“Sequins are great to wear for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” announces Mickey Boardman while sitting cross-legged in his Lower Manhattan apartment. It’s a cozy boîte that explodes with colour and kitsch from every available space, thanks to his predilection for anything rainbow-hued and charmingly retro.
As the editorial director of Paper magazine, where he interned in the early 1990s while still a fashion student at Parsons The New School, Boardman has been a fixture on the international style scene for over two decades. When he was younger, he was the only person he knew who had a Members Only jacket, and he splurged on a pair of Saint Laurent pants. As he acclimatized to New York’s vivacious nightlife scene, his signature style morphed into “a shell top or ladies’ blouse with some kind of hand-painted print” along with a chandelier necklace and pants that he had cut into clam diggers. The finishing touches were Pearl River Mart flip-flops “and a weird bag,” he says.
Mickey Boardman at home in New York.With pieces ranging from brands like H&M to Chanel and Lanvin, Boardman’s wardrobe is truly an example of fashion egalitarianism.
Today, Boardman is known for ensembles that combine casual items like Lacoste polo shirts (of which he purports to own hundreds) with dazzlingly tactile pieces, primarily of the sequined variety. It’s no surprise that Boardman, who was born in 1966, has a penchant for high-octane glamour. “I loved Bob Mackie, I loved The Carol Burnett Show and I loved Cher,” he says about the early influences on his taste for anything flashy. “I call my aesthetic ‘1960s Supremes in Las Vegas.’”
With its abundance of sequins, bugle beads and crystal-encrusted accoutrements, Boardman’s wardrobe could easily outshine the costume closets of many showgirls. Flashy shoes, cardigans, trousers, necklaces, brooches… If it has bling factor, Boardman will wear it; he owns dozens of embellished pieces by brands like Lanvin, Junya Watanabe, Dries Van Noten, Gucci and H&M’s Conscious.
However, there is one name that appears more than the others in Boardman’s closet. He has a growing stockpile of glittering delights made by London-based designer Ashish Gupta, including a customized match- ing shirt and bomber jacket emblazoned with his nickname, “Mr. Mickey.” Boardman recalls a show of Gupta’s that he saw during London Fashion Week; it was the designer’s Spring 2015 collection, which contained pieces featuring the faces of Kim Kardashian (before she became Paper’s internet-breaking muse), Kanye West and the members of One Direction – all made with sequins. “My brain was exploding,” he says.
Call it animal attraction – Boardman owns multiple pieces from London label Ashish, including separates in big cat and zebra prints. Here, he wears an eclectic ensemble with shoes by Junya Watanabe.An audacious customized shirt by Ashish looks right at home next to Boardman’s wide-ranging art collection. Some of the works on the wall were done by eccentric comedian Phyllis Diller.
Gupta has an unparalleled ability to create intricate and flamboyant designs, drawing influence from his ancestral India as well as pop culture references; his Fall 2017 collection contained pieces emblazoned with meme-able phrases like “More Glitter Less Twitter.” His mishmash of inspirations intrigues Boardman, who is himself a culture enthusiast. Boardman is also what you’d describe as a fierce fan of fashion – the resplendence and individuality of it all. “I worship anyone who’s committed to their look, whether that’s Rick Owens or Lynn Yaeger or Catherine Baba,” he says.
An obsession with the power of style and the persona has been a lifelong one for Boardman. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, flicking through fashion magazines while in his preteen years. He fondly recalls his mother’s evening aesthetic in the ’70s, which included a floor-length vest, bell bottoms and platform shoes, and the first two purchases he ever made at Barneys New York: a Missoni sweater and an Emilio Pucci shirt. (Prior to that, most of his eclectic wardrobe items came from thrift shops.) And he remembers exactly what he wore on the first day of first grade: a pink shirt with monkey heads printed on it and maroon pants featuring a fish motif. Boardman truly relished any opportunity to make a fabulous statement. “When I was four, I asked to be Cinderella for Halloween,” he says.
Procured from the Chicago store Ikram, Boardman’s Betina shirt (complete with 3-D floral neckline detail) pops beside a sculpture by artist Monica Valentine, who is blind. He came to know her work through Creative Growth, a Californian non-profit that provides support for artists with disabilities.
