Are you into summer festival fashion?
Once upon a time, a pilgrimage to a music festival meant piling into a Winnebago, discarding your inhibitions and, well, just following the music, man. These days, however, it isn't just free love and folk bands that are drawing crowds to the multitude of open-air concert venues across the country and beyond: There is also the promise of a good fashion show. Festival dressing, in all of its calculated, straight-from-the-tents glory, has made the mud-soaked stumble to the bandstand as important as the strut down a designer's runway.
"We've always felt that the festivals are like street style on steroids," says Shannon Davenport, the youth market editor for Stylesight, a trend-forecasting agency based in New York. "Part of what's interesting is that people do dress up. It's related to this street style phenomenon and they put a lot of effort into getting snapped."
"For my job," she adds, "I think about runway season and festival season."
The precise moment when peace signs gave way to paparazzi flashes can be traced to 2005, when Kate Moss, the supermodel and professional rock-star paramour, was spotted wading through the muck at Britain's Glastonbury festival in a pair of Hunter wellies. Thanks to Moss and that moment, the previously utilitarian boots have achieved a mainstream style status that lingers. At the recent men's spring 2011 shows, avant-garde designer Junya Watanabe paired rubber boots with overalls in a slew of functional looks that might appeal to farmers and festival-goers alike.
"People are walking around city streets looking like they're at a summer festival," says Lauren Toyota, a MuchMusic host who has been covering fashion at high-profile concerts such as Coachella in California this season. "Everything seems to mimic that now."
"I think clothes in general are becoming more functional and casually acceptable, but people are becoming more adventurous, meeting somewhere between fashion and function," she adds. "It's [akin]to an alternative fashion week."
This season, Toyota notes, big floppy hats (such as the one Rihanna sported recently at Coachella) and summer scarves as the most visible items to make it from the outdoor venue to the mainstream.
"The overarching theme is always hippie and bohemian. It's this Woodstock, idealized young mentality," says Randi Bergman, who, as online editor for FASHION, has been covering street style at festivals for the magazine's online hub. During her recent trip to Bonnaroo, the four-day fest in Tennessee, she spotted free spirits sporting feathers in every form.
"Feather headdresses, like the ones by [Toronto-based label]Headmistress, are getting bigger. We're seeing lots of feathers being [adopted]into everyday fashion," Bergman says.
It's no secret that designers are often inspired by young people, Davenport says, but many have been reinterpreting looks first spawned at festivals into sophisticated staples suitable for those beyond their teenage years. Those floppy hats, for example? Marc Jacobs' free-flowing collection for spring was brimming with them.
"Take something like crop tops," Davenport adds. "We've seen them out a lot in previous years and I've always wondered how that could ever leave the realm of a festival. But we've seen so many sophisticated interpretations on the runways recently or [the tops]paired with high-waisted trousers and a jacket on real women."
Such tops notwithstanding, there seems to be a new modesty inching into festival garb thanks to longer, decidedly bohemian skirts and dresses, a hit among women stomping through both fields and urban jungles.
"At the most optimal, it's a great inspiration for weekend style for women," Davenport says. "For the older customer, it proves that you can dress casually and still look good."
Indeed, the diverse lineups at this year's Coachella fest (where acts as varied as Duran Duran and Kanye West performed) or the upcoming week-long Osheaga event in Montreal (where headliners from Elvis Costello to Eminem are slated to appear) reflect just how much music festivals - as well as dressing for them - have become more about lifestyle choices and less about age brackets.
Now, where is that Winnebago parked again?
Meet the band
What's a music-festival shoot without musicians? Enter The Beauties, the riotous house band at Toronto's Dakota Tavern, where they formed during an informal jam in 2006 and maintain a popular Sunday night residency. This summer, the guys - Darin McConnell, Shawn Creamer, Jud Ruhl, Paul Pfisterer and Derek Downham - hop on the tour bus for festival season with a slew of performances that should prove to be as wild as their gigs in Toronto's west end. After this weekend's Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia, Ont., look for them at the Hillside Festival in Guelph, where they'll be playing two shows in a row - one with Serena Ryder and another with Broken Social Scene front man Kevin Drew. For more dates, check out www.thebeauties.ca.