Your New Favorite Movies

I just couldn't resist writing an extra post about Dmitry and his rickrack, but I promise this isn't going to turn into a Project Runway recap blog. This here is my real post for the week.

This week at work it was back to pushing boobs around and building beer guts. You know what I'm talking about--mannequin dressing.

When the new MOHAI opens in December, our first temporary exhibition will be about movie theaters and filmmaking in Seattle.  For the show, we are borrowing costumes from a local company that dressed a number of recent films that used Seattle as a location. The only problem is that most recent films set in Seattle actually use Vancouver for filming (something about taxes), and so actual films made in Seattle tend to be sort of obscure and little known. So, to get you all hyped up about the costumes I'm dressing for Celluloid Seattle, your assignment is to become obsessed with the following movies:

Stephen King's Rose Red

This was a 2002 made-for-TV movie which ended up being forgettable for everyone except those involved in Seattle-area historical societies. The story about a haunted Seattle mansion was totally fabricated, but the marketing campaign tried to get people thinking it was a true story--much like the Blair Witch Project had done a few years earlier. They set up a fake University website and had a faux documentary about the history of this non-existent building. The result was that lots of people were fooled and started contacting places like MOHAI try to find out more. When told it was just made up, some became angry and assumed that we were either misinformed or part of the cover-up. Historylink has a pretty hilarious run-down of all the inquiries it received, which includes comments like "If the story of Ellen Rimbauer is not true then where did the photos come from?" and "The unaccounted for bodies of those who visited the mansion should be proof enough...who are you to depict which are true and which are false?"

The movie is mostly set in the present day, but luckily the costumes we have were worn by ghosts from more fabulous historical eras.

Grassroots

Grassroots came out this year and is due on DVD soon. It actually looks kind of great.

On the long list of things I could never have guessed I would do in life:
#438: Scrutinize a movie trailer in order to better understand the body proportions of Jason Biggs

Ira Finkelstein's Christmas

Also looks kind of fun, right? It was filmed partially in West Seattle and in nearby Bavarian-themed town Leavenworth.  At about 40 seconds in you get a great view of Elliott Gould's grandpa costume which we have for the exhibit. Hardly haute couture, but the printed shirt is Tommy Bahama which is a local brand. I think it's a nice touch. 

With this movie and Grassroots, it's a reminder that most costume designers don't spend their time churning out Elizabethan gowns. Generally they work with ready-made pieces, and have to put outfits together that match the life and personality of each character. If you make the wrong choice with a period piece, only nerds like me will notice.  But if you dress a contemporary movie, you have to tap into people's present understanding of what certain styles and colors mean. If you put a dark toned, structured blazer on a retired Floridian, everyone is going to feel that it looks wrong. 

The movie was made in 2011 and was shown at the Seattle International Film Festival, but I think it has yet to have a general theatrical release. It might be coming soon to a theater near you!

Dmitry Update

Thanks for all your kind words about the various traumas I endured last week. I'm doing better. The work thing will probably haunt me for a long time, but the actual event is over so at least I can sleep at night. Love continues to be dead, but a reasonable facsimile is still available in the form of Jane Austen novels.

As for Project Runway, I tried to seal up my heart and start separating myself from this season, but then this happened:

That would be a childhood photo of Dmitry, dressed up in what appears to be a drum major uniform with extra rickrack. As part of a challenge about personal and cultural heritage, the designers were surprised by visits from loved ones and shown photos from their past. Dmitry started crying when his friend Irina played him a video of his father in Belarus, offering words of encouragement. It was a heart-melting moment. 

Look! He already has an affinity for blonde ladies!

(For the record I'm aware that Dmitry is probably gay. Not to make blanket judgments about opposite-sex friendships, but the presence of a lifelong, female best friend is a possibly an indicator. His low V-neck t-shirts are another. But who cares? He also probably doesn't live in a Dracula castle either.)

THEN not only did Dreamy Dmitry go on to win the challenge, but we found out that next week they were going to be dressing the Rockettes. At first I was worried for him, but then another blog pointed out that Dmitry "Strictly Ballroom" Sholokov might have this one in the bag. Oh yeah. He used to be a ballroom dancer and probably learned to sew by making his own costumes. I bet he practically grew up in stretch polyester. 

Contemplating this, Olivia and I proceeded to have the following offensive conversation:

"Yeah, I feel like Eastern Europeans love their sparkles."

"For all I know sequins are the national currency of Belarus."

"In old country we put sequin on everything."

"But then we have great sequin drought of 1987."

"Yes, it was very difficult time. Is why I come to America."

Ah Dmitry, you know I'm just jealous because if I ever had to turn to my family heritage for a fashion challenge, I'd be stuck trying to reinvent the Mennonite head covering. 

