Today, high up in the third-floor flat, Wornettes are whistling while they work. The tune? The Mary Tyler Moore theme song. The reason? (And no, we didn’t hire someone with a trust fund burning a hole in their pocket.) We are nominated for a National Magazine Award! Yes, the powers that be in the Canadian magazine empire conferred this nomination upon us for the cover of Issue 7! We’re up against some tough competition. There’s Toronto Life, Maisonneuve, and Vancouver Magazine to name a few… but, hey, maybe we’ll make it after all. We’d also like to congratulate our fellow indies, and our amigos at Spacing, The Walrus, THIS, Taddle Creek, and Broken Pencil. The winners are announced on June 5th at the NMA gala at Carlu in T.O.

disclaimer: That is not a photograph of Audrey Hepburn. She has never read a copy of Worn. We are in no way implying that Audrey Hepburn would absolutely love reading an issue of Worn.

-Sara Forsyth

When I discovered Cliff Muskiet’s website my sister and I engaged in an hour-long contest over who could find the wackiest stewardess uniform. (Her money was on the oil rich countries. I went for those with names like “Lion Air.” She won.) Cliff has received international attention for his collection, even appearing on television in Germany, the UK, Russia, and here in Canada. And with good reason, his collection currently sits at 820 airline attendant uniforms – all in pristine condition.
Herewith, the “uniform freak” in his own words:

In the beginning…
Ever since my early childhood I have been fascinated by civil aviation. The first flight I made (and that I can remember) was from New York to Amsterdam in 1970. I was five years old. I slept during the whole flight and when we arrived in Amsterdam, I was so disappointed because I couldn’t remember anything about the flight. I began to draw airplanes and I started to cut airplane pictures out of travel magazines. Every month I would go to Amsterdam and visit the airline offices and I would come home with bags filled with postcards, posters, and folders about the airlines and airplanes. I also cleaned airplanes in the summertime at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport when I was 15, 16, 17, and 18 years old.

My unique collection began in 1980, when I was given a KLM uniform. It was an old uniform from 1971. My mother was a nurse and she had a colleague who also was a part-time stewardess. At that time I thought, “This is great, I want to have more uniforms!” In 1982 I got two other uniforms from two Dutch charter airlines that changed uniforms that year. From 1982 until 1993 I didn’t do much to obtain more uniforms, something I really regret now because I could have many more. Ten years later, in 1993, I was in Accra in Ghana working for KLM, when I obtained some old Ghana Airways uniforms without any problem. When I received these uniforms, I started to contact other airlines. Most of my 800 uniforms were obtained between 1993 and today.

Hey, um, got any old uniforms?
I don’t tell strangers how I get my uniforms. That is my little secret! However, a lot of people send me a message through my website to inform me that they have something for my collection. This afternoon I received a uniform from a very friendly lady in Australia. She donated her Qantas uniform to me. She really made my day.
The fact that the airline uniforms are very hard to get makes my hobby even more special and unique. When I get a new uniform I am happy like a small boy and I get very excited! You can’t buy the uniforms in a shop or order them online. There are not many people that collect stewardess uniforms and – as far as I know – I have the biggest collection in the whole world. I am really proud of that.

The art of storing over 800 uniforms in your apartment.
I live in Amsterdam, near the airport. I have all my uniforms at home and I want to keep [them there] as long as I can. It would feel really strange to have my uniforms stowed somewhere else. My uniforms are like my little babies and you don’t put your babies away, do you?
All my uniforms are stowed in closets, containers, garment bags, boxes, and suitcases. When you come to my home you will not see any uniforms. All uniforms are put away in two special rooms. When you have to stow so many uniforms and items you get very handy using all the space you have in your apartment. I am very fortunate to live in a big apartment with three bedrooms so I have lots of space. If I ever want to move I need at least three bedrooms!
I don’t really have a cataloging system in place. I have most airline uniforms from the USA and Canada in two closets and I have most airlines from the UK, Asia, and Middle East hanging together. That’s all. On the containers I put little notes with the names of the airline uniforms that are in there so that I don’t have to open everything to see what is in there. Usually I know where to find a particular uniform, but sometimes I need some time to look for a uniform because I don’t know where it is stowed.

So, why airline attendants?
Because I like civil aviation (and everything that has to do with civil aviation) I am also interested in the uniforms. When I think of an airplane, I think of a stewardess. And when I think of a stewardess, I think of a uniform! The funny thing is: if [they were] uniforms worn by hostesses on a ship or train I would not be interested in them at all. I would get rid of the uniforms right away!

Gauging trends.
Male uniforms all look the same: jacket, pants, plain shirt, and a tie. Most men’s uniforms are dark blue – quite boring! The ladies uniforms are so different, you can see the changes in fashion throughout the years. There are so many different uniform items like the jackets, skirts, blouses, dresses, pants, vests, cardigans, and hats. The great variety of accessories makes the [women’s] uniforms so different and special. The blouses usually have colourful prints, stripes, dots, or airline logos. Scarves can have beautiful and colourful designs. Some uniforms have a hat and I love uniform hats! The hat is like the icing on the cake, it makes a uniform complete and stand out in the crowd.

