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Photos: Williamsburg Fashion Weekend Brings The NSFW Weirdness
By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 17, 2013
Modified Feb 18, 2013
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Kylah Shenkin/Gothamist
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Feb 17, 2013
Modified Feb 18, 2013
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Despite being almost completely fashion illiterate, we've still had a bit of fun this week covering the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week 2013—from the slushy stilettos to Bane-Face, from the frosted-face look to all the glorious sideboobs. But all of that was like a self-serious Sesame Street compared to the Wonder Showzen that is Williamsburg Fashion Weekend. That event, which took place Friday and Saturday at The Space, was filled with people who wouldn't look out of place at a midwinter Burning Man event. But the question was: were they people from the first three days of Burning Man, or the last three days?
Founder Arthur Arbit described the event, which featured 10 designers over the two nights, as celebrating "designers [whose professional practices] allow you to sleep at night," which the official event website paraphrases as "designers who elevate fashion aesthetically and morally." We sent Emilie Ruscoe out there with photographer Kylah Shenkin to survey the scene and try to figure out what that meant. Here's her report:
WFW is staunchly indie and locavore, and aspires to challenge the fashion world to raise its ethical standards. This makes for a lot of upcycled and repurposed materials—for example, the Spring 2013 Urban Goddesses collection from Shazam Magic by Dorit included several minidresses made from former scarves.
Shute Organic is a line composed entirely of "hand-destroyed" knits in a fabric made from environmentally-branded organic bamboo. Founded by a Parsons grad with a performance art background, they had semi-nude models writhing around onstage under red lights, putting strands of fiber in their mouths to the delight of the straight men in the audience (of which there suddenly seemed to be plenty).
Every piece in the show was handmade. Marco Santaniello's collection was organized loosely around the idea of the human relationship with technology...and consisted mostly of oversized t-shirts in black and neon with throwback video game imagery, some with shoulder pads and one worn as a pair of pants.
For many of the designs showcased, there was no clear intended market; some, but certainly not all, of the pieces could be described as streetwear. But that's hardly a characteristic that separates Williamsburg's fashion set from the international fashion elite. DJ Justice, who's worked the show for several years now, came up with a much more apt distinction: Williamsburg Fashion Week is "the opposite of Fashion Week [in that] It's really sincere."
So click through to see some semi-NSFW photos of some of those recycled materials, semi-nude models, and Brooklynites at their most Brooklyn-y.
Tagged
brooklyn
fashion
fashion week
NSFW
weird
williamsburg
original
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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