Action/Re-Action Fashion Show
“ I create because I am created, sculpting on the human body a dance between finding materials to design with, and composing a form to work towards. ..” - Julia Barbee, Frocky Jack Morgan If you ve been with us for a while here, you ll know that ultra acknowledges the more mundane functions of apparel yes, to shelter, to hide, to enhance, addressing problems of I m cold, I m naked, I wish I looked not quite as much like I do as I look right now.
And too, apparel is tool and palette of dreamers to invent better, multiple, and/or imagined selves through the artful selection and deployment of the ensemble parfait. But apparel, too, in the hands of the right maker is art, is craft with a capital C: the sculptural forms of Cristobal Balenciaga or Phillip Treacy, the liquid treatment of material by Madame Vionnet, John Gallianos over-the-top, theatrical fantasies for Dior Couture supported by a small army of couture craftspeople.
In Portland, perhaps we may not recognize what a highly-evolved and uniquely dynamic independent fashion scene we have with fierce designers who can make the wearable yet highly individual with one pass of the sewing machine (to pay the rent) and create the exquisite, the fantastical, finely wrought, one-of-a-kind and artful pieces the next (to engage with something other than, something more rarified than commerce and body covering). ultra is always interested in process.
More than, How did they do that? we are curious about the whole arc of making that starts with a seed of inspiration (from who-knows-where), kicks into solutions and more problem-solving, additional inpiration, most likely, and a successful (or satisfactory) outcome.