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Friday, October 28, 2011

Wearable Art

A couple weeks ago I participated in the Textile Art Alliance Wearable Art Fashion Show and Boutique. Say that five times fast without passing out! It is a fundraiser to get more textile related pieces into the Cleveland Museum of Art, a worthy cause I believe. I was able to open a small boutique at the show in hopes of selling a few items.

I think my favorite part of the show was preparing for it.
 I turned my garage into a studio, which was really fun. I've been spending a lot of time in there recently. Anywho, the door came from my parent's house. My dad and I were brainstorming and he came up with the idea to turn it into a display fixture. It worked perfectly! After dad made the stand and got the pegs to stay in the front, my boyfriend and I used masking tape and silver spray paint to give it a little more dimension (not shown in this photo). It looked really cool and I got compliments on it at the show!

My boutique:
Mom came with me; she's an excellent talking and I was totally banking on her gift of gab:) The green dress on the left is hanging on the door with some vest and skirts and other dresses... the door just didn't completely make it into the shot. I took some dresses I had from various shows (I wasn't really expecting to sell those), a couple vests (I sold a lacey one!), a couple skirts, those awesome screen printed messenger bags (which will be going up on my etsy) and some elastic belts with decorative 'buckles' that I believe deserve their own post. I only sold the one vest but I did get leads on shows that would be more appropriate for my audience.

The fashion show itself was an emotional roller coaster. Most of the other artists in the show had pieces that were felted, dyed, knit, or other very soft fiber arts kinds of things, and I entered my pop can dress. At the start of the show I was so terrified of what the response would be to something SO DEVASTATINGLY OPPOSITE of what everyone else had entered. BUT! My dress came out on the runway, and it received the most excited reaction of any piece in the show. It felt amazing. If I can figure out how to get that video up here I will post it. After the show/lunch we went back to the boutique and I got so many wonderful compliments on my dress. It made the day totally worth it. Mom and I had fun, I have leads on more appropriate shows, I sold a vest, and a few people actually tried on the pop can dress! It was a good experience and I'm excited to try more shows in the future.

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