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.

It is a little known fact, even among my close friends, that I was once a member of a sorority. In 1991, Delta Psi Delta was pretty new. They had big dreams of someday being absorbed by the national “Tri Delts” (immortalized on SNL with the phrase, “Delta Delta Delta, can I help ya help ya help ya?”) but, like a small magazine looking for a grant, they still had to prove themselves worthy. That year I was just cresting my Androgynous Grunge Angst period and hardly a candidate for sorority life, but I suspect they were sort of desperate for rushes (applicants). Every girl that showed up at our first meeting had been personally invited. I had reservations, but I figured my chances of ever again experiencing this particular slice of life were slim; I thought what the hell? When I walked in wearing a plaid flannel shirt and army boots, no one batted an eye.

Over the next eight months I attended charity events and made friends with our “Greek brothers” in the Acadia fraternity – boys who, when I ran out of money at the holidays, personally set up a driver relay to get me home for free. I decided popular depictions of sororities as petty, fascist dictatorships were overly harsh.

Here is a six page list, forwarded by the president of the Pi Phi sorority at Cornell to all new rushes outlining what dress will be considered acceptable for sorority events. (No “plastic shizzz” please.)

I think I stand corrected.

- g.

“immune” by Marina Dempster

It was easy, when I was little, to imagine myself inside fairy tales; to think Peter Pan might come to my window or enchanted lands appear in my closet. Though I’m more than old enough to know better, nothing’s really changed. There is a part of me that will always believe in outlandish, magical things - and what’s more, I’m thoroughly convinced my life is better than if this was not so. It’s also one of the reasons I’m perpetually delighted by clothing and costume. Dress is instantly transformative; an accessible door to other worlds and selves. To me, there is a particular magic in the collaboration between clothing and art. It is intimately relatable yet untethered by reality - endless possibilities in the shape of me.

So imagine my delight when, on a very dull winter morning, I saw these:

Designed by Marina Dempster, these extraordinarily ferocious shoes are such stuff as the rulers of kingdoms should wear. (Just last year, WORN was fortunate to have Dempster participate in our ART & SOLE shoe redesign exhibit with a pair of gold-winged Keds.)

From now until the end of the month, the Ontario Craft Council (as a participant in the Toronto International Design Festival) is showing an exhibit entitled Body + Object: “Eighteen artists explore the relationship between the body and the many forms in which it can ornament, present and represent itself.” While, for me, these shoes were the highlight, once I tore my eyes away I found the rest of the work fascinating and lovely and definitely worth seeing.
- g.

I am not obsessed with Sex and the City. I only mention this because it occurs to me I might have talked about SATC in another post and I want to be clear. (As a woman, I would rather distance myself from those of our tribe who have somehow latched onto that HBO phenomenon as a step-by-step guide to modern womanhood. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a chic-er version of Trekkie-ism.) That said, let’s all just admit right now that it was, whatever the over-saturated aftermath, a piece of pop-culture that did, in some way, shift public consciousness about fashion and femininity, and so does not bear dismissal (at least not outright).

In the last months there has been the expected amount of buzz about the latest SATC movie, due for release in May of 2010. Internet gossip sites are rife with photos of SJP et al, on location and dressed to impress. Sort of.

I remember the first time I watched SATC. It was the late 90s and, fashion-wise, I was feeling kind of bored. The pierced-and-dyed grunge aesthetic had become mainstream enough to be adopted by elementary-school secretaries, runway fashion was dominated by nudity (with strappy shoes) which was hard to pull off during the long Canadian winters, and the ravers had finally lost their minds completely. I wanted something else – more creative, less presciptive, intelligent, inspiring. Enter Pat Field. Her styling decisions in those early years were everything I’d been missing. The startling (for TV) mix of current trend and vintage quirk felt unique and fearless (the latter was amusingly illustrated by frequent fashion disasters that somehow came off as charming, which was a revelation to me). I found myself combing Goodwills and Salvation Armies, armed with ideas and new sense of adventure. It was really good fashion – and it felt totally accessible. I still think the first four seasons especially are some of the best (and wonderfully worst) fashion the small screen has seen since Mary Tyler Moore.

I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but somewhere in the last couple of seasons (and especially in the first film), with the momentum of snowballing popularity and the increasing demand for product placement by designers (for a while there, a high-end handbag in Carrie’s hand was worth a hundred ads in Vogue), the whole thing started to drift into Advertorial land. Pretty, sure, and well styled still – but increasingly devoid of the intuitive and street-savvy originality I’d come to crave. It was as though SATC had fallen victim to a Couture Coup; fashion was, once again, ruled by money and label. By the time they got to the movie, my love affair with Pat Field was over and, between the safe choices and designer pandering, I felt like I was being sold another bill of goods. I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.

Good thing those first seasons are in the can. And since the New Year is a time to look back as well as forward (should auld acquaintance be forgot and all that) this post was really just an excuse to revisit a few old favourites…

g.

This one can’t go without comment. It happened in season 6 and was, hands down, one of the worst mish-mash outfits Pat Field ever put together: sweatshirt and silk cami, flannel pyjamas, pearls, disco toque and the rattiest fur coat since Fozzy Bear. It looks wildly uncomfortable and it made me impossibly happy.

-g.