Festival of Arts artists dress to express in runway fashion show
Nancy Swan knew what time of year it was, and perhaps more importantly, she knew the year.
The painter, a veteran of the Festival of Arts runway fashion show, was in a fever pitch, especially with the Pageant of the Masters running a fashion-oriented show concurrently inside the Irvine Bowl in Laguna Beach.
One of her granddaughters had expressed a desire to be her model again. Swan wanted the bonding experience, but a family vacation that would have her return a day before the show was problematic.
“I planned on getting a head start, but as the weeks went by at the festival, I still hadn’t found another model,” Swan said. “My sister, who was looking out for me, said, ‘Oh, it’s too much stress. It takes a lot of work. Just don’t do it this year.’
“I thought, ‘Yeah, but this is the year of fashion. I want to do it, and I have this idea, and I want to see if it will work.’”
Inside a month before the dress had to be completed, her sister found her a model in Lucy Landherr, who was willing to make the commute from Chino Hills.
Landherr walked the runway in a black-and-white dress framed with hand-cut lace created from newspaper on Aug. 18, when Swan’s design was named the Most Glamorous “Red Carpet” Worthy Creation.
The long skirt, which also earned the People’s Choice honor, was designed to depict fashion silhouettes from 1800 to the present. A headpiece featured stars, representing the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Swan shared the stage with her granddaughters and niece in a previous show, when she made four dresses for one entry. They posed as a wedding party, which included the roles of flower girl, a bridesmaid and a bride.
“The little 6-year-old that was walking out there, she was the flower girl, and I had her lead off,” Swan said. “I gave her a whole set of instructions on what to do, and she had nothing to look at to see ahead of her — not like her sisters.
“I said, ‘This is what you have to do.’ She walked out, she did everything perfectly. She carried a basket of flowers made out of trash bags and all kinds of things like that, but I had embedded a bubble machine inside of it, so instead of throwing flower petals, this thing was just pumping out bubbles everywhere.”
Susan Davis, who recently retired as the special events director of the Festival of Arts, founded the runway fashion show in 2009. The first iteration took place without a runway but instead with a red carpet rolled out in the middle of the festival grounds.
A showcase of the festival’s exhibitors and their talents, the contest has called upon those entering to create outfits from recycled, reclaimed and repurposed materials.
Glass artist Cody Nicely was doing much of his work in the final days leading up to the show. On Aug. 13, he accompanied resident Greg Viviani to the Laguna Beach City Council meeting, where the latter dumped trash collected from Aliso Beach in front of the dais to make a statement. Nicely said he had met Viviani while skimboarding.
After that bit of political theater, Nicely gathered the trash for his purposes, and it ended up on the tail of a mermaid costume worn by McKenna Michels.
“I knew that it needed to stay together for three minutes,” Nicely said. “It ended up doing that and more. We built it in a way that it could stay together. … We used a lot of hot glue that we could count on. We had fishing wire, it was 30-pound test[ed], keeping everything together. All the sewing, we used fishing wire because we didn’t want any wardrobe malfunctions.”
Durability varied among the designs. Laguna Beach Arts Commissioner Pat Kollenda, who judged the contest, weighed in on the subject for the environmentally conscious mermaid.
“I do have to say one of the things that impressed me the most was the amazing way she kept it on,” Kollenda said. “I actually thought we might have one of those fashion faux pas, but nicely done.”
Painter Elizabeth McGhee has caught the fashion bug, and she has caught on when it comes to catching the attention of the judges.
The three-judge panel, which also consisted of costume designer Shelley Komarov and local artist Gerard Stripling, recognized McGhee’s latest creation, a dress made out of socks, with the Most Innovative Use of Materials award.
McGhee, who likened the Festival of Arts to a “summer camp” for its artists, described the fashion show as one of the camp activities. She modeled the dress herself, not unlike her debut on the runway, when booth neighbors Janet Lewis and David Milton asked her to wear their dress during her first season as an exhibitor.
The most recent show featured artists whose primary media included drawing, painting, glass, jewelry and printmaking. An opportunity to challenge oneself outside of their comfort zone has contributed to the interest of the exhibitors.
“I think it’s fun to see what the jewelers make or how their brains work,” McGhee said. “We’re all trying to make outfits, so it’s all clothing, but I think it’s different. If it was all fashion designers, it would almost have a different tone than when you see somebody do something that’s not in their wheelhouse, the creative turns they might take.”
In roughly a dozen years as a participant, McGhee said the sock dress was only the second she had sewn. Others had been held together with staples, duct tape and clear shipping tape.
Artists have been known to help each other, McGhee added. The assistance manifests itself in helping some to find models, while others collect materials for the competitors.
“I’ve never felt it to be cut-throat,” McGhee said. “It’s a competition, but it’s a very friendly competition, so it doesn’t feel ick, and it does feel like a community.”
Printmaking artist Anne Moore’s dress, which was referred to as “Breakfast at Tea-fany’s” featured 312 tea bag covers, winning Most Creative Concept.
In celebration of the 15th anniversary of the fashion show, a retrospective brought back memorable looks made by longtime participant Brad Elsberry. To model his denim design, Elsberry called upon Jeff Lam, who also wore his headpiece for the villainous Minotaur in the most recent Pageant of the Monsters in October.
“Miserably uncomfortable because the hooves are 10 inches high, and they each weigh like 4 pounds,” Elsberry recalled of the Minotaur. “The costume, I have no idea how much it weighs — probably 20 pounds [or] 30 pounds — and it’s all foam rubber, so it just holds in the heat, so you get drenched when you wear it.
“He didn’t believe me, and then the first night, he was like, ‘Yep.’ When he came in the second night to put it on, he was like, ‘Oh my god, it’s still wet.’”
The event also included a look at a few costumes from the Pageant of the Masters show, “A La Mode: The Art of Fashion.”
Valair Williams reprised her role as the model for a tribute to the British design label Ossie Clark.
“This has been all summer, so this is really like a family,” Williams said. “The fact that I got to meet the director of the [Pageant of the Masters, Diane Challis Davy], beforehand, and she’s able to interact with us, it really feels like a home vibe.”
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