Despite many of his fledgling fashion dreams being indulged, Boardman has faced challenges in living out his sartorial fantasies because of his weight. He’s a member of WW (formerly Weight Watchers) and works with a personal trainer and does yoga to stay healthy. One Chicago-based retailer has become his fashion fairy godmother. Ikram Goldman, whose eponymous boutique has become a favourite outpost for those seeking eye-catching designs, has been instrumental in teaching Boardman that with a little tailoring, the world can be his oyster. “She wanted to give me a present around Christmas one year,” says Boardman, but he couldn’t fit into anything in her shop.
After he pointed to a sparkly Proenza Schouler top and lamented that it wouldn’t work for him, Goldman replied, “Oh yeah?” Boardman did a fitting with a tailor Goldman brought in, and panels were added to the sides of the shirt. “It was a shock; it opened things up to me,” says Boardman. “Ikram has ordered extra fabric from Ashish and other designers for me, and she can make anything fit any person.”
A pair of shorts from Ashish’s Fall 2018 collection hangs amid Boardman’s overflowing collection of books (the topics of which range from art to the histories of various royal families).In addition to owning an array of showy clothing (pictured here are a jacket by Gucci and a top by Ashish), Boardman has a selection of equally eye-catching jewellery, including an heirloom ring from his grand- mother and a customized pendant necklace from New York-based brand Alexis Bittar.
The Proenza Schouler top that Boardman acquired from Goldman features prominently in a story that speaks volumes about his status as a style icon. “I was at this glamorous party,” he recalls. “It was an uptown thing – I was shocked I was even invited.” Boardman wore the shirt that night, with his tuxedo, and at one point realized that another guest, actress Liv Tyler, was wearing the same top.
“I prefer women’s clothes because they’re fabulous, not because I want to be a woman or have a gender issue,” he explains. The Tyler sighting made Boardman feel quite chuffed, but one of fashion’s most beloved stars would give him an even bigger boost that evening. When event and street-style photographer Bill Cunningham noticed Boardman’s ensemble, he immediately asked if he could take Boardman’s picture with another fashionista at the party. “He asked if I had seen Iris Apfel,” says Boardman, “and dragged me around to find her.” Afterwards, Cunningham sent Boardman a photocopy of the duo’s picture with a note written on it that couldn’t be more fitting: “This is fashion.”
While the sweatsuit was admittedly not something we predicted would be the It item of 2020, it’s undeniable that was the case. If you had the ability to work from home where Zoom meetings only required you to look presentable from the waist up, jeans and skirts were immediately swapped for sweatpants.
Athleisure has been a trend for years now, but it wasn’t leggings we were drawn to during lockdowns, particularly in the winter months. As Anne Donahue wrote in a 2006 essay defending sweatpants, yoga pants may be comfortable, but they offer neither coziness nor warmth – things we were all in desperate need of in 2020.
“I don’t see sloppiness or the abandonment of one’s stylistic brand – instead, I see liberation,” wrote Donahue of choosing to wear sweatsuits. “Liberation of fitted pieces that we all need a break from, and liberation from the self-imposed fashion police who condemn simultaneously looking and feeling comfortable.”
Looking to 2021, we’re not done with the desire for comfort just yet. Designers like Thakoon, Prada, Tibi and Balenciaga showed sweatshirts and sweatpants on the spring runways. If you’re in need of a fresh pair of sweatpants or a matching sweatsuit set, click through the slideshow below featuring options some of our favourite Canadian brands like Kotn, Knix, Brunette the Label, Sidia, Tkees and more, at all price points.
The year I started wearing the hijab – the head scarf some Muslim women wear — was also the year I got braces and glasses. It was the mid-2000s, I was about to enter high school and it was the heyday of melodramatic teenage insecurities, fuelled by cinema classics such as Mean Girls and High School Musical. Unbeknownst to me at 13, I had teetered dramatically away from conventional beauty standards in a time when they were far more narrowly defined than they are today.
Soon, however, the hijab would seamlessly fit into my fashion and beauty regimen. In a quest to stand out in the suburbs of Western Canada, in a city where many people were South Asian like me, I found hijabs to match my clothes: in neon hues, bedazzled with sequins and in prints from cheetah to floral. My makeup matched these colours, and I swapped a hair routine for a hijab routine. (Yes, there were bad hijab days.)
