Tag: clothing

What She Wore

Clothing is a personal thing for many women. That material intimacy is something the Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron understand very well.

The award-winning duo, who’ve penned some of my favorite movies (including Nora’s “When Harry Met Sally“), have brought their award-winning play Love, Loss, And What I Wore to Toronto. It runs at the cozy Panasonic Theatre through the end of the summer. A portion of ticket sales will, appropriately, benefit Dress For Success, a fantastic charity that provides professional services (including attire) to disadvantaged women. What a perfect fit.

The Ephrons’ monologue-style play features a collection of stories that connect certain outfits with special, significant life moments. There’s the story of wedding dresses, sexy boots, and the joys (or not) of purses, the challenges of mothers, the pangs of body types, and the perfection that is “BLLAAACK!”. It’s all melded together with happy/sad/bittersweet/funny flavours. Performers Andrea Martin, Mary Walsh, Louise Pitre, Sharron Matthews and Paula Brancati do a truly fantastic job of combining the happy and the sad with equal dollops of grace, charm, wit, and sensitivity.

I asked the Toronto-based actor and performer Sharron Matthews about her thoughts around clothing, creativity, and cabaret recently. She has a long history of performance, with everything from Les Miserables to Mean Girls on her resume, and is a positively radiant stage presence. Her responses are very enlightening and refreshingly honest. Enjoy.

Which aspects of Love, Loss, And What I Wore do you most relate to?

That is a hard question. Not because I don’t feel like I relate, but because the things that I seem to relate to are a bit challenging for me to acknowledge. My first monologue is about a child losing a parent and when the material assignments were sent out I was hoping and dreading that I might get this piece. I lost my dad when I was very young and it had a huge impact on my family. I also talk a lot about my weight, now it fluctuates and how hard being a big girl can be. I was a bit nervous about doing these pieces as well but the more I read them the more I thought, “Well, these are truthful and this a group of women that needs to be represented in fabulousness as well as in hardship.”

Why do you think so many women associate clothing with other things? Do you think women are more prone to association (& connection) than men?

I think that women are more ‘collectors’ then men are: (of) shoes, jackets, purses. Men don’t have as many accessories as we do, as a rule. Some of us have closets that are like art galleries… I know I do… featuring shoe boxes with pictures of the shoes on them. And yes, I do think we are more prone to association and connection. We are also, for the most part, more sentimental. We see “a shirt that a wore on my first job interview, the day I was hired to begin my career”…and men see a shirt. I think that it can be a sensual thing, the feel of a fabric or the smell but is also a sense-memory thing… we feel something and we sometimes be in that place again… recalling our emotions.

How much has your other work, specifically in TV and film, has been useful in doing the Ephrons’ work?

Though I have worked in TV and film -of course not as much as Paula, Mary and Andrea -I think that my work in cabaret, as a storyteller has been my greatest asset with the stories in Love, Loss And What I Wore. I feel right at home in this piece. The audience is present and a part of the piece and the stories are brief… like a song.

Define ‘cabaret’ as it is, now. What does it mean to you? What do you think it means to audiences of the 21st century?

I went online to look for some definitions of cabaret. They are all very dry and general: “a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue.” I recently did a cabaret that was a part of the Young Centre’s Saturday Night Cabaret Series and (their) description is one of my favourites: ”Cabaret is a combination of intimacy, personality, and social contact.”

So my definition of cabaret is a evening of musical storytelling including themes that are universal and accessible, but challenging at the same time. I love cabaret. It is the way I best feel (able to) express myself and really explore my creativity and my artistic voice.

I also think that cabaret can be performed “intimately” in a huge theatre. (It) is an art form that is not fully recognized in Canada.

To some, the word ‘cabaret’ conjures up images of singers belting out “My Way” in gold lame outfits . I am slowly trying to change that perception. I believe that cabaret is a journey, not the picture I just described. It is a form of storytelling to me. A way of breaking down the fourth wall an reaching out to people.

Stage or screen -what’s your favorite?

Having done screen work, I have a huge respect for people who work in film and TV day in and day out. Film acting is a true skill and the people who do it well are artists as well as technicians. I enjoy the spontaneity that is the stage. It is so live in front of an audience and you can never be totally sure what is going to happen. I like to feel an immediate response to what I do… it fuels me to move forwards. I love the stage.

ELABorate Simplicity

In the last few years, I’ve developed a passion for consignment stories. They have, to my mind, the perfect combination of style and substance; like small collections of carefully-curated non-originals, they encourage the recycling ethos within a stylistic context.

So it was with much anticipation that I hopped off to LAB Consignment, located on Ossington Avenue in Toronto. Its owner, Lauren Baker, is a smart, sassy, refreshingly unpretentious woman dedicated to both fashion and environmentalism. We had a lively exchange of ideas around the rise of consignment stores, what they might symbolize in a larger sense, and the challenge of getting Bloor Street fashionista-types (the New York equivalent is Fifth Avenue, by the way) out of their big-label headspace and into a new, imaginative space where substance and style connect in a meaningful way.

How did you become interested in fashion?

