Costumes Costumes Costumes!

Gosh it has been so long!

This doesn't mean that the VAGADU headquarters have been quite though. Yes, there has been some much needed down time, but in the meantime a lot has been going on.

I have been designing costumes for the Ragged Wing Ensemble for the upcoming production of "History of the Devil".
It is going to be an excellent production that spans over 3,000 years! This has made it an exciting challenge to create costumes that represent the various periods.

It is a very clever script that really deals with the problems of seeing the world as a dichotomy, which is so important to remember these days.

Opens Oct. 3rd and you can buy your tickets online!

Reflections on Deployment in Wonderland

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Over a month has passed since the Kara Maria Collection made its big debut.
And for those who couldn't make it, it was really an incredible show that virtually turned out how I envisioned it.

From the event decor, to the dancers, clothing, and food, everything was beautifully, creatively and artfully executed. Here I will thank everyone who contributed their energy to the show-- whether you brought the love in big, bold, fashion, or just chipped in a little detail, it all was needed to make the evening gel.

First off! Kara Maria, thank you for believing in what I do and being part of this crazy dream for the last 4 months. It has been a joy to explore your art and a reason to create clothing! You totally came through on bringing out at least 30 of some of your best paintings (minus the porn work ;-). Having so much of your art in one room was a spectacular sight and made our set designer's life a lot easier!!! I hope it was as good for you as it was for all of us to were constantly inspired by your art.

Now for the food! Chefrain you really did it man! From the Wizard of OZ contraption that ejected soup if you pushed a button....to herb infused oils hanging from the ceiling, to different fabulous creative vegetarian options that made everyones tummy sing! Furthermore you ignited their imaginations of how food could be prepared and served. We've done 3 show now, and this was the most creative work you have done thus far. You really came through to create food as art and it showed! I love you!!!

As for the fashion.... Monica Mark and all the U Dance Electra team you lit the night on fire! Having a troupe with so much energy and spunk lived up to all my dreams about having dancers replace models for the fashion show. Thank you for all the excitement and juice you added to the whole production. You've got the moves...and it shows!

John Arns you are the first musician to create an the original composition for the dance performance which furthered my vision of complete Karavision for the show. People really responded to the music and said it worked perfectly for the dance. Go John!

Alex Steinhouse your thrifty creativity was the perfect combination to dress our set! Thanks for coming in last minute and creating an atmosphere that reflected the artwork and created ambiance. I can't wait to see what you can do with a real budget and a little more time....watch out!

Joel Franquist thanks for doing the lighting and hanging all things from very high places. Most people would get dizzy but you work well from up on high!

Molly McEvoy like I said earlier....you are the best producer I know! Thanks for taking a chance on this project and making it your own vision too. You helped in so many ways, from having a husband who so generously built our stages, to getting donations from Rainbow, to allowing me to keep my sanity! Can't wait to work with you again :-)

Many thanks to our DJs, Ammon Haggerty and Doug Sands. The music was awesome, and you got the real VAGADU to really boogie down!

The make up and hair was provided by the Paul Mitchell Institute of Cosmology and Thomas Klann (who did my hair, check him out at Chakra Salon on Sutter in SF). They did a terrific job and made our dancers look like white trash meets David Bowie, meets Jem Barbie! That was just what I wanted!

Many, many thanks to my interns: Milan Delveccio, Alix Hadley, Sherry Hernando, Angela Lopez, Megan Quirolo and Cindy deLuzuriaga. You were a great team and it was my pleasure to work with you, I wish you all great success in your pursuits, you certainly have what it takes!

Beautiful photos which you will find in the link above were taken by the super duo of John Martin and Son, and Rachel Ortiz.

Video was taken by Joe Seif and Rick Takes, thanks so much for capturing the moment that took four months to create! Videos can be found on the Vagadu website.

Thanks to Elena Dvorochkin for the PR and outreach.

And last but not least lets thanks the volunteers who made the night go so well:
Ahna Fender, Julie Ross, Tim Lubic, Mark Bourbonnais, Jim Flemming, Jill Kunishima, Vagadu Varda, Dave Kim, Andi Clegg, Jocelin Tran, Ashley Burnett and many more, plus my ultimate teammate Andrew Hinman!

Stay tuned, much more to come...however for the next month or so the blogs may not be as regular, because even Vagadu needs a vacation once in a while!

Get your Kara Maria Nails Done!

Sherry, one of the interns loves nails. In fact, when I first posted about her, she sent me an image of nails as something she felt really represents her creativity.

So, as one of Sherry's final contributions to the collection, she came up with some nail art in homage to Kara's artwork.Since I am not sure if the dancers for VAGADU's May 3rd show will be able to wear them, I wanted to dedicate a post just for the nails to show everyone how nails can be your canvas for wild creativity too! I hope you are impressed by these claws, I know I am!

Workshop #3: Jewelry

One of the great dilemmas of creating clothing is, "what do you do with all the scraps of fabric you produce?"

Many years ago I would have just thrown them out. But no longer.
Now, I save all my scraps and try to organize them by color and then see what fun ideas arise as to how to use them.

You can imagine after creating two collections and having a third on the way, how many scraps I have! A LOT!

So, we decided to play with them. The workshop was dedicated to creating jewelry and accessories that easily eat up those little bits of fabric.

It ended up that the way we created was very flow-of-conscious, grabbing colors that appealed to us and going with whatever fancied us. There was no set standard, so idea to emulate or copy. Whatever emerged, emerged. Sometimes it was a barrette, a neck-wrap, or a bracelet.