About a decade later, at age 22 and in my last semester of university, I decided to stop wearing
the physical marker of faith. As if I were a teenager again, I found myself learning things anew, from how to style my hair to how tied my perception of beauty was to the male gaze.
As a hijabi, I fantasized about all of the different hairstyles I wanted to try: wearing French braids, donning extensions and even dyeing my whole head purple. Ironically, the most avant-garde hair decision I’ve made to date is to let a friend bleach the ends of it in their bathtub one summer. Most days I simply wash my hair, haphazardly rub in some curl cream and hold out till I’m confronted with a frizzy pouf.
Despite these fantasies, I found it easy to embrace modest beauty and fashion trends, part of a growing but still novel industry in the mid- to late 2000s. I even started my own fashion blog in high school to document my outfits, which helped me connect with hijabi bloggers from Indonesia to Italy. One day while I was strolling the beach in Vancouver with some other friends who were also wearing hijabs, a woman came up to us. “You all look beautiful in that!” she exclaimed, pointing to our heads. “Just stunning!”
While I was basking in the glow of her compliment, one of my friends turned to our group and said worriedly: “See, this is why we shouldn’t even get our eyebrows done! The point of the hijab isn’t to attract attention to our beauty.” I nodded along with the others, confused. I knew that the hijab was worn as an expression of modesty, but what’s the harm in looking good? And what did plucking our eyebrows have to do with anything?
It was then that I began to understand why some people had left comments on my blog that were variations of “Hijab is not a fashion statement!” These were among the first few questions I would have about the hijab and then later about women in Islam and eventually Islam itself – or at least the mainstream Sunni interpretation of it.
As my belief in the religion waned, the hijab began to lose meaning for me. My daily ritual of wrapping fabric around my head began to feel cumbersome – even irritating. I knew I couldn’t continue wearing it. I also knew that there would be repercussions and that I’d never look back.
The first day I stepped out of the house without a hijab, almost six years ago, the winter wind nipped my ears and blew my bangs in my face. I felt like everyone was staring, but of course they weren’t. I had matched my eyeshadow to my blue dress and wore dangly ear rings that, for the first time, weren’t peeking out from behind a scarf.
“Unveiling” – from colonial Algeria to present-day Iran – has long been seen as a liberating act to many in the West. Now that I’ve stepped from one world to the next, I’ve taken on new burdens. Becoming agnostic opened up a new world of dating and sex, and I soon became fixated on presenting myself so men would find me attractive.
As I try now, in my late 20s, to feel beautiful without validation from men, while at the same time shedding binary ideas from my Muslim upbringing about modesty and hypersexualization, my style and beauty looks are a combination of my entire past. Sometimes I wear short dresses with plunging necklines; other times I opt for shirts with a looser fit. Sometimes I do a full face of makeup; other times I’ll go bare. One thing hasn’t changed, however: how many different colours you’ll see me sporting at once.
As consumers move away from purchasing mass-made goods – because of their toll on the earth and its inhabitants – brands that showcase handcrafted artisanal techniques are poised to win admiration the world over. From intricately beaded works of art to elevated wardrobe basics, there’s no scarcity of wonders offering the irreplaceable value of the deeply unique.
AAKS
AAKS Tia Ruffle
Akosua Afriyie-Kumi launched her line of vibrant hand-woven accessories after moving from Ghana to the United Kingdom and studying fashion design. “It was difficult to find a job after,” she says. The industry was saturated with hopefuls, and fast fashion still dominated. “I always wanted to start my own brand, but I didn’t know which direction to go in,” says Afriyie-Kumi. “I remembered that when I was a child in Ghana, we had lots of baskets. You would see a lot of weavers selling their handicrafts on the roadside. I started thinking ‘Why hasn’t anybody done something new with this?’ That was my light-bulb moment – to focus on this craftsmanship and these ideas and turn them into something someone in London or New York or Spain would appreciate.”
With some motherly nudging – “My mom would visit me in London and say ‘Why don’t you come back to Ghana?’” – Afriyie-Kumi began to formulate the idea for AAKS. “I started looking for weavers in the South,” she recalls of her return to her native roots.
“Through research, I realized that most basket weavers are based in the North.” After making the 10-hour trek, Afriyie-Kumi was able to connect with talented makers, and her team has grown from three to 30 as AAKS has caught the attention of an international audience. Mere months after the label’s launch, multi-brand retailer Anthropologie reached out to Afriyie-Kumi to carry her wares, and now AAKS can be found in various stores worldwide. A collaborative tote with the hip ready-to-wear label Rag & Bone launched in August.
