started cutting my friends’ hair. An older girl with a David Bowie smile had heard about me through the grapevine and I soon became a shampoo boy at the shop she worked at with other funky stylists. Eventually I decided that committing to cutting hair was something I was serious about and took up formal classical foundation training.

Did you have any mentors or other inspiring people who helped you along the way?
Each salon I’ve worked at has had an incredible impact on my development. I’ve been inspired by many people and experiences, but one that really stands out was Pamela Neal. She took over for renowned stylist John Steinberg at the Rainbow Room in Toronto, which was a punk and new wave styled salon known as not just any place for cutting hair. Fashion, music, art, and media all came together at the Rainbow Room. It opened in 1976 and brought the British fashion scene to Toronto, moving away from the hippie era of Yorkville. Eventually it became where the Queen Street Scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s came to get their hair done. When Jimi Imij and Robert Pieter of Coupe Bizzarre brought their camp from Montreal to set up on Queen Street West in Toronto in the ’90s, I had the pleasure of working with and learning from them.

What has traveling as a stylist been like?
I worked in salons in Tokyo for one year, which was totally fascinating. There were lots of different styles meeting in a Japanese environment because of the many travellers and influences of outside music and culture on looks. I spent time at a black salon owned by a group of people formerly from Brooklyn, who needed me to help with their European clients. I was working alongside Japanese stylists who were having me translate hip hop lyrics for them—it was kind of crazy.

I worked in London, England, which was a really dynamic experience. I had the chance to do hair for photo shoots and videos, and worked in a salon on King’s Road. Living in London and experiencing the art scene there alongside my work was pretty amazing as well.

Tell me about your experiences hairstyling in the ’80s and ’90s.
At one point I worked at a three-chair salon in a fashion market managed by Pamela Neal, but when this closed I opened a small shop in Graffiti Alley in Toronto called Salon DNA. The space was also home to rave promoters X-Static. Because of this connection, during the 11 months that I owned the shop I was setting up hair styling booths at raves. I did a similar gig at the first Lollapalooza when I worked at the Rainbow Room with Pamela. We did the hair of almost 9000 festivalgoers. I moved to England after my time with Salon DNA came to an end. When I got back to Toronto in 1995, I worked at Coupe Bizzarre for 12 years.

How long has Modern Lovers Hair Shop been open?
We opened in 2010. After all those years with Coupe Bizzarre this was naturally the next step. I was originally looking to open up a sake bar with a friend, but when that fell through I decided to start my own shop. I had been working at Coupe Bizzarre and helping to train stylists there and was ready to branch out on my own, but if it wasn’t for finding this place through searching for real estate for the sake bar, I wouldn’t have left when I did. It was too good to be true. This location made sense—people come to Kensington Market for haircuts, among many other things, and the space was perfect for what I needed. This actually used to be a barbershop called Guerrero’s a while before I moved in here, so it’s kind of fitting for me to open another hair shop in this space.

What is it like working alone like you do now as opposed to working in a group setting like you have in the past?
Working one on one with clients is complete paradise—a total experience in hair styling. Early in the move people would ask me if I got lonely—never! I also have a music studio in the back room so this is a total creative space for me. However, working in a salon alongside other stylists, like I did when I worked at Coupe Bizzarre, has its advantages; the social life is interesting—you learn how to work well with others and a lot about people in general. You also draw inspiration and learn things from the other stylists around you. You can come up with ideas together for projects or looks, learn new tricks and invent things together. There’s always someone’s hair to cut. At Coupe, people came for the creative, artistic haircuts that I specialize in today. That, among many other things, has had a lasting impact on how I work.

Visit Rocky at Modern Lovers Hair Shop.

photography // Angela Lewis

The Hair Issue of Worn Fashion Journal is currently available for presale

Crushing on Elaine Ho

Montreal jewelry designer talks cats, art school, and becoming an independent fashion entrepreneur

By: Isabel Slone

Montreal is home to lots of hidden fashion gems; the plentiful thrift shops of Mile End, Fashion Pop, and our latest crush, jewelry designer Elaine Ho. Her design sense is both broad and bold, ranging from architectural geometric designs that look like they appeared out of an M.C. Escher drawing to morbid-cute miniature skulls. Plus, she is funny, candid, and loves cats almost as much as our editor-in-chief, Serah-Marie McMahon.

What was it like taking metal design in art school?
My first piece was in my high school art class; we got to make a silver ring with a bezel-set stone. I still can’t believe that our art teacher trusted a bunch of teenagers with gas torches and acid and dangerous stuff like that. Considering some of the kids in my class would sneak up to the loft above the art classroom to smoke pot during class, it’s kind of a miracle that there were no injuries or fires. After that I was hooked (to making jewelry, not smoking pot). I took metals classes at the Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) while I was a teenager and about six years later I started taking jewelry courses again at the Visual Arts Centre in Montreal. The ability to make stuff out of metal, especially precious metal, is the best. Making something that could maybe last forever? Crazy.

How was going to school in the Prairies different from taking fashion design at Parsons in New York City?
I grew up in the suburbs of Calgary, Alberta across the street from a national park and had deer in my front yard. I could see the Rocky Mountains from my house; it was fun. But I never pictured myself staying in Calgary, and a move to NYC was perfect.

Parsons was amazing; they have campuses all over Manhattan. You go to class right in the Garment District and can buy fabric and supplies at the same places that “real designers” do. I got the kind of jobs and internships that would never have been available to me if I had stayed in Calgary. Oh, and not to name drop or anything, but one of my classmates was Prabal Gurung, and there was also this other guy who used to be a District Attorney who prosecuted murderers and rapists, and he decided to make the career change into fashion design. Awesome guy. I loved living in NYC and would have stayed there much longer had my student/work visa not expired. I was politely refused at the border when I returned from a vacation to Montreal in 2003. That’s how I ended up in Montreal.

