The 13th Annual Green Is The New Black Fashion Extravaganza opens tonight! Thursday, March 7, that is, at the Carbondale Rec Center. “This year’s theme is ‘Fabulation: A Wild Romp Through the Future,’ a concept inspired by the examination of our future with advanced technology, artificial intelligence and the impact of that on the human experience,” reads a press release from Carbondale Arts.
The Sopris Sun had the opportunity to catch up with a few of the designers ahead of the show.
Koimoyoo
Ayana and Ruthie Brown are a mother-daughter fashion design duo. Ruthie initiated some of her designs at school, and her mom added some final touches before submitting them.
Having to come up with a name for the line, Ruthie drew inspiration from their first shirt design — a button down white shirt with red kisses they already had dubbed “Office Romance.” They played off of other various “love tropes” for titles for the other designs and settled on “Koimoyoo” as a brand for the line. The Japanese word translates to “love affair,” and Ayana suggested that, since her daughter is studying Japanese, it would be a good fit.
Ruthie said that the looks are inspired by the latter three decades of the 20th century.
“I thought I was going to be better at sewing than I am,” Ruthie laughed. “I think it just looks so much easier than it actually is.” Luckily, mom was there to help with some of the more technical stitches. “I feel like we’re a good balance,” said Ruthie.
Both were surprised by how time-consuming it was. Ruthie works at a gym, and its patrons have become accustomed to seeing her beading or sewing at the front desk.
“It’s a lot of problem solving,” said Ayana. “You have what you want to make and you kind of know how to get there; then along the way you come upon all of these problems that you weren’t expecting and you just have to solve all of them. It’s an ongoing process.”
Ruthie feels fortunate to be able to experiment with fashion design in her hometown.
Ayana commended her daughter’s knack for design, noting that it was easy to discern from her drawings how it would all be put together. “I’m excited to make more,” Ruthie concluded.
Peaches & Sea Foam
Rachael Gillespie has been modeling in the fashion show for more than a decade and has had her designs in the show almost as long. She is self taught and bases her designs off of the theme each year.
“This year I’m going a lot bigger,” she told The Sopris Sun, from a designer’s perspective, of course. “I’m doing a lot more bulky, kind of sculptural … more frill, more texture,” with a “space cowboy feel.”
For a long time, Gillespie has had a vested interest in fashion. “I really enjoy having this creative outlet to do this all of the time. Once a year I get to sew and create for this show.”
She appreciates having such a wild and whimsical event in Carbondale and recognizes how it might push people’s comfort. “I think [that can] be healthy and good for the state-of-mind,” she stated.
Gillespie recalled when the fashion show was hosted at the Community Room (formerly Pac Three) at the Third Street Center. “It’s been fun to see the show evolve” and grow, she shared.
There is an element of feminism that permeates from the stage, which Gillespie is proud to be a part of. “That female empowerment side — not that I don’t practice that in the day-to-day, but it’s nice to express that in this really outward way,” she shared. Typically, Gillespie can be an introvert, she claimed.
She encourages audiences, and people in general, to “embrace more of the weird and unusual.”
Neo-Perennial
“The core of what I do is botanical,” designer Yoli Laguerre told The Sopris Sun. She has worked as a professional floral designer, with some pretty outstanding and massive installations around the world under her belt.
“In my career, I’m used to doing fleeting art,” she said. “My art never lasts. It’s an arrangement or an installation that’s made to enjoy for the night … you enjoy it for the moment and then take it with you.”
Still, “All of the looks are strong and perennial,” she shared.
She welcomes that aspect of her work. “You won’t see these dresses anywhere on the planet. They’ve never been done. I’ve never done them, and I never will do them again. I kind of think that’s romantic.”
“I like to deal with different botanical elements that are unexpected,” she continued. Many of the natural materials for her line are foraged from here in the Valley. “There’s a lot of surprises there and mystery. I think that the community that is familiar with my work will look at it a bit more acutely and look for all of those surprises.”
She also pointed out the amount of time it takes to bring a vision to fruition and said she has A,B and C plans for each of her looks, “depending on how long it was going to take.”
A couple of years ago, Laguerre started We Are Perennials, a local organization that works with victims of domestic violence and people suffering from addiction to create beauty from the natural world as a type of therapy. Learn more about that at weareperennials.org
She is blown away by the dedication and work that goes into Green Is The New Black every year. “I don’t think that people would expect something so fashionable and so cool coming from a small mountain town … and to be a part of it, I feel so lucky.”
History of the Future by the Progressives
For the third iteration of Carbondale Arts’ Creative Apprenticeship Program, local high school students with a flare and interest for fashion got to create a six-piece line to be featured in the 13th Annual Green Is The New Black Fashion Extravaganza.
Walking into the Project Shop on a recent Wednesday evening, The Sopris Sun came across a group of young people working in unison to make unique repurposed outfits.
Gigi Rascon, a sophomore at Glenwood Springs High School, explained that they all worked on each outfit as a team. “We all throw something into the mix,” she shared.
While working on a hoop skirt, looped with an old TV cable cord and glimmering with reclaimed vinyl, Enzo Katzenberger, a sophomore at Roaring Fork High, shared that he’s had a predisposition for fashion, having “attempted” to create some of his own clothes “but nothing like this.”
“We’re all so different — style-wise, but also expression-wise — so it’s been really interesting to try and work that all together in a coherent way,” said Enzo. “That’s been really fun.”
“I really love fashion,” added Jacob Sam, a senior at Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS), who discovered his interest thereof at a young age. He got to help with costuming for a CRMS play but considers this to be a whole other level.
Speaking to the group’s cohesion, Nicola Stringham, a junior at Roaring Fork, said, “We’ve been able to come up with a lot of fun pieces that have a lot more meaning than anything I think I would have been able to come up with individually.”
The apprentices have also been coming in on their own time during open hours on Saturdays at the Project Shop to work on their pieces, according to Reina Katzenberger, Project Shop manager and the liaison for the Creative Apprenticeship Program.
View the Fashion Show Program Here.
