On a lovely day this past summer, Kate “Copy Editing is My Life” Schweishelm, photographer Alyssa K. Faoro and I piled into a car and drove to Cambridge, Ontario, to talk to Jonathan Walford and Kenn Norman about their dream of opening a fashion museum. (Pulling a Museum Out of a Hatbox, WORN Issue 9).

Alyssa and I were there for pictures - the fun part - but work came first. While Kate interviewed, we waited…

- g.

My youth was spent in suburbia where I grappled for straight A’s and wrote sappy lyrics for music-less songs. Eventually I left the comfort of my parents’ house and my rock star dreams for Guelph, Ontario, where I completed a Bachelor of Arts and Science in English, Psychology and Political Science. Later I moved to Toronto and immediately took enjoyment in the vast and eclectic array of arts-related opportunities and events; there is a seemingly endless cascade of ideas. I spend a lot of my time poking around thrift, consignment, and rare goods shops. The social and cultural history behind anything from clothing to magazines to bathroom décor is incredibly intriguing. And trifling but true, the act of getting dressed is one of my dearest pastimes. With much delight, I now find myself at WORN as Director of Events where I can put some of this affection to work.

Current Inspirations

So Vintage Patterns
Essentially, this is a giant, well-organized catalogue of vintage patterns to tempt you, your wallet, and your sewing machine.

ill seen, ill said
This blog comes out of Toronto and is written by Jane Flanagan. It features posts on artists, designer collections, beautiful photography, and other such treats for the mind and eye.

weardrobe
This website showcases people wearing cool things, and then links to their blogs, Etsy stores, etc. It provides good visual fun for browsing, but is also a bank of other fashion resources.

FORA.tv
Yes, I am directing you to a television website. Here is the thing; FORA is a collection of videos featuring passionate people discussing their ideas. The ‘Culture’ section is my favourite.

Miranda July
One of my favourite multi-media artists and her website showcases all of the reasons why.

Alice in Wonderland [Tim Burton, 2010]

Last week, WORN’s Editor-in-Pants tried to schedule a staff meeting. “I can’t come,” I told her. “I won tickets to an advance screening of the new Alice in Wonderland movie.” Apparently I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t make it and the meeting ended up being rescheduled. “Maybe you could write about the movie’s costumes for our blog?” she said, subtly reminding of how long it had been since I last wrote a post (her exact words being, “it’s been a long time since you wrote a post.”) I told her I would.
After my last class on Wednesday I bolted for the TTC, hoping to make it to the theatre in time for the 7 pm screening. Long story short: I was too late, and the doors were closed by the time I got there. “Well, that’s it,” I thought. “I’ll have no article to turn in and everybody in the entire world is going to hate me for being a terrible, terrible blogger and for making my editor reschedule the staff meeting for nothing” (sometimes I get dramatic when I’m tired). But gosh darn it, I had promised our good readers here at WORN an Alice in Wonderland themed blog post, and I am a woman of my word. So here you go:

Neco z Alenky [Jan Scankmajer, 1988]

It’s not like there’s a lack of anything to say on the subject of fashion and Alice. If I had a penny for every artsy film adaption, inspired runway collection, and magazine editorial entitled “Through the Looking Glass” I would have enough cash to buy not only my own movie ticket, but theatre-priced popcorn – and that’s saying something. I want to start this post somewhere else, however. After all, my own introduction to Lewis Carroll didn’t happen with a visually-saturated interpretation of his stories – no, not even the Disney one - but rather on a more literally literary level.

Alice v Strane Chudes [Efrem Pruzhanskiy, 1981]

When I was a little girl I spent many holidays in British Columbia, visiting my grandmother. She had this thick book called The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll, and before I could understand what they were about, she would read to me his poetry – the Jabberwocky, The Hunting of the Snark, and so on. For my birthday a couple of years later she gifted me with an illustrated hardcover copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, two stories I would read over and over again. Alice served as the gateway to the books I would learn to love reading as a kid: stories about children who were bored with their humdrum lives, finding a way to escape to a world of wonder; the likes of Narnia, Harry Potter, the Phantom Tollbooth and others followed suite in my readings.