It’s all a heady departure from AAKS’s humble beginnings. “I spent about two years under a tree, working with the weavers and developing my samples,” says Afriyie- Kumi. “Of course, it sounds so easy talking about it now, but it was so hard to begin. There was a language barrier, and trying to get my ideas into 3-D with the weavers was difficult. I was trying to do something a bit different.”
Weaving in Ghana goes back thousands of years. “I’m still doing research into how it all began and why it’s done,” she says. “When I speak to my weavers, they tell me it’s something they’ve been doing since they were young. Your dad is a weaver, your mom is a weaver, so you weave as a little kid. All the kids in the community can weave, but with training, they can weave something of a higher standard.”
Afriyie-Kumi has achieved such prowess in developing this kind of infrastructure that she was tapped to participate in the launch of a training program started by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and has since become a partner in the initiative. “They saw my work and thought ‘Perfect,’” she says. “I was working with weavers already so I could help them set up this new program.” The result was AAKS’s Weaving for Change line of home decor items.
Afriyie-Kumi acknowledges that her collaborative approach is time-consuming—even parallel to that of creating an haute couture gown. “In general, it takes about a week to make one product,” she says. “First, we have to source the fibres and transport them to the weavers – it takes three days or more before they even get the raw materials. They twist them, dye them and dry them. Then they begin to weave.”
Products are sent to AAKS’s studio for finishing before they are dispatched to a growing legion of fans. “Before I moved back to Ghana, there was a lot of talk about fast fashion,” says Afriyie-Kumi about what differentiates her designs – ones that have resonated even more greatly, she notes, since the Black Lives Matter movement felt a groundswell this summer. “I always remember that I never wanted to go into that market. I wanted to do something that was handmade. This is where my story began.”
Julia Heuer
Trained as a textile designer, Julia Heuer first learned about the Japanese dyeing technique of Arashi Shibori when she was an exchange student in Copenhagen. She was drawn to its simplicity and nearly instant gratification. “It’s exactly how I like to work,” says the Germany-based creative. “It offers very quick results, but it’s handmade.” It also affords Heuer and her team the ability to work in a satisfyingly-scaled-back way. “You just need a tube for wrapping the fabric and you can dye it in hot water,” she describes. No expensive industrial-sized equipment is needed.
Heuer’s adoption of Arashi Shibori (which was developed by Kanezo Suzuki as a way to create an all-over pattern on fabrics and is an innovation of the ancient Shibori method used as far back as the 8th century) means that she’s free from having a strong reliance on suppliers – and that’s certainly helpful given the global limitations on manufacturing and shipping presented by COVID-19 this year. “when you’re a textile designer, you usually depend on other companies to produce materials,” she explains. “with this technique, i can do it in my studio – I’m able to do it with my own two hands.”
The designer’s fall collection, titled Funny Animals, draws inspiration from the array of natural prints found on all manner of creatures. Heuer’s offbeat pieces combine digital prints and hand-painted fabrics, and there’s a moment of truth when you see how these effects are realized after the fabric has been given the Shibori treatment. “You have to see if the print works after pleating,” she says of the union between the hand-hewn plissé material and its artistic treatments. “When they work together, they create something new and give the resulting product a certain dynamic that makes it feel immediately right.” Sounds like the ideal kind of fast fashion.
Blu HummingBird Beadwork
“Beading is medicine,” says Brit Ellis, founder of accessory line Blu Hummingbird Beadwork. “It teaches and connects us.” Ellis started her practice after joining a beading circle facilitated by George Brown College in Toronto while she was a student there. “I grew up displaced from community,” says Ellis, who had virtually no ties to her Indigenous background while growing up. “When I was in college, I attended beading circles at the Friendship Centre. I felt a real connection with beading almost immediately.”
