Long-time read­ers of this jour­nal may know that my wife is a fash­ion designer.  She has fash­ion designer friends and as such, we occa­sion­ally get invited to fash­ion shows.  Last night was one such event.  Although I often feel a lit­tle out of my ele­ment at fash­ion shows, I take it in stride and always end up hav­ing a good time.  Last night’s show, though, was a bit dif­fer­ent.  It ended well, but “a lit­tle out of my ele­ment” would be an understatement.

Kim’s friend Rio Wrenn designs lin­gerie, among other things, and was hav­ing a show at her workshop-slash-gallery-slash-storefront, R.A.W. last night.  Rio’s recent work includes some awe­some dye­ing of del­i­cate fab­rics with rusty items and some of that made its way into the lin­gerie styles.

When I was first asked to go to the show, my ini­tial (stereo­typ­i­cal male) response was “look at girls in under­wear?  Woo hoo, YES!”  The arrival at the gallery was with­out event, as was find­ing seats and what­not.  When the show kicked in, I real­ized I may have been a bit more out of my com­fort zone than antic­i­pated.  At a fash­ion show, you are there to look at cloth­ing, but the lack of cloth­ing when mod­el­ing lacy, skimpy, ethe­r­ial things means you’re also look­ing at nip­ples and jig­gly bits.  And I have no good back­ground or frame of ref­er­ence for how to act and feel in that sort of sit­u­a­tion.  I real­ize they are mod­els and they are used to and com­fort­able with being stared at — when work­ing, being as objec­ti­fied as the cloth­ing they are show­ing — and that’s great for them, but does not help so much with how I feel.  In fact, the clos­est expe­ri­ence I have to such a thing would be a strip club — but there is no ambi­gu­ity there.  At a strip club, you are NOT there to look at clothes and also hap­pen to also see lady­parts.  It is assumed that your entire pur­pose for going is to look at lady­parts.  In fact, money is exchanged to look at lady­parts.  But that’s a strip club, not a fash­ion show with nearly-naked models.

After a few girls walked down the run­way, I got more com­fort­able with the sit­u­a­tion, myself, and myself in the sit­u­a­tion.  I began to focus less on the HOLY COW, NEARLY NAKED LADIES and more on the styles, designs, tex­tures, and col­ors.  Over­all, I pushed myself into a slightly uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tion, a lit­tle out-of-bounds from what I nor­mally do, and as a result, I grew.

I feel that I do not have the fash­ion vocab­u­lary to describe the sorts of cloth­ing I saw last night, but I highly urge you to look at her col­lec­tion and see for your­self.  Keep in mind that I believe that link is to a gallery of an ear­lier col­lec­tion; I do not imag­ine the pho­tos from last night are online yet.  You can also look at her port­fo­lio for exam­ples of the non-clothing rust and nat­ural dye work she does.  I par­tic­u­larly like the one with shears.

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Tagged as: design, fashion, gallery, lingerie, naked, rust, rusty, show, underwear