Tonight is the first ever Portland Fashion & Style Awards ceremony, a night meant to celebrate the winners in a series of “best” categories ranging from hair stylists, photographers, designers, models, and boutiques. It’s a grand idea in theory if a little overreaching the first time out of the gates (it’s at the Schnitz, for crying out loud, with tickets as high as $100—click here to buy some, but be prepared to wait in the queue while everyone gets their The Book of Mormon on), which is pretty steep for a roster of nominees that bears so few recognizable names.

I’ll be in attendance (as, ahem, a nominee, I get free entrance), but my reservations about the relevance of this thing are acute (how can you talk about—much less make grand proclamations about—the best in Portland fashion and style without mentioning the forces actually putting it on the map? Pendleton’s Portland Collection? Portland Garment Factory? Adam Arnold? Anyone? Hello?). Nonetheless, I shall go and give it what my date for this evening suggested: a fair shake, despite all the many indications that it will be a farce. Meanwhile, you can read more about why I have such a huge stick up my butt about it over here.

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Marjorie Skinner is the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor, author of the weekly Sold Out column chronicling the area's independent fashion and retail industry, and a frequent contributor to the film and...

5 replies on “The First-Ever Portland Fashion & Style Awards Are Tonight”

  1. I agree with your stick-up-butt-edness. That nomination process you described on MOD was absurd, and basically the opposite of savvy. Without passing on the wisdom of the entire thing, it shouldn’t take a genius to realize that if you want first-year buy-in, you’re going to need to suck up to all of the biggest names, which would include a) nominating them, and b) doing whatever you could to make sure they didn’t get humiliated by losing out to some undeserving nobody who has the quarter brain it requires to manipulate this “system.”

  2. So the very absurdity of it will either assure that it never happens again, or incite the biggies to use their bigness to steer it in a better direction.

  4. What a joke. Talk about a low end waste of an evening! Another low end production from some of the people from the now dead portland fashion week, but even worse.

  5. What a joke. Talk about a low end waste of an evening! Another low end production from some of the people from the now dead portland fashion week, but even worse.

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