Show and Shops Cover a Lot of Territory : Papier-Mache Hats a Little Fishy

Mermaids in footless, skintight dresses wore fish hats at the M Gallery in Sunset Plaza. Michael Dwarkin, who owns the gallery, designed the clothes. But the star of the evening was Adam Kurtzman, who made the hand-painted papier-mache hats shaped like eels, stingrays and other luminous creatures from the deep.

Although they are priced from $1,200, and not right for every occasion, Dwarkin says three of the six fish hats were sold, and all of them will go to the San Francisco Folk and Craft Museum for an exhibit before retiring to private life.

In the future, Dwarkin expects to see them again at the Oscar Ball, the Grammy Awards or “wild, avant-garde parties.”

Dwarkin’s M Gallery is for jewelry, particularly by New York-based designer Robert Lee Morris, who founded Artwear. But Dwarkin now has other non-jewelry shows in the works. His qualifications: “Anything extraordinary that’s wearable.”