Is every piece of jewelry handmade, or do you contract out the production elsewhere?
I am able to create almost every piece of jewelry myself, including all the wax and silver models. However, I am unable to do casting from my home studio and have been working with an amazing local foundry (SR2 Technologies) for the past seven years, who excel at what they do.

After the casting I do probably about 90% of the finishing myself, but sometimes I get a huge order and do need to have help with production. I’m a bit of a perfectionist control freak when it comes to my work. People are spending their hard earned money on my jewelry and that’s kind of a big deal to me.

A lot of your pieces have a dark edge, like cat skulls, dead rabbits, and two-headed snakes. How does the macabre influence the jewelry you design?
My favourite outfit in Grade 3 was a long black jumper over black leggings with a black long sleeve hoodie and black slouchy socks and black high tops—I guess it’s just the way I’ve always been. I’ve always been drawn to really cute and adorable things (Hello Kitty, kittens, baby animals, miniature versions of things) as well as dead stuff and violence (guns, knives, watching Full Metal Jacket when I was seven) so I suppose I’m just bringing together my favourite things.

What are some of your more geometric designs based on?
I used to doodle cubes, cylinders and other geometric shapes in my notebooks, and always looked forward to going to the gem and mineral show every year as a kid. I still do, not because they’re kind of a freak show, but because I absolutely love crystals and minerals and fossils and rocks (just not in the weird spiritual energy way). I just think they’re beautiful. Most of my geometric designs are based on existing and imaginary shapes, and inspired by natural crystal structures.

Our editor-in-chief, Serah-Marie, is obsessed with your pet cats you post about on Instagram—tell us more about them.
I am obsessed with cats! Especially Persian cats. They’re possibly the most domesticated animal you can get your hands on. They are so easy to take care of, extremely friendly, and not much more work than a houseplant—save for the excessive shedding.

Pepito Mimumo(Black Persian): I picked him up nine years ago at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), and he was already a senior when I got him. By now he could be 200 years old. He is old and crotchety, dirty and cranky, gets cat food stuck in his nose, and the end of his tail is always wet because he sleeps curled up like a fox and drools on his tail. He never cleans himself, so I have to give him baths. He was recently diagnosed with kidney failure, but he’s doing okay, all things considered.

Poof (White Flame Point Himalayan): I got Poof from a pet store in 2003. She lived in a cage for about six months and I used to visit her every time I bought cat food from the shop. I’m sure she’s probably from a puppy mill or something awful like that. I don’t buy pet food from shops that sell kittens and puppies anymore. She looked gross because she had a bad cold and was sort of wall-eyed. No one wanted her and they kept marking her price down because it’s harder to sell older kittens. Poof turned out to be a great cat.

Fräulein Ponyo von Mitten (Black long-hair alley cat): She was a very small abandoned kitten living under my front porch and I took her in a few years ago. She has extra front toes so it looks like she’s wearing mittens.

Sofia (Grey Persian): I just picked up a fourth cat this month. Her owner was really sick and not able to take care of her anymore. She is a five year old, tiny cat with giant eyeballs, and looks like a cartoon character. She has settled in quite well, and pretty much runs the place.

WORN Fashion Journal is obsessed with cats: our associate web editor Alyssa owns a cat sweater, our publishing intern Jill owns a kitty iPhone case and our publisher Haley owns a ‘Cat Flag’ parody t-shirt. How does owning cats affect your design process?
I love and want both those cat shirts, and the iPhone case. I have a few cat items in my collection, but they’re subtle—well, I think they are. There is a fine line between liking cats and looking like a crazy cat lady. When I make cat designs, I make sure it’s something I would wear myself before putting it into production. But perhaps that’s not saying much because I have a rather large tattoo of a cat face hidden in floral lace on my arm.

Do you have any plans to continue producing your clothing line?
Yes, I would like to eventually. I took year off of designing clothing so I could focus more on jewelry. Jewelry keeps me really busy, so I think all I can handle at this point is a super mini collection or season. By super mini, I’m thinking one top, one bag, and some mittens.

What sort of consideration do you give to environmental sustainability in your jewelry design and business model?
I never throw anything out. That’s also known as hoarding. But does it count as sustainable? I keep all my silver scraps, even the tiniest ones, as well as any failed projects, which get melted down and re-used. I try to use the “greenest” and least poisonous options for my pickling, cleaning, and oxidizing solutions. My jewelry teacher once told me about this lady who had the most beautiful patinas and finishes on her jewelry made from crazy chemicals and she’s dead now because of it.

I try to get all my supplies locally. I recycle everything I can, and I use biodegradable poly bags for the accounts that insist on having their items individually poly-bagged. I use recycled cardboard mailing envelopes, and paper jewelry boxes that can be easily reused and recycled. (I hate bubble envelopes; they are the devil’s invention.) Overall, there is very little waste from making jewelry.

Are their any jewelry designers you admire, or design colleagues you think our readers should check out?
I’ve really been into silversmith Hans Hansen and his son Karl Gustav, who made stunning minimalist jewelry in the early 20th Century. I’m also obsessed with Victorian mourning jewelry, especially the stuff with human hair, which is so intricate and pretty and creepy.

Any tips for young people interested in starting their own fashion businesses from the ground up?
Just go for it. Intern or work for businesses similar to the one you want to create, because it’s the best way to learn all the behind-the-scenes stuff they don’t teach you in school. Don’t quit your day job right away either. See if your work takes first, then quit, and make sure to steal a lot of stationery on your way out. You can never have enough pens or printer paper.

photography // Allison Staton