To launch our new event series, Rally Cry, a Make It. MSP. conversation, we are focusing on the fashion community—a talented group of designers, artists, retailers, and event producers who fuel MSP’s economic engine and vitality. MSP is home to emerging fashion leaders who are creating both art and community. We asked artist Allegra Lockstadt to illustrate their work and inspire us to support the designers who are helping make our region a #1 place to live, work, and thrive.
Fashion and rock and roll have been intertwined since the musical genre originated in the 1950s–and with it, the teen fashion boom that brought leather jackets, blue jeans, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and cardigan sweaters into style. So accordingly, rock-themed fashion shows are nothing new. In Minneapolis, the most notable example was the now-defunct Voltage fashion show, which ran annually on and off between 2004 and 2013 at icon rock club First Avenue.
The new Icons fashion-and-rock event, which debuted on Saturday night at the historic St. Paul’s Athletics Club, adds a new page to the canon, carrying on the spirit of Voltage with an original vision. Partnering with Twin Cities music film organization Sound Unseen, show producer Cult Collective (which was also behind the Black Hearts Ball event this past Valentine’s Day) juxtaposed short rock documentaries with custom-designed looks by local designers, who riffed on the show’s four categories–“glam rock,” “psychedelic rock,” “ladies of rock,” and “punk rock”–alongside a live set by indie band Step Rockets and DJ sets from FooLprooF and Tickle Torture.
The show led off with a trio of glam rock-inspired looks by designers Clare LaFond, ArielSimone, and Tim+Thom to the sounds of Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug.” Each offered modern twist on glam rock: LaFond with a silver-and-black dress featuring bold, sci-fi-inspired shoulders; ArielSimone with a figure-hugging, Studio 54-appropriate ensemble; and Tim+Thom with a male model dressed in a gender-bending look that incorporated skin-tight, silver-and-leather pants and black lipstick.
Rachel Roff with her modelThis last Saturday, show producer Cult Collective (who produced the Black Hearts Ball, which spearheaded MSPFW this spring)’s newest event, ICONS, was an evening of pure rock inspiration. Held at The Saint Paul Athletic Club and co-hosted with Commonwealth Properties, it treated the audience to a glam event inspired by icons from the four horsemen genres of rock: punk rock, ladies of rock, glam rock, and psychedelic rock. Twelve local fashion designers (including local luminaries Lindsey Hopkins, Rachel Roff, Sarah Holm, and Project Runway alums Danielle Everine and Tim Navarro) presented their rock-inspired looks on the runway ton an enamored audience. Between the glamazons strutting up and down the boomerang-shaped runway and Sound Unseen co-presenting four clips from rock documentaries, the intimate setting was wall-to-wall with rock and roll inspiration.
Photo by Gregg JiracekWith a show soundtrack courtesy of DJ Tickle Torture and FooLProoF, the fashion on display was a sight to behold, ranging from psychedelic beauties to inconceivable getups by Clare LaFond, Ariel Simone, and Navarro that looked as if they could be worn by rock gods from another galaxy. Rachel Blomgren’s fantastical creation was a surefire highlight of the night. Taking a plain, sheer black tank dress, Blomgren sewed a whimsical illustration of two (or one?) faces onto the front, fringed the bottom of the dress with alternating thick, hot-pink and orange tassels, and festooned the model with an orange turban and white stripes on her arms. Following Blomgren’s lead, Rachel Roff presented a beautifully sewn, orange print dress with spiral sleeves and a sheer white, embroidered breast, and Lindsey Hopkins concluded the segment with a silky, jewel-toned dress. Up next were the unabashedly chic ladies of rock by Tessa Louise, Danielle Everine, and Kelly Keene. It was here that Everine debuted her fabulously intricate pair of hand-etched, saddle leather booty shorts, the singular piece to likely be dubbed “Most Instagrammed”.
Clare LaFond 