The Wednesday Play: Alice in Wonderland [Jonathon Miller, 1966]

Growing up however, I had no magical cupboard of my own, no Platform 9 ¾, no mysterious tollbooth and no rabbit hole to escape through. Being introverted and more than a little nerdy, I continued to seek my own escapes through what I read, and eventually through what I wore. Discovering fashion felt a bit like entering Wonderland; the first designers I really fell in love with were those like Alexander McQueen and Viktor & Rolf: designers who, with their clothes, created a world of the fantastical where practicality took second place to imagination. It became really evident why Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a major inspiration point for countless photo shoots – at its best, fashion could share that notion with the story that the absurd is always so much more compelling than reality. I’ve tried to channel the more popular perception of Alice in my own wardrobe, occasionally donning that iconic cornflower blue dress and white tights when I run errands, causing my sister to ask “Anna, are you doing that weird thing where you pretend you’re a fictional storybook character again?” (Answer: yes. Yes I am).

Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland [Geronimi, Jackson & Luske, 1951]

My grandmother passed away last month, on the same day that McQueen did. Going back to her old apartment in B.C., I found her Lewis Carroll anthology (it seemed so much bigger when I was a child!) as well as a couple of tattered, fading books a relative had salvaged. Among them was her first copy of Alice, a copy which, according the scrawl in the front, had belonged to her own grandmother. It doesn’t surprise me that this book has been passed down through so many generations and yet continues to stand the test of time: another year, another half dozen photo shoots, another film adaptation – this one in 3-D, no less. I still haven’t had a chance to see Tim Burton’s version (at this rate it looks like I’m going to be shelling out for a full priced ticket) and I know it won’t be able to live up to the image of Alice I’ve constructed in my head. At the very least, I hope it can serve as the jumping-off point for a new generation to fall in love with all things Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland [Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, 1903]

photography by Alyssa K Faoro

A couple Wornettes will be manning a table at the Broken Arts Fair in Oshawa from 3-9 p.m. on Wednesday March 10th, at The auditorium of the McLaughlin branch of the Oshawa Public Libraries. (65 Bagot St.) Come say hi and support arts in Oshawa!

Otiena Ellwand is a second-year journalism student at Ryerson University and an intern at CHEEK Magazine. She loves all kinds of design - from fashion to architecture - and she thirsts for adventure and seeks it not only in her own home of Toronto, but around the world. She has a unique, colourful, and inspiring sense of style. Otiena certainly doesn’t blend in, but that’s okay - she doesn’t want to.

How did you dress in elementary school? How about in high school?
In grade 4, I had an awesome pair of lime green platform shoes that I wore everyday… The Spice Girls influenced that decision! In high school my best friend and I paired odd combinations of things together. We tried to be creative with our clothes because it was fun and we wanted to stand out. A lot of the girls we went to high school with wore Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister so we sort of did it as a rebellion.

I have this bright yellow dress with little blue owls on it that I bought in Kensington Market. I wore it a lot in my teenage years; on dates, to school, to Greece, and I was made fun of mercilessly, but I didn’t care because it so perfectly represented my personality. I still wear it today and I still get made fun of although now it’s a little bit “cooler” to be seen sporting a vintage dress like that one.

You do a lot of traveling. Has this affected the way you see fashion?
I love traveling and every time I do, I try to pick up a few pieces that I feel either really represent the place, will remind me of it, or are just unique pieces that I won’t be able to find back home.

Last year I lived in Indonesia and dressing was tricky. It was extremely hot and I needed clothes that were comfortable, durable, that I was willing to get dirty, and most importantly, that covered me up because the majority of Indonesians are Muslim. I didn’t really care how I looked so I opted for baggy shirts and capris. I did get some beautifully patterned cloths, one of which I got made into a mermaid-shaped skirt. It isn’t really something I would wear in Canada, but in Indonesia I got a lot of compliments on it. It’s funny how the clothes that were fashionable there would never be fashionable here. They really like patterns and baubles. They have this traditional dyeing technique that makes a pattern called Batik and that’s what they wear for formal occasions. It is really something to see all of the men in these intricately patterned shirts instead of black dress suits.

