Skip to main content2001 STARTED OFF FLUSH, our vaunted economy sweating bullets but still eager. Every man jack in cornflower blue shirts! Business casual was fashion's postcard of prosperity--"I don't have to shine my shoes--my portfolio exceeds Japan's GNP." Lush-budget anachronisms like fur and top-to-toe leather, all but quashed in the early '90s by PETA and the ESA, sprang to the fore. Calfskin low riders at the Gap? Now I've seen everything. It was all so Gilded Age, so fin de siècle.
PORTLAND INDIE DESIGN shot up like springtime crocus, as newcomers Uniform, Donna & Toots, G-Spot and your-name-here joined seasoned style-makers Narcissia Dial, Lena Medoyeff and Kara-Line to swell Portland's fashion varsity. Kelli Vergotis designed a dress worn to the Tony Awards by Best Supporting Actress nominee Johanna Day. Make-do milliners ekologic snagged the national spotlight with an Organic Style cover in November and a USA Today blurb this month. Seaplane caught W magazine's eye. Un-press-edented attention for Stumptown.
IN TREND NEWS, the embrace of Forever 21 by PDX's 98-pound hipsters brought a dramatic spike in backless halters last summer. Breeder grounds like the Paragon, Bar 71 and fresh new fleshpot XV swelled with a surfeit of fuschia spandex. Cigarette-burn injuries spiked at local emergency rooms--still awaiting tallies on the roofies episodes.
WE ALL KNOW what happened in September. Disaster tore the guts out of New York's Fashion Week, a long-overdue bitch slap for an industry already rotting from its celebrity-polluted insides. Pundits started hawking the "new sincerity," with fashion quick to raise its Kalashnikov. Vogue and Elle featured flag-draped cover models. Portland retailers did their duty--but someone should pass the collection plate so M&F can shampoo their stars and stripes.
RE-TALES: Vintage vault Atomic Lily opened its doors to a smattering of applause. A hint: Better lighting would become those gorgeous gowns. A moment of silence for Shoescape, that 15-year-old curiosity shoppe of white patent stilettos and bugled caftans that once haunted Northeast Broadway (it shuttered last fall after a drumroll of markdowns). Church ladies and drag queens still scrambling for new suppliers.... Luscious local boy Kenny Wujek teamed up with Art à la Carte veteran Brooke Clairidge to launch a hip little you-tique called Lit on an obscure patch of West Burnside. Though inventory's coming at a trickle and it's a bit off the pedestrian radar, any rival to Poker Face was long overdue. We're expecting great things, Kenny...
2001 SAW THE END OF Elsa Klensch's two-decade reign as CNN's Style reporter. Helmet-haired Klensch invented fashion TV journalism, pioneering that breathlessly upbeat style that spawned a smorgasbord of imitators. Designers worshipped her because, rather than raking their collections over her editorial coals, Klensch served as a conduit for their passion and their pique. Can PDX's local style scene expect such attentive adoration from its humble Dress columnist in 2002? Only the stars can tell.
WWeek 2015