Wear What When

Recap: Prairie Underground Sample Sale

A report from the shopping trenches.

Posted by: Heather Fink on Dec 16, 2011 at 09:30AM 1 Comments

Photo: Diane Bolme

SLIDESHOW: What we found at the Prairie Undergound sale. The Canal Building in Fremont offered the team at Prairie Underground plenty of space to set up their racks of stylish hoodies in all hues.

View Slideshow » Photo: Diane Bolme

SLIDESHOW: What we found at the Prairie Undergound sale. The Canal Building in Fremont offered the team at Prairie Underground plenty of space to set up their racks of stylish hoodies in all hues.

View Slideshow » Photo: Diane Bolme

Most pieces were 50-70 percent off regular prices—at that price, you don’t expect to see this much merchandise when you walk in on the second day of the sale, at about 1. Here’s the deal: The Prairie Underground team is in the habit of restocking their sales on the second day.

View Slideshow » Photo: Diane Bolme

Here’s what the designers had to say about the sale: “This staggering [donation total] is almost double what we had hoped to achieve. That weekend turned out to be one of the most memorable events in our history as designers.”

If you made it to Prairie Underground’s recent sample sale, it was great for your closet—and for the BABES Network. According to designers Davora Linder and Camilla Eckersley, the 20 percent of proceeds that they promised to the peer counseling non-profit amounted to more than $9,000 in donations. Nice job, Seattle. And nice job, Prairie Underground.

Shoppers were able to snag pieces from past collections as well as sample items that never went into production. The room was filled with cozy sweatshirts, denim leggings, jersey knit dresses, and more. I couldn’t resist a cream T-shirt for 20 bucks; the extra long sleeves make layering easy and keep my hands warm. Shoppers also had a chance to peruse art from HIV30. Linder and Eckersley definitely took time to make the sale an event worth your while.

Moral of the story: Don’t sleep on this city’s sample sales. We snapped a few photos while we were there. Take a look at the slideshow for more information.

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Tags: Prairie Underground, Made in Seattle

Give It Up: Object’s Porcelain Fortune Cookie

To open or not to open? That’s the question. But get this: Charlie Schuck’s gift gallery is open Christmas morning.

Posted by: Laura Cassidy on Dec 15, 2011 at 12:12PM 0 Comments

To break or not to break? Porcelain fortune cookies at Object are perfect for drifters and wayward souls. But design freaks, craft collectors, and artful modernists would appreciate them also.

Who gets it: The drifter. The lost. The unsure. The one who obsesses over his/her horoscope while they’re reading tea leaves and consulting ancient runes and insisting that they’re just really having a hard time finding themselves.

Why: Aleksandra Pollner’s porcelain fortune cookies, made in collaboration with photographer, collector, and all-around enthusiast Charlie Schuck for Object, his art-and-gift gallery-and-shop, offer a kind of delicate, durable clairvoyancy. The rough-smooth, smashable-savable rendering of the American icon (I mean, we know these things do not exist in China, right?) sets up an existential dilemma (to break or not to break?) that ought to smack that wayward soul right into a steady job, a heated apartment, and a healthy, plant-based diet.

And yes, there is a fortune in each porcelain ‘cookie’, should your drifter go that route; the artist commissioned an ‘actual psychic’ (I’m not totally sure what that means) to write them.

Oh, and they’re 12 bucks each.

Where to find it: Object, which, it must be noted, is no longer a pop-up shop that you have to be friends with someone on Facebook to get invited into. It did start that way, and the opening parties in Schuck’s loft were pretty much epic, which is another word for ‘a who’s who of Seattle design, culture, fashion, and art.’ It’s also another word for ‘crowded and impossible to actually shop at’, which is why it’s great to see the locally and internationally made objects gathered in a ground floor storefront. (Recognize it? The space was previously occupied by Screaming Trees’ Mark Pickeral, who set it up as a sort of uber-record shop but it didn’t quite fly.)

Photo: Charlie Schuck

The interior of Object on Second Ave across the street from Tavolata.

Find exceptionally well made, smartly conceptualized products from Seattle artists like Grain, Iacoli & McAllister, and Meet Me Here as well as cult Japanese designers and found treasures at this Belltown stop, but keep watch for artist/Object collaborations. There’s something inherently “us” and imaginatively descriptive about what comes from Schuck and his cohorts when they get specific and targeted.

Special note to procrastinators: This is kinda insane but Schuck pledges to be at Object on Christmas morning from 6:30 to 11 in order that you might set off to your holiday gathering with some really lovely and special gifts for your friends and family, instead of the windshield scraper and tube of Blistex that you would have to settle for at 7-11.

(Full disclosure: Among the objects at Object is a small chapbook of sorts that contains work by Lily Raskind, Izzie Klingels, Justine Ashbee, and me; it was designed by Seattle Met art director Andre Mora.)

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Tags: Locally Designed, Made in Seattle, Gift Guide '11

Cameron Levin Party Dresses

How does a devoted Seattle shopper get dressed up for a holiday party? Like this.

Posted by: Laura Cassidy on Dec 15, 2011 at 06:30AM 0 Comments

SLIDESHOW: A selection of newly launched party dresses by Seattle’s Cameron Levin, and a conversation with the designer.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

SLIDESHOW: A selection of newly launched party dresses by Seattle’s Cameron Levin, and a conversation with the designer.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

WWW: It’s been so cold lately. How could a Seattle woman warm up one of your looks?
Levin: I love the look of opaque black tights worn with a pair of soft leather or suede black pumps. It’s a fantastic way to lengthen your legs, accentuate the color of the dress, and stay warm and comfortable.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

What looks are you loving for this holiday season and for going into the next year?
My favorite trends right now are solid color-blocking and material mixing—the latter of which I incorporated into my 2012 collection. I wanted to create looks that are appropriate for cocktail or evening attire but also comfortable and convenient to wear. I used luxurious, high-quality jersey fabrics for the main structure of the dresses, and added silk chiffons and feather accents to give them a more glamorous aesthetic.

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Tell us about the eco-friendly aspect of your collection.
In the Sati Collection, I use a lot of jersey fabrics that are organic cotton and bamboo, as well as a few hemp-silk blends. Not only are these fabrics environmentally low-impact, but they look and feel luxurious. Where petrol-produced, synthetic fabrics (and pesticide-exposed cotton fabrics) feel uncomfortable and often irritate (and pesticide-exposed cottons are far less durable), natural fibers feel smooth, lightweight, and have a subtle beauty to their texture and movement.

Among the local designers selling at Sara Seumae’s Spun Sustainable Collective is Cameron Levin and her eponymous earth-friendly line.

On the occasion of Levin’s 2012 Sati Collection launch as well as the holiday party season that we are right smack dab in the middle of, we talk to the designer about her day and evening dresses.

Find the interview within the slideshow here, and then find the dresses themselves at Spun on Capitol Hill. As for the parties, you’ll have to find those on your own.

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Tags: Locally Made, Seattle Designer, Made in Seattle, Cameron Levin, Spun Sustainable Collective