Everything is Terrible.

Here is why this week really sucked, in reverse order of suckitude:

3. Dreamy Dmitry made an ugly finale collection

If you know me, you know I love Project Runway. I own the first five seasons on DVD and used to clear my schedule whenever it was on. But the move to Lifetime has been rough, and I thought a low point had been reached when Gretchen won instead of Mondo in Season 8. But the real low point was when I just stopped watching Season 9 because I realized I was dreading each episode and I felt actively anxious and unhappy while watching. I made it through All-Stars but it felt like a chore. 

So I was pretty sure I was going to watch little, if any, of Season 10. But Olivia and I ended up watching a few and got hooked, mainly because we fell in love with Dmitry Sholokov, the hilarious, ballroom dancing Belarusian who looks like younger, hotter incarnation of Professer Snape. His thick-accented quips have single-handedly brought the joy of Project Runway back into my life. 

So far, he has made some great dresses but hasn't won a challenge. I was hoping his "always the bridesmaid never the bride" story would be similar to that of Jay McCarroll, who uttered that line just before producing one of the best finale collections to date and winning Season 1. But this week the remaining designers showed at fashion week and Dmitry's was...kinda bad. Which means he won't win. Then again none of the collections were particularly exciting, so once again, a season of Project Runway is destined to collapse into one giant letdown. 

2. Love Is Dead

I probably shouldn't be dreaming of moving to Eastern Europe so I can live in a castle and have pale babies with Dmitry because the news came this week that love is dead and we should all give up.  

If you have been wondering why people are sobbing openly in the streets or why pints of Ben & Jerry's are sold out at your local grocery store, you must not have heard that all-time awesome couple Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are breaking up. 

Every time I chuckled with schadenfreude over some overexposed celebrity couple going bust, I wondered if I was just hard-hearted toward love and if I would ever be upset to hear about the break up of two people I don't know. And for years the answer was obvious: Amy and Will. Besides both being two of the funniest people I can think of, they seemed like they really had a loving, respectful, fun, equal marriage. 

So if they can't make it work, it means that love must be broken and that we should all just crawl into bed with a box of doughnuts and commence eating our feelings. 

1. Ugh

This week something very, very frustrating happened at work and it appears that there is nothing I can do about it. Since this is a public blog, I can't tell you about it, but I can tell you that my level of sheer rage on the subject has had me listening to Mozart's Queen of the Night aria on repeat for cathartic comfort. If you're not familiar, here is a clip. 

Yep. That is pretty much how I feel.

The Beefy Arms Brigade

On Monday at the new museum, I had the exciting task of monitoring the moving crew while they worked with some of our larger artifacts. Basically that meant I was supposed to watch them with a steely, judgmental stare that says "under normal circumstances I would rip your head off for touching an artifact like that, but that thing weighs 1400 pounds so I suppose I need your help to move it." The project included taking the wheels off of a cart and reassembling it in a gallery, and moving our famous racist fish-gutting machine into place.

After watching for a little while, I realized I was actually having fun witnessing the whole process. It was just so different than my normal workday. I work mostly with women, and manual tasks are completed slowly and methodically. Fabrics get vacuumed with brush attachments that aren't much bigger than a quarter, and an entire canoe can get cleaned with a q-tip. But here was this pack of tough guys hammering axels into place, bracing things with giant pieces of wood, and using exciting tools like "winches" and "bottle jacks." For both projects they had ingenious, well thought-out plans for how to move the objects carefully and methodically, but there were still a few moments where the best option was "hand me the hammer," or "let's just see what happens if we push it really hard."

Later that week, as I was sewing padding to male mannequin arms to make them look beefier, I was struck by the bizarre presence of the faux men I have in my work life. And no, that isn't some cruel comment about the dudes who work at MOHAI-- I'm talking about this house of horrors:

That would be the mannequin that I made the aforementioned beefy arms for. How would you feel if you turned on the light in your office one morning and saw that? 

Eventually, he will have hair and hands, and will be wearing a hat, vest, tuxedo jacket, pants, and shoes. But right now he looks like some sort of pants-less, nubby-handed Frankenstein monster. 

This then brought to mind my other favorite creep-tastic collections photo:

This is Black Bart, a quick-draw cowboy arcade game from the 1962 World's Fair. Here we see him back from the conservator (where he got some face-work) and tucked into his packing crate. His shirt was removed so it could be replaced with a prop shirt.

But seriously, the whole scene with the plastic, the covered head, the tight pants, the bare chest, and the gun at the ready, it looks like he was the victim of some sex game gone awry and now his killer is trying to dispose of the evidence.

Nice arms though. 