Sometimes I have a lot of difficulty with having a fashionable image. I want to dress nicely, look and feel good, and indulge in fashion, but I also feel like I only feel those ways when I am ‘dressed up’ in makeup and nice clothes. Shouldn’t we feel all of those things even when we’re just looking exactly like ourselves without any of that stuff? As I adapt to where I am, so does my sense of fashion. Each scene differs from the next; I guess that’s the fun of fashion, after all.

Colour is a huge part of your personal style. Why do you think it’s important to wear colourful clothing and accessories?
I can’t help it, I’m just addicted to colour. Colour has always been apart of my wardrobe. I had a fascination with the colour turquoise and wanted that to be the colour of my wedding dress (hopefully my future partner won’t mind!). I have tried to put more black into my wardrobe because I hear that it is sophisticated, but really, black isn’t me. I’m an outgoing and positive person and colour is just another way I reflect that. If I’m going to live in a cold, sometimes ugly and grey place like Toronto, I best amuse myself with the colourful outfits I put together.

Oteina’s top ten favorite clothing stores in the world:

- Stephanie Fereiro

I must admit, I’ve never been one to keep up with models. I adore Heidi Klum for her often ridiculous critiques on Project Runway, but otherwise no one model has won me over as a big fan. However, I have recently become enamored with Crystal Renn. Not only do I find her beautiful, her lack of sexy-face brings something new and interesting to the table. Of course, she is known for more than just her expressive photographs; Renn is a size 12 and the leading “plus-size” model working in the industry right now.

At 23, Cystal Renn has been working as a model for seven years, a career she documents in her memoir Hungry (penned with Marjorie Ingall, a former Sassy contributor). Reviews of the book, or articles about Crystal Renn, all seem to provide the same synopsis of her life. She was discovered at a charm school in Mississippi by a modeling scout who told her she could be a supermodel if she lost nearly ten inches off her hips. To achieve this goal, she began dieting heavily and developed an eating disorder, bringing her weight down to less than 100 pounds. She realized the scope of her illness and was able to recover and has now become a very successful plus-size model that works in mainstream fashion magazines like Vogue. And of course, that is all true, but in this book she engages critically with her past, the industry, and her continuing career as a model in a way that is sold short by a sound bite summary. Her recollections of filling her mouth with peanut butter only to wash it out, crying, are enough to make me hungry. While she writes a personal memoir, Renn’s accounts of sitting starving and miserable in her crappy New York model’s apartment bring into focus a larger reality that exists behind the glossy pages.

The chapters that follow the Renn’s life are staggered, with chapters dissecting body image and the inner workings of the fashion industry. Size and beauty are concepts that are intrinsically linked in our society, and Hungry provides more analysis than I expected. One point that Renn focuses on is how the issue of extreme thinness in the fashion world is consistantly made out to be someone else’s problem. Magazines claim to show women who are thin because designers send them sample sizes, but of course designers say they are making clothing for thin women because the magazines define this size as what is in style. And when blaming each other doesn’t work, it seems that the industry blames the models themselves. The book also discusses how the “waif look” (read: skeletal) seems to be tied to xenophobia. While of course there are waifs of many colours, Renn notes how the seasons that are populated by extremely thin woman on the runway (a recent trend) are overwhelmingly white. She believes this is tied to people’s belief that thinness connotes higher class; marginalized populations (which include millions of people of colour) have higher obesity rates, so therefore whiteness and thinness can be read as signifiers of luxury. And what is luxury if it doesn’t exclude 99.9% of us? Or employ a migrant work force of teenage girls?

Renn comes off as a likable, introspective person. I can definitely see how this book will appeal to WORN readers; she poses some serious questions about how we view our bodies through the lens of fashion, but she still takes time to gush about working with Jean Paul Gautier and Steven Meisel. Her life story is no doubt similar to other young models, but because she has become so successful she has the opportunity to speak out. And luckily for us, she is ready and willing to intelligently examine the fashion industry, while still enjoying the widespread acceptance she has received by it.

Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves by Crystal Renn and Marjorie Ingall (Simon & Schuster 2009)

book review by Hillary Predko

This spring WORN will launch its tenth issue. In the last five years as our readership grew, we worked hard to improve and impress you, to keep our content smart and our pages pretty. One way or another, we’ve told you all about us – now we want to hear all about you.

We’ve always said WORN is about readers, so help us get to know you, our reader, better. Take our teeny tiny little survey and show us how we can bring you more of the publication you know and love. We swear it won’t take more than five minutes.

take the survey here.

Five minutes for five years – that’s one exchange we’d call a perfect ten.

I’m Sticking With You from g steg on Vimeo.

During a recent visit from her home in Alberta, regular contributor Hailey Siracky not only joined the WORN team in Toronto for an all-staff meeting, but very graciously agreed to unburden WORN’s managing editor of a few things that were clogging up her dresser.

To completely misquote Aristotle, friendship is a single soul dwelling in two closets.

Ha.

Our intern positions offer valuable opportunities for those interested in fashion and publishing. Because WORN is a small magazine, our interns work alongside our editors, writers, and graphic designers helping with real tasks (never fetching coffee or picking up dry cleaning) and getting a chance to show their stuff.

Why choose Worn? Worn is an independent print publication dedicated to offering a unique and inclusive perspective on fashion and style. Our readership is expanding dramatically throughout Canada and internationally. We are increasingly recognized by fashion lovers, vintage hounds, academics and artists as a truly unique and smart magazine for people who want more fashion and less fluff.

WE ANSWER TO READERS, NOT TO ADVERTISERS.

issue 11 application deadline is April 1st, 2010. applications and more information about available positions

Geraldine Chaplin plays sweet and supportive Tonya, Yuri Zhivago’s step-sister turned wife. Her introductory scene shows Tonya hopping off a busy train from Paris at the Moscow train station in a fitted, pale pink dress and overcoat with matching fur hat and grey muff. The costume garnered much attention from Director David Lean, a stickler for details in the film, who insisted on a few revisions to the design before it hit the set. In Doctor Zhivago: The Making of a Russian Epic, Costume Designer Phyllis Dalton explains, “That was a sad argument I had with the Director at the time because I designed that same costume in pale grey with a black fur hat because I thought she would be so sophisticated she would want to go with the utterly grown up thing, and a rather tight skirt that she could hardly run in, which was very in in Paris in those days.” Geraldine Chaplin recalls the conflict, saying that Dalton then had a white version of the outfit made, which Lean rejected since it made Chaplin’s teeth look “too yellow.” Dalton goes on to say, “David didn’t say he didn’t like it but he was quite adamant that he wanted a pale colour. He said ‘try pink’ …and it’s the most beautiful outfit in the whole film.” The look is elegant early 20th Century Parisian, a chic yet glamorous show stealer. Among the details Lean is known for implementing in his films, he is said to have made all his actors wear period undergarments beneath their costumes for added authenticity, though they were never visible in any of the film’s scenes.

Julie Christie stars as Lara, Zhivago’s mistress, muse and true love. Though Lara is an innocent young woman at the start of the film, her entanglement with a political fixture and notable womanizer named Viktor Komarovsy finds her in a flashy red number that Christie wore rather reluctantly. Claiming that she hated red and the way the dress made her feel, Christie initially refused to wear the revealing, vixen-esque gown, with its black tassel trimming and long satin gloves. “’It’s not a dress you would have worn, or Lara would have worn,’” Lean says he explained to Christie. Lara’s lover Viktor forced her to wear the dress, demonstrating his complete power over her actions, securing Lean’s belief that the costume was fitting for the particular scene. Whether it’s a crisp white puff sleeve shirt and floor-length skirt or a lavender evening dress with a matching bow tied in her hair, Lara’s costumes are some of the most enchanting in the film.

The rich, opulence of Russian culture at the beginning of Doctor Zhivago works in stark contrast to the latter part of the film, where communism takes power. The characters somehow look simple and even stylish in their tattered clothes and fancy furs, which are functional for the bleak cold. Through it all, the film’s title character, played by Omar Sharif, dons a classic fur hat and long belted coat with large lapels, as he braces himself against the cruel Russian winter and dominant Soviet rule.

-Anna Cippollone