Red Carpet Watch
Our Grammy Winners: Mark Mitchell and Hollis Wong-Wear
Sure, the Seattle story is all about Macklemore, but check out his collaborator—the Flavr Blue songstress— and her Seattle designer neighbor.
Your feeds have been crammed full of Macklemore, Macklemore, and more Macklemore over the last week, I know, but before we lay that storyline to rest, I want to make sure we all know for certain that our own Logan Neitzel custom-made the pop star's suit. And Mary Lambert? She wore Seattle's Hourglass Footwear on her feet (again) when she took the stage (in hair and makeup by Kaija Mistral Towner) with Madonna and Queen Latifah.
But there's another pretty glamorous (emphasis: pretty, emphasis: glamorous) story about local talent that needs some light.
Image courtesy Hollis Wong-Wear's iPhone
When Mark Mitchell, one of our favorite designers and creative minds, heard that Hollis Wong-Wear—she of Macklemore collabs, the Flavr Blue, and, once upon a time, Canary Sing—was Grammy-bound, he says he "didn’t want to see her in a borrowed dress, so I texted her and said to get her little butt over." They're neighbors. Cute, right?
The Burial artist had loaned several of those garments to the singer for a music video, so he had a really good idea how she wore his work, and "I knew what I wanted to make her pretty much immediately," he told me recently by email.
Image via Mark Mitchell
Meanwhile, Wong-Wear tells me, she was "overwhelmed by all the Grammy particulars and logistics, and it was Mark's confidence and vision that grew my confidence from the inside."
They decided on a bias-cut—after Wong-Wear learned what bias-cut means. Mitchell told Wong-Wear he wanted to do embroidery, but then realized he would need ten days to do all the hand-stitching, and he only had six, so the singer got a text reading simply, "Plot twist." She wasn't worried.
Mitchell whipped up the dress you see here "in white and garment-dyed it to my favorite shade of Japanese plum," he told me. "I like to garment-dye when I can rather than buy pre-dyed fabric. I like control. It was stress free, a wonderful experience, and she looked magnificent."
She certainly did—with hair by local stylist Nina Nguyen who works at Seven, Jane Pham on makeup, and Sandy Phan on wardrobe styling. Media sources like Billboard magazine took notice, and stopped her to chat about things.But here's where I really fall in love with this story:
And therein lies the power of fashion: an expertly, tenderly, thoughtfully made and wonderfully fit garment can connect us not only to each other, but to ourselves.
