Vintage Served Fashion Side Up
Finding a good piece of vintage clothing requires one’s best Sherlock Holmes skills, but reconstructing vintage into an entirely new design takes inspiration.
Rie Fujii, director of Beverly Boulevard vintage boutique Shabon, challenged 17 up-and-coming designers to imagine new possibilities in vintage clothes and displayed the results at a fashion show on July 14 at the Good Hurt nightclub in Los Angeles’ Venice district.
Boy Minus One designer Lun*na Menoh made 1980s rhinestone- beaded T-shirts rock ’n’ roll by spray painting them with industrial lettering. She also showed her elegant side with a vintage shimmering gold lameacute; dress, once again marked by industrial lettering.
Allegiance to the vintage ethos was evident in both the name and the creations of Recycle Flower. The designer turned a plus-size velvet dress made in the 1970s into a hippie princess dress for sizes 1 through 4 and topped it off with a red cape.
Heartstrings made the old new by sewing sequins onto vintage dresses. South Paradiso Leather turned pieces from legendary label East West Leather into new fashion statements.
A few designers ignored the vintage diktat by displaying new pieces. Shyoko debuted a knit mini-dress with leather circles. But the creation wasn’t so far away from the vintage feeling—it looked like something new wave diva Debbie Harry would have loved in the 1980s. —Andrew Asch
