Portland Fashion Week

Portland and fashion have never really gone together in my book. Perhaps it is the perpetually gray and drizzly winters or maybe it is the lack of places to find great pieces to add to the wardrobe. And maybe I shouldn't really be one to talk. I participate in fashion as much as looking and wanting, layering and unlayering. I can't afford topshop and Portland doesn't have King street worthy shopping. Granted we have a shit ton of great designers and a few good boutiques but nothing, so far, that I lust for and dream about at night.

Portland Fashion Week is coming up this weekend after surveying their website and looking into the designers represented I've decided there is nothing that justifies me buying a ticket. Now this constitutes a problem for me: I love looking at clothes and I love the idea of being able to sit at a runway and see what local designers want to see on their patrons, but the garments that I've seen PFW designers are horribly boring and lack any kind of creativity.

There is however, hope on the horizon. PFW may be lacking fashion and design sense but there are plenty of other local designers doing their thing, this weekend in fact. On Friday at Someday Lounge a group of Portland favorites will be showing their wares in a multi-designer fashion show coordinated by Gretchen Jones (Moth Love). Other participating designers besides Jones are Emily Katz, Emily Baker of sword+fern, Dust by Julia Blackburn and Reif by Lindsay Reif.

I will be the first to admit, and I hope this dissuades any hate mail I might get about my rant, that know very little about Portland designers. I am, however, now determined to seek them out, dress up with them embrace, some of them, with open loving arms.