Because my office is so packed due to the big date coming up....we decided to work in the coffee break area of my office. And so as we are throwing around fabric, sewing, cutting with such delicious colors surrounding us all the other folks in the building would stop to watch. You could see their eyes light up and smiles grow. It probably brought back memories of the craft table at preschool (I know that is an image that came up for me). Good memories of more carefree times of silly creation. The office manager even suggested we do it every Friday! Maybe after the show....




Besides just jewelry making, we also helped Megan sandpaper the fabric for her little army jackets.

As I updated in my previous blog, we learned quickly how terrible it is to do this without a dust mask. Fibers from the fabric just fly everywhere. I got it up my nose and felt like I was suffocating.

It is a lovely effect, but as stated above, preferably do this outdoors with a mask. You'll be much happier for it.

What I personally find so rewarding about doing these workshops is the way our energy together inspires us to do things we never before imagined. A lot of the time it isn't even the product that is the most fruitful, rather the process of getting there sparks solutions for other garments that you were struggeling with. The process of relaxing the mind seems to feed the creativity tree, which allows for future bounty.

Other Upcoming Attractions

Besides the HUGE, WILD, AMAZING Kara Maria show that is coming up I am also going to be part of some other fantastic sweat-free/eco fashion events.

Rags to Righteousness: A Passover Celebration of Sweat-Free Fashion
Thursday, April 24, 7:00 - 9:00pm
at the Swedish American Hall 2174 Market Street

It looks like it will be a terrific event with fashion shows and opportunities to buy from local designers like me!
http://www.pjalliance.org/eventcalendar.aspx?LOC=SF

ECCONOVATION
It is an ongoing show that on the closing night I will be doing a sewing demo on how to reconstruct creative clothing with Miranda Caroligne. It should be quite entertaining....watch me go sew crazy!
June 19th 7pm-11pm
http://econnovation.org/

Fashion Conscious
This is part of the UC Davis Textiles Dept. (I am actually am not participating) and it is a forum on sustainability in the garment industry with an interesting line-up of presenters. I def. want to be there to support this conversation.
May 18th 1pm
http://sustainablefashion.blogspot.com

The Story of Stuff

After another emotional conversation about why buying local and recycled is so important one of the ladies at Pandora's Trunk turned me on to this website: www.thestoryofstuff.com. I finally took a look at it and it blew me away!

Story of Stuff with Annie Leon takes a very user friendly and in-depth look at the destructive cycle of mass production and step-by-step dissects it to show you how it all works, why we do it, and what we can do to make a change.

A lot of information she provides is stuff I already knew or suspected, but having it spelled out in economic and psychological terms really hit home. One of the most interesting parts is when Annie talks about how the U.S. became so collectively wasteful in the first place. Here is an excerpt from the film:

Shortly after the World War 2, these guys were figuring out how to ramp up the [U.S.] economy. Retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated the solution that has become the norm for the whole system. He said: “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”46

And President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers Chairman said that “The American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.”

Did you know that? I bet you didn't. And this excerpt is just one of many excellent points that should be well known. Another fact they talk about is how today Americans consume twice of what we did fifty years ago but our overall satisfaction has been ever decreasing since 1950s. Hmmmmm.........you mean my new ipod nano does not equal ever-lasting bliss? ;-)

I could go on and on, but overall The Story of Stuff asserts my own passion and urgency for education about the perils of over consumption and purchasing "cheap" items. As you will learn in the film the real-life cost is not factored into many of the things we buy. And I know it is daunting to try and figure out if our purchases are environmentally and socially friendly. Fortunately, the website has lists of resources that can help guide you toward ideas and products that are good for you and the planet.

So watch it, and send it to everyone you know. And come by the store and tell me what you thought of it!
Pandora's Trunk
544 Haight St.
SF
Wed. 2-8pm, Thursdays 11am-3pm

Designing the Postcard

This week the final Vagadu meets Kara Maria postcard was created. During this part of the marketing process I got to use some of my other skills like photography, and Photoshop to get the exact "look" I want to express.

The concept for the card was to show the raw, the awkward, forced sexual energy that is particularly prominent in Kara's latest work. This concept is inspired by the Marc Jacobs ads (image to the right ) that have this candid, unproduced quality that is unusual for mainstream designers.

I thought the informal look would work well, because the pornographic images that Kara uses are not from Hustler or Playboy, rather from amateur pornographic magazines, so they have this affected quality that makes you wonder what kind of drugs might have been used to get these people comfortable enough to take the pictures.

So when the models were posing inside the studio space in the co-op I belong to Pandora's Trunk, as they were arranging themselves on the cutting board I told them to try a little "too hard" to be sexy, hot and irresistible (much like the women of Kara's work see above).

The garment they are wearing is a pseudo lingerie piece inspired by the painting "Unspecified Involvement xii". This piece turned out great for the marketing campaign because its features have some of the most obvious connections to Kara's work. The pink swirling smoke of the painting translated into fluffy swirls that decorate the body in a random, unspecific form ;-).



So our low production values echo the low-brow edge in Kara's amateur porn theme. We're giving a voyeuristic guilty peek in a place you maybe shouldn't look. Or you didn't know you wanted to until you did. My models were such good sports (thank you Evelina and Bella) as I asked them over and over to roll all over a cold cutting table in order to get into the more uncomfortable positions.

Fliers are coming out next week, look for them around town!