True Tales of the Antiques Roadshow

About two months ago I got an email that the local PBS station was looking for people to volunteer for Antiques Roadshow. The deal was you had to be willing to show up at 6:30 am on a Saturday, and then work on your feet for a twelve hour day. In payment you would get a free Antiques Roadshow polo shirt, two meals, and two appraisals by the experts. I thought, "You had me at free Antiques Roadshow polo shirt."

(Just as a warning- this is a long post. If you have always wanted to know the inner working of Antiques Roadshow, this is your lucky day. If you barely care, skip to the last paragraph for the #1 best part of the story.)

We had training on the Friday before and got our jobs assigned. Some assignments seemed uninteresting, but also low pressure (standing at the front door and greeting people) and others seemed exciting and high pressure (working with the camera crew but wearing a headset and running around all day). In the end, I played my cards exactly right and found the perfect job: working on the set, directing people into the line for the Rugs and Textile appraisals.

When the day started, I chatted with the appraisers and tried to casually let it slip that I knew a bit about fashion and was sort of an expert on local stuff. One of them was actually interested, and before I knew it I had him jotting down notes about John Doyle Bishop.

The set at the beginning of the day before the hoards arrived

Most of the day consisted of managing a line of people. Basically the Antiques Roadshow set is one big circle, with tables of appraisers along the interior perimeter. In the center of the circle is the filming crew and the areas for the on-camera appraisals. The appraisers are divided into categories (pottery, furniture, Asian art, prints), and there is supposed to be a short line in front of every table. When you watch the show, you see lots of people milling around in the background: these are people lined up for appraisals and the volunteers trying to jostle them into the right position. On the outside of the big circle are much, much longer lines for each category. My job was to walk people from the longer hidden line, into the shorter on-set line, and to keep people from sneaking directly into the shorter line. Going to the Antiques Roadshow means lots and lots of waiting (6,000 people came through with two items each), so the main thing that was stressful was dealing with grumpy people in the longer line. By the time they saw me, most had been waiting in different kinds of lines for several hours. But after a few seemingly-tense situations, I discovered that the biggest grumps transformed into cheerful, wide-eyed folk as soon as I led them on set.

Speaking of waiting, I realized that if you were excited about the possibility of getting an on-camera appraisal, you should be careful what you wish for. If an appraiser thought you had a TV-worthy story they would call a volunteer like me over, I would go to the volunteer in my section with a headset, and he would send in a request for a producer to come to the table. The owner of the object was sent away to wait, and when the producer came over the appraiser pitched the story to them and they decided if it is camera-worthy. Getting on television is also the goal of the appraisers because it means exposure for them and their business. So at any given time, there are a number of appraisers wanting to speak to the producer. At one point, there were people with objects waiting an hour and a half just to have the producer come over and decide if they were going to get filmed. IF they were picked for filming (sometimes they weren't) they would go into the green room to get makeup and wait to be called onto set. That wait could also stretch into an hour plus.

One thing that really surprised me was how much time the appraisers at my table spent with each person. I had three experts: Connie and Steven who specialized mostly in vintage clothing and accessories, and Jim the carpet guy. All of them spent at least five minutes, and sometimes what seemed like as much as 15 or 20 with each person. It made the line move excruciatingly slow, but I don't think anyone walked way unhappy from the table. Never once did someone get a "Meh. $10. NEXT!" appraisal. No matter the value, each item got the appraiser's full attention and they told the person as much as they could.

When it was time for my own appraisals, I found out that not every table worked that way. The line for textiles was long, but some of the lines, like painting, were INSANE and so the appraisers had to work very quickly. I brought in two pottery pieces that my parents owned that we had reason to believe were somewhat interesting and possibly valuable. I saw a different appraiser for each one, but I felt like both pieces were dealt with hastily and dismissed as unimportant. I was told one was "the type of thing you see a lot at garage sales" and the other was "only $300 to $500." I walked away defeated, but later realized that they could have told me all the same information in a better way and I would have felt a lot better. $300 to $500 for a tiny tea bowl that my Dad got for free?? Hot dog!

The day ended up being longer than planned. At our 6:30 release time there were still some substantial lines, so we all just kept going. Finally at 8, when most of the lines were done or at least down to the people inside the set, they told us to go home (the appraisers apparently stayed until the last appraisal was done). I was exhausted, but it was an awesome, fascinating, totally worth-it day. They said they would make Seattle into three episodes, airing sometime in early 2013. I think there is a good chance that the back of my head will be in a shot somewhere!

