Hey all. I’m Sarah, one of Worn’s newest web interns. This is my first time working for a fashion publication and I am thrilled to be here. I graduated last year from the University of King’s College in Halifax, where I studied English and Journalism. I’m going back to school in the fall to do my masters in English at York University. Since graduation, I’ve spent the year writing about anything from insurance to woodworking. Worn is my first opportunity to really love what I’m doing and I can’t wait to get started.

I am dress obsessed. My love of fashion is genetic; a seed planted in my family tree by my grandmother. She currently has no fewer than five closets bursting at the seams. I raid these on a pretty regular basis. Whether it’s something she bought 30 years ago or five minutes before, I get such a thrill out of transforming her stuff into my own. My favourite is her 1970s long-sleeved, backless lace mini dress that I wore to a wedding this year. I’m not sure where I will go in life but I always want to work with creative and interesting people. That’s a big reason why I’m here. I’m so excited to be at Worn for issue nine.

My grandmother is pretty happy for me too.

My current inspirations:

The Weekness
Every day is a new inspiration for Angie and Christophe, the creators of The Weekness. This sartorial blog pokes good-natured fun at everything silly and great about fashion. Be sure to check out Tuesday SHOEday and Monday MANday.

Punky Style
Anyone who runs a vintage clothing store out of a repurposed 1954 vintage Bellwood Aloha trailer has got to have a great blog. Punky is a vintage-enthusiast in New England, who organizes massive clothing swaps in her home town. Her trailer-park turned clothing shore is called Haberdash.

Art + Culture
This site takes the interweb literally. You can sign up or just observe as over 600 users create a map of all things art and culture related. It’s a great place to start your research or learn something new about something you already love. Just like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, find connections between movements in fashion and architecture or follow members with similar interests to discover something new.

Montmartre’s Sketchbook
I was initially drawn to this blog because I am going to France this summer and I thought there would be interesting posts about the artist district in Paris. The blog is about Montmartre in name only, but there are beautiful pictures of fashion, art and life here.

Dead Sexy Mag
This is a new online magazine. It’s not a blog because it is actually set up like a flat magazine. You can scroll and click your way through their beautiful photo essays and articles. It is all about Toronto but just for now. They are planning to start Dead Sexy Mags in Berlin, Montreal, Portland, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul and Tel Aviv.

Hair India presents what can arguably be called the uglier side of the beauty industry. Directed by Raffaele Brunetti and Marco Leopardi, the film shows the extreme differences between India’s richest and poorest, and the roles both play in the obtaining and selling of one of the most popular recent accessories: hair extensions.

The film follows a young girl named Gita and her family living in West Bengal. Having no other material possessions to donate to their temple, they plan on collectively shaving their heads and sacrificing their hair, a common ritual where they live. In a culture where a woman’s beauty is so highly regarded, the act of giving up one’s hair is not a simple decision. Meanwhile in Bombay we meet Sangeeta (pictured above), the editor of a gossip magazine who busies herself with such tasks like finding a professional palm reader to dish on the personal lives of major Indian celebrities. While looking for a new hairstyle before a huge party, Sangeeta turns to hair extensions.

Between following the lives of these two women, the documentary observes how the temple sells the hair to a company in Italy called Great Lengths, who then bleaches, colours, and sorts the hair and turns them into extensions, sold around the world. They are a hot commodity coveted by the rich, from celebrities in Hollywood to Sangeeta and her peers.

The film does suggest that there is an injustice being committed, but it is hard to pinpoint who exactly the culprit is. There are the temples who sell the hair without the consent of the donating parties, but if all the money goes back to charitable events, can it really be inferred that the temples have dishonourable intentions? It seemed clear that Sangeeta, the glamorous magazine editor with an obsession for celebrity culture and makeup, was seen as silly and shallow – after all, the audience at the screening I went to laughed when she said she hoped her new extensions would make her look like Shakira. Shots of Gita and her family living in near poverty accompanied by melancholic music are interspersed with scenes of Sangeeta at high profile events wearing designer dresses, yet I still find it hard to vilify her as a bad guy of Disney proportions – after all, she is a woman trying to find success in a society that, although different from our own, still places great significance on a woman’s physical beauty (as emphasized by the great pains it took for Gita to eventually donate her hair). Could it be possible that Sangeeta herself is just a different sort of victim, falling prey to a sexist and shallow culture and merely ignorant to the conditions under which the hair extensions were made?

In a post-screening interview with the filmmakers, they explained that their job in creating this documentary was not to give all the answers, but rather to ask the relevant questions. In that respect, their film was successful. Hair India does a good job of displaying the relevant information so that, even if the film doesn’t solve any problems itself, it certainly raises awareness of the issue.
- Anna Fitz

It’s up for sale on our site, in our etsy store, and in stores in Toronto including 6 new locations about town. Montreal, Ottawa and the rest of the world will be getting their little bundles of joy soon. I think it may be my favorite cover so far. You?

xoxo,
Serah-Marie

photography by Kate Schweishelm

After the big night we had Saturday, everyone at WORN may be forgiven for suffering from some residual delirium, which probably helps explain the immense glee we derived from the process of titling our first batch of pictures from the event, now up on our Flickr feed. We spent a good portion of the afternoon inserting the word shoe into song titles…

Never Gonna Give Shoe Up
Say Shoe, Say Me
I Want Shoe To Want Me
Shoe’s Come Undone
Shoe Can’t Always Get What Shoe Want
I Get a Kick Out of Shoe
I’ve Got Shoe Under My Shin

Got any more?

text by Kate Schweishelm, photography by Marilis Cardinal and Carl Heindl.