Going the distance.
I am a purser with KLM. One day I had to fly to Singapore for work and I had some days there to rest. On one of my days off in Singapore I took a plane to Hong Kong (that’s a three and a half hour flight) went to the Cathay Pacific office at the airport to pick up an old uniform and flew back to Singapore that same afternoon.
Some people say I am crazy for flying all the way from Singapore to Hong Kong, but I enjoyed every bit of it and would do it again if I had to.

What do you have your eye on next?
I love the uniforms from the 70s. Most uniforms then had a hat, a short skirt, and shirts with big, pointy collars. In those years a lot of colours were used in psychedelic combinations and patterns. Some airlines [I’m looking for] are: Alitalia, Air France, and Japan Airlines.
My big dream now is to make a nice book about my collection, a nice book with beautiful pictures of the uniforms worn by professional models. A graphic designer has already made a show model for the book, but the only thing we need to find is a publisher.

-Sara Forsyth

In keeping with its moniker, most would consider the pieces selected for “Fashion No-no” anything but wearable. (Much to the dismay of the preteen girls who strayed from their class trip to see fashion!)
Instead of couture, we’re offered six reactions to environment, form, and how it all relates to the female body. Curator Paola Poletto, a new media and design professional, reigned in such amorphous ideas by choosing pieces that expressed the most varied points of view. In Traveler’s Tale, Sarah Dorkenwald and Ruth Spitzer printed images from domestic life (coffee percolator, a chair) alongside fuzzy, dream-like ones (a sinking ship?) onto large pieces of fabric meant to “affix to the body,” thereby invoking the notion of carrying – and of being – all the stuff of our life.
The Girl in the Wood Frock, Andrea Ling’s adaptation of a fairy tale (A girl escapes her father/husband by floating away in a river wearing a wood frock. She is saved by a prince, but must remain in the dress.) defies the implicit constrictions of a wooden dress by turning the tale on its head. In the accompanying photographs, the dress is presented in motion; the “girl” jumps and dances while wearing the object of her imprisonment. The dress is beautiful – three nest-like forms made from strips of black cherry veneer attach to a mini-dress made of pressed wool felt. It’s more like a cocoon than a cage.
Joanna Berzowka’s Skorpions are white “dresses” that use a shape-memory alloy called Nitinol to organically move and change on the body. Berzowka emphasizes the parasitic nature of Skorpions, though thematically, they resonate more when considered for their protective and chameleon-like qualities.
One misstep in “Fashion No-no” was the inclusion of Linda Imai’s Purses. Imai used unconventional materials – dog hair, aluminium pop tabs, and recycled plastic – to assemble eight bags. The idea of separating the object from its traditional use is an interesting one; however, Hilly Yeung’s shoes in Objects to Die For nailed this idea by removing designer shoes from their pedestals and presenting them simply and accessibly in crisp white paper.
That said, “Fashion No-no” presents a diverse discussion on form, often concluding with the artist reappropriating and subverting traditional feminine ideals from around the world (see Annie Thompson’s Les Madamoiselles). Since there are so few fashion exhibitions in Toronto, “Fashion No-no” is well worth it for anyone itching for a little social commentary with their design.

Fashion No-no
January 24 – March 8
York Quay Centre, Visual Arts Exhibitions
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

-Sara Forsyth

Woody Allen is consistently praised for creating challenging roles for women. His ability to score with a great many of them (either as himself or through Virgil, Sandy, Gabe, Boris…) must be reward for this happy fact. Woody’s women are an inimitable breed: often brilliant, self-sufficient, and nervous, with similar sartorial traits. This is most obviously exemplified by Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. (True story, Annie’s Ralph Lauren duds are based on Keaton’s own wardrobe. The costume designer, Ruth Morley, wasn’t having it. It was the first and last time she worked with Allen.)

Though sometimes frumpy (remember Scarlett’s heinous brown linen pants in Scoop?), Woody gives his leading ladies a certain puissance through their wardrobe that is both in line with his satirical depictions of bourgeois intellectual life and quite useful in matters of the heart (particularly broken hearts).

In Manhattan, 42-year-old Isaac Davis (Allen) is dating 17-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway). When he falls for that Radcliffe Tootsie (Diane Keaton) halfway through the film, he picks Tracy up at Dalton, takes her to an ice cream parlour, and breaks it off with her. Tracy, in her cardigan and flawless French twist, summons an emotional maturity far beyond Isaac’s capability and sheds a single tear over her milkshake.

Deconstructing Harry

Their clothing holds everything together – even when they’re not able to. When Joan (Kirstie Alley) discovers that Harry (Allen) has been cheating on her in Deconstructing Harry, she loses it in a hilarious scene where she tears through their apartment, screaming at him within earshot of her therapy patient. Her black knit sweater never bunches, her necklace remains flat on her grey turtleneck, and her black cotton, elastic headband doesn’t move; there is not a hair out of place (and those headbands are notorious for sliding around).

In the famous “spider in the bathroom” scene in Annie Hall, Annie doesn’t exactly appear the broken-hearted woman. She is terse, dressed in olive cargo pants, grey tee-shirt (sans bra), and hair piled ridiculously on top of her head.

You could say Woody’s women, with their oversized blazers and dresses buttoned up to the neck, wear clothing like armour. You could say that. Or you could just put in that DVD, have a laugh, and try not to think so much.

Either way, you probably all want to look as good as Charlotte Rampling in a white oxford.

Text by Sara Forsyth