What can we expect from designers at the last three last shows in Portland Fashion Week’s six-day showcase? Season-versatile pieces, earth-friendly sustainable practices and fresh, beautiful clothes by designers who understand how bodies move.
Portland’s quiet fashion revolution has turned the city into the go-to destination for detail-oriented surprises, human- and environment-conscious production practices and custom-made originals. This week serves to reinforce the shared values of creativity and contact between designers and customers.
Today, headliners Elizabeth Dye, Emily Ryan, Holly Stalder and Kate Towers anchor the local designer collaboration show, “The Collections.”
Designs walking the runway today include the contemporary classics reworked by A Broken Spoke and handmade hats by Dayna Pinkham. Other “Collections” include Genevieve Dellinger, Linea by Jess Beebe, Liza Rietz and Daniel McCall.
For those not acquainted with the local design scene, fashion, like everything art in Portland, revolves around an open-minded, creative core. Several locals, like sustainable fashion trailblazer Anna Cohen, have gained attention in the international fashion world by mixing beauty with good practice.
New mom Kate Towers is showing pieces that will immediately hit her boutique Seaplane, which she co-owns with Stalder. Towers is looking ahead to the upcoming season as an opportunity to make a “badass line of clothing” that will be of use to strong working mothers. As a busy new mother herself, Towers is nurturing the idea that mother and frumpy need not be synonymous.
“I am in mom land,” Towers said. “I would like to do a show with strollers and mothers nursing, holding babies.”
For today’s show, her scaled-down collection is made up of clean, seasonless silhouettes.
Lara Miller’s Chicago-based studio specializes in designs that can be worn multiple ways. Miller, like Towers, is usually not compelled to have a complicated runway set, and instead prefers to let the clothes speak for themselves. On Tuesday, her clean lines will be taking to the stage along with innovative designers like Cohen, British “ethical fashion” designer Izzy Lane and organic denim from Del Forte.
“My past spring collections had vibrant colors, which are fun but not wearable,” Miller said. This spring her designs express color, but not loudly.
Miller, who planned to be a neuro researcher before going into fashion, truly understands the body.
Her interest in brain function lends to Miller’s sensitivity to how women relate to their bodies and their clothing.
This week, expect body-attentive fabrics and shapes. Look for no flannel; this week is dedicated to real fashion.
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