Croatia - Freaky Fashion Force
When Croatia's fashion army offered to pay for British designers to show at the country's biggest fashion event, bags were packed before you could say 'International Peace-keeping Force'. What followed was a strange mixture of the bizarre and the brilliantly weird.
June 1996 and all is quiet on the fashion calender. The sleepy resort of Rijeka is an exception. Designers and fashion fans from across Croatia have gathered here for a four day celebration of fashion innovation which includes a contingent of British designers many of whom are visiting the country for the first time.
UK fashion and style zine 'Blow' lead the brigade which includes Earley Palmiero, Brian of Britain, Anthony Gammon, Suture, and Mickey Brazil. The designers are here to show their wares to what they hope will be a receptive audience. They are also here to experience the Croatian fashion scene - yes, that's right. Croatian designers have yet to establish any sort of international fashion reputation, but they're passionately pushing fashion forward as the new creative expression of this independent state. It's early days for a country which is still licking the wounds of the most brutal civil war in recent history, and everyone has got to start somewhere...
Fashion News is the collective responsible for the four day event. They've been organising bi-annual Croation fashion extravaganzas for the past six years. For the British designers, it's a golden opportunity to show their clothes. As Brian of Britain's Zowie comments, "it's great that we were actually paid to go and show our clothes on a catwalk. Our government would never do that."
For an entire four days Rijeka rocks with fashion. Streams of designers, models, teenagers and dogs (part of the proceeds from the final show are for a local dog shelter) parade on the pavements. Radio Fashion News interviews fashoids round the clock. On the day of the show, all is chaos. Croatian designers have paid to take part - but some are so short of funds that they can only afford to show a couple of outfits. All the models are decked out in strange wigs and their make-up is styled in true alien extra for 'Star Trek' mode. Dogs donning sunglasses, jumpers and jewellery take centre stage. For five hours the audience sit and endure collection after collection. The cost of showing (and the heady excitement) means that most models are very reluctant to leave the stage. A collection comprising just a handful of outfits hogs the stage for a quarter of an hour. The drag queen hostess is unperturbed by this and soldiers on. Backstage the Brits are having a fit at the hair and make-up. How can their clothes look good on models with uniform hair blonde pieces and stripes across their faces?
The venue is covered in straw presenting a very real fire risk (which no one seems to mind about). It's supposed to look like a dog kennel, in reference to the pooches who'll be pocketing the proceeds. After five long hours it's finally over and time to party. Not that the Brits haven't been hard at it since they arrived. Ask any of them and they'll confess their stress was considerably lessened by a large quantity of herbal in what's been described as "the biggest deal in the country's history. We're talking big bargain." Their hosts Fashion News lay on a big after show do at a local castle - the splash is rumoured to be for the launch of an EMI boys band. More drag queens appear. The dogs, the teenage models, outfits made from sacking, orange hairdos, Croatian fashion egos and a LIVE tv crew all twinkle and mingle into a shitfaced haze. When the British depart, they leave with feelings of numb disbelief at the ridiculously surreal nature of the fashion circus Croatian style. Perhaps the dogs were just a collective hallucination.
What the designers say about Fashion Croatia
Suture - Philip and Tom of diffusion label Suture walked away with the 'Pret A Porter' award for their collection which Tom says, "was called Ivan, supposedly playing on the idea of an Oscar - only Ivan looks like an Oscar that has been left on a radiator and melted."
Philip: "I remember so many things - the 24 hour shop that's called 'Drug Store' but doesn't sell rizlas. We were told the party at the castle was a launch for a new EMI boy band but they were some kind of political outfit who were dressed as Croatian peasant women and stripped all their clothes off after doing King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man' to which we British designers all did some frenzied disco dancing."
Tom: "My overriding memory is of fifty-two drum majorettes piling out of a record shop with no batons and James from 'Blow' magazine trying to suck off the leader of the boy band who had a two-and-a-half foot long strap-on penis and hairy balls."
Anthony Gammon
Award-winning menswear supremo Anthony Gammon is a Croatian veteran. This was his third trip to the Croatian fashion extravaganza.
"It was hysterical. The Croatian designers are intimidated by us Brits because they don't have any fabric, they always seem to use sacking. It's as if they have never seen a proper fashion show before. There was more mince on that catwalk than in any butcher's shop and apparently the Croatian Minister of Culture is a big drug baron. I met him and he has the hairiest chest I've ever seen. I was awarded the 'Studio Art Design' award but I still haven't had it. They said the award was going to be a photograph of me receiving my award, which was a photograph of me receiving the award..."
Brian of Britain
Zowie and Brian received two awards for Best Collection and the IFF Crystal Label Award for Outstanding Fashion Design. (See some of their wares in this month's Diva Ascending shoot). Zowie recollects the experience.
"The whole thing was too weird for words. It was bizarre and surreal. The village was a lovely fantastical place and the people lovely, but everything was very strange - even the hotel with its huge long corridors which went on forever was a surreal experience. At the show everyone wore these ceramic necklaces, there was straw everywhere and the host was Liz Taylor in drag. I remember sitting watching the collections on these TV monitors totally shitfaced. It's only afterwards you realise how much fun it really was."