I started reading fashion magazines when I was 11 years old. I was really drawn to the supermodels at that time (1992) as I’m sure most young girls were. I remember loving Bob Mackie and Issac Mizrahi. I still think Bob Mackie is a master at glitz.

How did you go from working in retail to being interested in consignment? To many, the two worlds are far apart.

I worked in retail for almost 10 years but always sold my clothes on consignment growing up. When I came up with the idea for LAB, I was actually working in the music industry for a woman who built her business from the ground up, which I really admired. I, however, wasn’t made for the music-industry machine, I really didn’t enjoy the stress. That’s when I started to wonder how I can use my strengths and passion and turn it into a business that I enjoy. Consignment came to me almost right away.
Why do you think consignment and vintage-y stores have become so popular? Is it purely economic? Or is there something else at work?

I’ve been shopping at thrift stores since I was 14. In my home town (Dundas, Ontario) it was what everyone did and it was completely normal to me, so I can’t say that I’ve noticed this as a trend. Maybe they’ve recently become more attractive to different clientele due to both the environmental benefits of recycling clothing and the economic downturn. Many shoppers feel that buying vintage is their way of giving back to the environment and saving a few bucks while they’re at it.

How much have your friends’ input shaped and influenced your style, as well as your career path?

I like to think I’ve always had my own individual sense of style. I tend to rely on intuition when building a wardrobe, rather than memorizing each collection from each major designer and trying to mimic those trends on a very tiny budget. Don’t get me wrong, I love to watch the collections each season, but I don’t put pressure on myself to be on-trend all of the time. But I do have some very stylish friends. My dear friend Vanessa Fischer is an amazing costume designer (she’s designing my wedding dress) and I always like to bounce wardrobe ideas off of her.

As for my career path, I only told one friend that I had this idea because I didn’t want it to get scooped, and she supported me 100%. She actually pushed me very hard to do it. Now she lives in London UK and hasn’t even seen the store!

What are your future plans for LAB? You’d mentioned wanting to expand nationally. Do you think the fashion world is ready for consignment outlets?

Now that I’ve accomplished one dream, why stop there? I would love to have more than one location, but in reality it’s a baby-steps process. For now, I’m going to concentrate on the Ossington store and make it the best it can be. I think Canadians in general would welcome consignment with open arms! Only a small percentage of Canadians can afford designer fashions; the rest of us are just maxing out credit cards, bidding on ebay, and stalking Gilt Groupe. Consignment stores would allow the majority of Canadian shoppers to have access to designer fashions for a fraction of the price. I’m also carrying samples from Rita Liefhebber and am in negotiations with other prominent designers in Canada and the UK to feature their wares.

Why do you think traditional fashionistas turns up their noses at consignment?

I’m not sure who these fashionistas are, because I’ve had quite a few fashionable and well-known Canadian ladies shopping in my store, as well as some name designers. Quality clothing is quality clothing, no matter where you buy it. If there is a portion of the fashion world that turns their noses up at consignment they won’t for long. Who wouldn’t want a gorgeous designer piece at a fraction of the price?

@LABconsignment

It’s Not A Heel; It’s A Mountain

It was with a huge amount of sadness that I read about the death of designer Alexander McQueen last week.

The British designer was one of my early favourites in the high-falutin’ world of fashion. Amongst the pish-posh flaky fashion queens, McQueen redefined regal -and he knew it. Working-class royalty wrapped in bad boy drawl, he dared to try new things, while really, truly, “keeping it real.” To paraphrase playwright Joe Orton, he “came from the gutter, and don’t you forget it.” His work wasn’t merely ephemeral; it was probing, challenging, and frequently bizarre. Live presentations were deeply theatrical, taking inspiration from popular entertainment and relevant social issues (yes, fashion and social isues can mix) and fusing these ideas with a Biennale-esque sensibility that sought to blow open the doors of what fashion was and what it could be. He never lost touch with his roots, nor with his family. His deep connection with the women in his life -the twin muses of Isabella Blow and his mother -was apparent, and it’s that touch of touching earthiness I still find so endearing.

Part of what makes Alexander McQueen’s passing so tragic is the nature of his death. It wasn’t the wasting-away rot of cancer or the slow annilation of AIDS, but rather, the scalding horror of self-violence. Despite conjecture, we’ll never know the exact, true reason why he felt the need to leave us -nor should we. His death remains, like his life, his creation alone. It’s just sad that, at the end, he never saw the windows, only the walls; never felt the light, but scraped along in darkness; threw aside creation in favour of destruction. Why? Like so many other suicides, it’s not ours to know. He’s gone, and he’s left us his visions, in colours and textures; in dyes and dances of hems and heels and the height he reached as a one of the greatest visual artists our age has seen. From a fashion cynic to you, Dear McQueen, thank you for the passion, the play, the verve and the vision. I’d say “angels sing thee to thy rest” but frankly, the whir of sewing machines, the dry scrape of pencils against paper, and the click-clak of stiletto heels seem like an infinitely better symphony. Rest tight. The gutter won’t forget you.

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