Ok, but I saved the best story for last. In the middle of the day, the appraiser I had connected with in the morning called me over by name (to be fair, I had a giant name tag on) to come look at something. In front of me was a woman with several hats. "What can you tell us about John Eaton?" he asked.  I couldn't believe it! As a museum person I couldn't say anything about value (I didn't really know anyway) but I talked about his store, his career as a milliner, and his legacy as a teacher. I even slipped in something about Gigi and Voulez-Vous. I shared my knowledge with this nationally recognized appraiser and got to tell the owner of the hats something interesting that she didn't know. Totally worth waking up at 5:30 am and standing around for 13 hours!

Exotic International Weekend Getaway

Last weekend I went to Vancouver! I rolled into town via my favorite transportation method (train) and was shown around by my awesome friend Danielle. Highlights included taking advantage of the nearly equal exchange rate to buy things I didn't need, visiting the Asian "night market" where we ate fried bananas and visited a booth that was selling bouquets made of stuffed animal heads, and watching Canadian coverage of the Olympics. We also saw an outdoor movie showing of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which I had never seen before. It was...sort of bad. I thought the three other than Crystal Skull were the good ones but it was pretty racist and had a terrible love interest who squealed "I broke a nail" at least twice. Can I get some validation here? Am I speaking Indiana Jones blasphemy?

I also saw the single coolest piece of NW Coast Native art ever:

Really highlights the terrifying "I have eight legs and a beak" quality of the octopus

But the big reason I was there was to take in a fashion exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver.

Jazz Hands!

It was called "Art Deco Chic" and was about clothing in the 1920s and 1930s. Besides the fantastic dresses, what really excited me about it was that the exhibition was within reach of what could be done at MOHAI. It was beautiful and engaging, but it wasn't on the level of the MET or the Museum at FIT where all the mannequins match and each room has some elaborate set. This was an impressive show at a local history museum.

You bitches are just jealous because I have real hair

The mannequins were really interesting because they didn't all match. They were clearly cobbled together from a few different sources and the curators had to do a lot of work trying to put the right dress with the right form. 

"Don't lose your heads over it! Ha Ha!" [elbow jab]

Mostly, it worked. I can't remember any being particularly creepy or strange.  

Oh wait, now I remember. Aunt Mavis there on the right seemed like she had wandered into the wrong show.

They also had some really cool accessories, particularly this purse shaped like a VW bug.

Pay no attention to the decapitated green bear in the foreground

I left brimming with ideas and dreaming of the day when I would get to put on my own fashion exhibition. And wondering if I would ever be fabulous enough to pull off a hoodie dress. 

Cheating on my Boyfriend

My co-leader for the summer walking tour I am leading (tickets on sale now!!) jokes that John Doyle Bishop is my "boyfriend" because I'm so excited by any and all things JDB. I always sort of roll my eyes at the joke because being born 70 years apart is just ONE of the reasons why I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work out between us.

But if we go with it, and decide that my "type" is fabulous gay men who worked in fashion in Seattle before I was born, then this week I definitely cheated on my boyfriend. This week I met John Eaton.

It all started innocently enough. One of my coworkers in the library was processing a new collection and came across a reference to a designer named John Eaton. Since no one seemed to know anything we started searching. First someone found an ebay listing for a photo of him. Then I found an article in the Seattle Times historical database. Before long, we knew the following things: 1) While he did design clothes his specialty was hats. He had a shop across the street from Frederick & Nelson called "John Eaton, Of Course!" and later in life he taught millinery classes in Seattle. 2) In the 1960s he was living with his "business partner" James Neher and two poodles named Gigi and Voulez-vous. Now, I don't want to jump to conclusions about men who live with other men and own poodles, but I think the implication there is pretty clear.

Be still my heart!

The more I looked, the more there was to love. First of all, it looks like he was pretty much the biggest deal in hats the city has ever had. His shop was one thing, but his major legacy was his teaching. I saw one quote that claimed all milliners currently working in Seattle either learned directly from him or from one of his students. Second, it turns out that my hunch about him being gay wasn't just an educated guess. In the 1980s the Seattle Times did a feature about gay couples in Seattle and "Jim and John" were included as a happy couple that had been together 33 years. When faced with snide remarks, James said "we chose to ignore it and act like gentlemen."

I can't wait to find out more about Eaton and let more people know about his awesomeness. Tragically for you, if you are interested in those ebay listings for the photos you see in this post, too bad. I already snapped them up. I also bought a hat of his on etsy.

Hmm. I just got a vision of myself on an upcoming episode of hoarders. My apartment will be filled to the gills with old Nordstrom ads, packages of vintage John Doyle Bishop hosiery, and Bon Marche shopping bags, and the therapist will pull something out of the rubble and say "Now, do you really need this photograph of a man and two poodles? Is he even related to you? I'm going to throw this away," and I'll be like "Noooo! I'm saving it for HISTORY."