We’re all familiar with the opening lines: “Who’d have
thought ‘Portland’ and ‘fashion’ would ever go together?!” Or,
“Portland’s known more for its rainy days, craft beers, and lefty
politics than its cutting-edge style.” And so ad infinitum go the
apologetic preludes to any discussion of fashion in Portland. It’s been
an uphill battle, but as Portland creeps its way into an international
consciousness that has historically rarely given much thought to our
corner of the world, the media credentials—however hedged with
skepticism—have begun to accumulate.
The New York Times currently harbors a blushing crush on
Portland, most dramatically with a recent ode to local design in its
T style magazine describing (and inaccurately singling out) the
Pearl District as an “epicenter of all things cool—a vibrant
music scene, locally grown food, and a bicycle-friendly eco-culture,”
and recent times have regularly seen Portland fashion designers and
boutiques on the lofty pages of WWD, amid a whole host of other
fashion communiqués.
With the time feeling nigh for something to strike, the organizers
behind Portland Fashion Week (Tito Chowdhury, Chris Cone, and Tod
Foulk—and while I’m at it, I’ll disclose my participation on the
advisory board) have drawn together an international collection of
designers under the shared ideal of green fashion. With Portland’s
ratings sky high in studies of cities successfully adopting sustainable
practices, it’s the right time and right place for such a
gathering.
The ins and outs of what constitutes “green” remain subject to
interpretation, but buying local is a wise bet. So while excitement is
high for the coming nights featuring guest designers, it’s the familiar
names that will matter the most, and in the end it’s their clothes we
as Portlanders will be buying.
On the one hand, Portland is using the industry focus on
ecologically minded design to make a well-timed leap onto the
legitimate fashion calendar, but on the other hand, such a thing
betrays the complete story of contemporary fashion design in Portland.
This last urban frontier of the West Coast is home to scores of
creatively active people who choose to live and work in
Portland—there’s little to have stopped any of them from instead
settling in New York or any other first-tier capital that already
boasts a fashion week. And the fact is that there are as many bright
design stars absent from the Portland Fashion Week schedule as there
are on it.
On these pages you’ll see fall looks from some of Portland’s best
designers. Some of them are showing on this week’s runways, but you’ll
also see work produced by local designers who aren’t participating in
Portland Fashion Week, but without whom this town’s design personality
is sorely incomplete. The clothes are modeled by four such individuals:
Adam Arnold, the most unanimously admired Portland apparel designer;
Rachel Turk and Nathaniel Crissman, whose church + state label is the
ultimate badge of insider Portland cool; and Gretchen Jones,
representing the many recent transplants who chose Portland as a place
to pursue her fledgling design career.
In addition to the schedule of Portland Fashion Week shows and
discussion forums below, we’ve included a directory of some of
Portland’s best boutiques stocking local designs. Although we may
become a coliseum for the celebration of all things green, the
long-independent pioneering heart of Portland is never fully found at
the main event, and anyone looking for the “Portland” in Portland
fashion is going to have to leave the beaten path—that’s just how
things work in our town.