AMS thrift and consignment store Get Thrifty brought their fourth annual fashion show to The Gallery on March 4, with a focus on upcycling, fashion circulation and promoting emerging designers from the UBC community.
Zeitgeist: The Essence of Time featured exhibitions of nine collections assembled by student curators specifically for the event, as well as a dinner buffet included in the price of admission.
Before the metaphorical curtain rose, guests milled and mingled on makeshift runways between lines of chairs, many sporting curated looks of their own. Highlights included a handmade wire headpiece strewn with silver butterflies, an exaggerated pair of ripped bell-bottoms and a Canadian tuxedo accented with aquamarine hair extensions.
The Gallery, a new venue for Get Thrifty — whose annual showcases have previously taken place in the Pit or the lower atrium of the Nest — was completely transformed for Zeitgeist. Tables were consolidated into islands through which wound runways lined with chairs. There was no audience section per se, as guests were seated entirely along these runways. Live UBC Electronica DJs spun from the corner stage between exhibitions, and floodlights and photography equipment were set up along the models’ paths. The scale of the production was impressive, with event lead Max Dahl-Sam saying it took hard work from everyone on the team to reach that point.
“It was hands-on,” he said. “When we got [to The Gallery], we had about an hour and a half for setup and an hour for teardown … It was all hands on deck, but we have a fantastic team behind us [with] a diverse range of experience, a lot of ... [them] have worked in Indigenous Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week [and are] very good with backstage management.”
Each of the evening’s collections was preceded by an artist’s statement read by Get Thrifty execs expanding on the theme of time and how it was explored in the looks on display.
The first series of the night, designed by co-lead curator Rachel Kwong, was entitled Cycle of Life and featured looks representing stages of human development from adolescence to marriage. I found the first few designs which Kwong based on children's drawings, as well as the last which featured an enormous South Asian-inspired shawl along with an eye-catching belt and headpiece, to be the most inspired.
Kwong, in her capacity as co-lead curator with Ashley Hilbers, also had the responsibility of managing and overseeing her fellow curators as they prepared their collections for Zeitgeist. This involved enforcing deadlines and helping with model booking.
“Affectionately, [we’ve been] on their ass since November,” she said, “‘Get sourcing, get your looks planned, get your models’ … We never want to be nagging them; they’re very self-sufficient. They know when the deadlines are, but we do try to support them the best [we] can, finding items from our closets if they need them.”
Although they were downstairs in the Get Thrifty store working with models and curators instead of pushing tables and carrying chairs, preparations on the night of the show were taxing for Kwong and Hilbers as well.
“There are nine curators and each has about four to six models. So organizing the logistics of 45 to 50 people can be pretty stressful,” Kwong said. “We love our store [but] it’s not the biggest space, so trying to find different rooms that they can get ready in, [ensuring] that they're supported with makeup and hair … things like that [were a challenge].”
For the most part, the curators’ efforts paid off. While a few collections verged on repetitive or lacked a strong sense of cohesion, most were original and thematically expanded on the idea of time. A personal favourite was Sophia Anise’s collection Celestial Sways. Loosely based on Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in a Day,” the outfits reflected a sci-fi summer look perfect for the source material’s future colony where the sun only shines once a year.
“The show went better than I could have imagined,” said Kwong. “Every year it gets better and better, and that rush of seeing the show finish … that’ll never get old.”
Although Get Thrifty’s event planning will have to adapt with Dahl-Sam graduating at the end of this year, the other executives are determined to keep the annual fashion shows going well into the future.
“I struggle to put into words how special it is to have a community of close to 40 people dedicated to contributing time, effort, emotional leeway — all of it for a volunteer thrift store,” said Dahl-Sam.
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