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Saturday, May 30th It's after midnight on a Saturday at Fais Do Do, a Los Angeles club catering to diverse indi music and art scenes. Tonight's crowd is decidedly Goth. At this point in the evening, the sullen and slouched creatures of the night that mill around the space have already endured the dark pain of a Siouxsie & the Banshees rip-off band and a predictably sophomoric spoken word piece with theremin accompaniment. Bella Lugosi's dead and so is this scene. But somewhere amidst the black clothing and white faces, a wave of Technicolor inspiration blows everyone out of the water: the Red Ant fashion show. At twelve thirty, the music changes from morbid to manic and a bevy of women with painted faces, dreads, and colorful and outrageously distressed clothing ambles lithely up the stairs to the stage. It's hard to accurately describe these Post Apocalyptic babes with their craggy-yet-fabulous attire. They're like the love children of a bizarre orgy made up of the members of Kiss, Parliament's George Clinton and Tina Turner in Mad Max. They animate the stage by dancing around, unabashed as if they were the punk rock version of Zeus' muses. The previously dead crowd has now been exhumed and the stage sparkles with creativity. And isn't that the point of fashion-to express, through clothing, ineffable originality? In an ideal world perhaps. This is the realm that twenty-five-year-old Santa Clara based designer, Rachel Woodward resides in all the time. She says of her three-year-old Red Ant clothing line: "Most of what I do is art. It's functional art but it's art." She doesn't mean this in a high fallutin' art school sort of way. She never, in fact, studied art or fashion formally. For her, art is the domain of unbridled, chaotic creativity. With the force of an action painter and the irreverence of a graffiti artist, she burns, distresses, deconstructs and paints clothing and material that she finds in thrift stores and upholstery shops. There are no limits for Woodward. Calvin Klein would flip his lid to find out that she even weaves human hair into some of her pieces. The twenty-minute show at Fais Do Do is imbued with this very liberated disregard for the stale conventions of fashion. Orange County artist Geoffrey Graves has created the kabuki/Kiss makeup for the show with the help of Oxnard based Christine Salazar. The latter has never even worked in fashion. The looks she creates are products of her own vivid imagination. That's how Woodward likes it, free and limitless. The models are diverse bunch-ages 18 through 45, from size two to plus size. One by one they prance onto the stage, leaving their inhibitions at the door. Androgynous men in long skirts and flat bustiers figure heavily into the pageant. There are no labels, just individuals. Woodward honors this in her desire to custom-make clothes according to her client's imaginations as well. This fringe take on fashion is probably what endeared her to communities like those of the Renaissance Fair and Burning Man, where Red Ant is sold and showcased. Despite the fantastical inclinations of her work, it's not just for rock stars and the women that love them. Beyond the over-the-top layered antics of the show, individual pieces would easily strike the fancy of bold and fashion-forward consumers--everything from deconstructed denim skirts adorned with zippers to the familiar and funky skirt over pants look. At the end of the show, like grungy homecoming queens, the models join Woodward on stage to take their bows. Red Ant's creator, too, is all made up and decked out in her most Baroque and burnt prom dress, metal chains interwoven into her locks. When the grand dame of disorder finally leaves the stage and the 'scene' moves backstage there is finally an opportunity to take in all the details of these special pieces. Punk pageantry does rock the house. But it takes close-up communion with Woodward's clothing to really appreciate all her hands-on work-the hours of burning, shredding, painting and piecing back together that go into these one-of-a-kind labors of love. Touching the clothing gives a whole new perspective to Red Ant-the crispy edges of a burnt taffeta dress, the black human hair affixed to a green shirtsleeve. No wonder those models are so buoyant and uninhibited. The clothes are a sensual experience. One might wonder what it would have been like if the audience had been invited to mingle freely on stage with the models-getting a front-and-center dosage of these offbeat threads. Living dead-meets-living color. Now that's an oxymoron that even those traditionalists on Seventh Avenue could work with. Info available through www.bluehouse.org/redant |
