The semi-annual Fade to Light fashion show looms, just one week away (Wed Feb 25 at Crystal Ballroom)! The last couple iterations of this show have featured WWJJD—a collaboration between Joshua Buck (who’s no stranger to the city runways, both on his own and under the SKB umbrella) and Jeanne Tunberg. Theirs are some of the most anticipated collections of the year: ultra-inventive, exuberantly designed, and it’s menswear for pete’s sake; no one else in the city is doing anything like it.
- Jeanne Tunberg
On process:
JOSHUA BUCK: We preform our appreciation for the body through creating garments. By exploring the body’s functions and needs in a variety of situations, each season we take as a point of departure a common scenario one could find themselves in. This season we designed deep into the act of sleeping. We deconstructed beds, pondered the brevity of dreams remembered, and reinvented the comfort of being swaddled. Also, when sleeping you are at your most vulnerable. You take a leap of faith that you will awaken from dreaming into the serial of experiences that make up your life. There is a stillness or calm in that vulnerability that is very seductive or even mesmerizing.
On inspirational material:
Dreams were a large portion of the inspiration. A dream, good or bad, can cast a halo on an entire day, week, or month. It can reveal truths and horrors unacknowledged to our cloistered consciousness. A dream can make something absurd seem totally familiar, and we wanted to capture some of this surreal essence in the interplay of styles we are showing at Fade To Light. Music is always inspiring, and we have been listening to a lot of LEO, who will be providing the soundtrack to our segment.
On fashion now:
The silhouette has become more important in menswear over that last couple of years. There is a play on proportion, and an interest in novel methods of make for men that has begun to make its way into the mass market. I think of the success of the jogger pant (loose through the hips and tapered at the hem, sometimes with a cuff) or even running tights (lots of guys in Portland are wearing these as their sole bottom when working out.) as being examples of this. It is exciting to look to the future and contemplate the new spaces that can be forged for men in the realm of the silhouette, or the new systems of dress that arise out of these new proportions and garments.