Ellis started her brand in 2014, and her creations incorporate both contemporary motifs (cartoon characters, the Toronto Raptors logo) and ones linked to her ancestry – her Moon Medallion pieces are particularly popular. “I’ve always felt really connected to the moon,” she says about why she began crafting the labour-intensive pieces, which can take up to 30 hours to complete. “And I wanted to do beadwork with moon imagery since I started.” Ellis’s attachment to lunar activity and its symbolic link to life cycles has a deeply personal resonance. “I struggled with infertility for about six years; I got very sick and had emergency surgery to remove one of my ovaries,” she explains. “It was a very confusing time. The teachings around Grandmother Moon really helped me feel grounded and connected. They helped me feel hopeful. The cycle and the renewal – it’s all very powerful to me.”
Ellis has explored other deeply intimate motifs in her beading, from human hearts to vulvas. “I’ve beaded a number of them,” she says, adding that many Indigenous community members have “received negative feedback when talking about sexuality and our bodies.” She says she feels fortunate that that has not been her experience. “When I was speaking with my elders about the vulva pieces, I got very positive feedback.”
Bridging generational traditions and practices with contemporary concepts is something Ellis finds deeply gratifying about her beading.
“My Indigeneity is tied to the past, present and future,” she says. “It’s all intertwined. So I memorialize the things that are of interest to me – like my appreciation for the art of drag – in a modern respect. Those things are just as valid an influence. They are a way for me to fully encompass and express – in a full-circle kind of way – my entire self as a Haudenosaunee woman.”
Larkspur & Hawk
“My love of foiling came from my love of antique jewellery,” says New York-based curator turned jewellery entrepreneur Emily Satloff, who founded her line of fine baubles in 2008. Satloff collects what she describes as more “esoteric” jewellery from as far back as 250 years ago, and she has become familiar with the technique of foiling, which involves “lining a closed setting with brightly hued, gold or silver metallic foils.” She was so bewitched by the effects – describing the interplay of light and colour as a “halo”—that she eventually decided she wanted to find a way to interpret the under- recognized technique in an updated way.
Satloff began to educate those who were curious about her antique foiled jewellery. “The more I heard myself talking about it, the more I had a burning private desire to design a bit of it for myself,” she says. But the revitalization of an antiquated technique requires plenty of research, and that wasn’t easy to do with this near-obsolete craft. “There’s no guidebook or recipe for foiling,” she says. “But I had been working with antique jewellery for so long and had seen it in all stages of disrepair, so I basically had a sense of the ways in which people were foiling 200 years ago.”
Satloff says that after she gained a sense of the basics behind the technique, she “played around with faceted gemstones and candy wrappers to see the effects” until she got the cut she was really looking for and then searched for a jeweller who was patient enough to work with her. She describes the foiling technique as “extremely laborious” and notes that because Larkspur & Hawk is a pioneering brand in terms of modernizing the practice, she – once a student – has essentially become a teacher. “Even today, when I start with a new workshop, I train the artisans on how to do things our way,” she says. “It’s not something they’re versed in…. One of the good things about working with an outdated art form is that we don’t have a lot of competition. But with the benefit of leading the way in modern foiling comes the disadvantage of it not featuring a mainstream technique that people immediately know about.”
This lack of awareness means there’s a steep learning curve for Satloff when it comes to customer education. “There is a misunderstanding of whether it’s fine or fashion jewellery, and it’s all fine,” she notes. “We use fine materials, and the pieces are handmade.” Satloff also wants to make it clear that she’s not replicating pieces from days gone by. “I never want to appear to be doing reproductions,” she adds. “If our work is mistaken for a Georgian piece of jewellery, I’ve done my job poorly.”
Osei-Duro
Founded by Maryanne Mathias and Molly Keogh in 2011, this line of contemporary essentials was inspired by Mathias’s travels to various regions of Africa and India – locales she visited while on hiatus from her former fashion label, Hastings and Main. “After getting frustrated with the design industry and wanting a break, i ended up travelling around the world and designing capsule collections in textile-rich countries,” she says. Upon returning to Canada, Mathias recruited Keogh to join her in launching Osei-Duro.
The brand primarily offers hand-printed batik clothing – pieces that are made by local artisans in Accra. (Mathias is based in her native Vancouver, and Keogh resides in Ghana.) Batik is an ancient wax dyeing technique that cultures across Africa, India and Asia have been employing for centuries as a means of creating artful garments and accessories.
“It takes a while for any designer or artist to find their voice,” notes Mathias. “We have experimented with so many different techniques over the years – natural indigo, plain dye, hand-weaving, factory-dyed fabrics, knits and more – and through feedback and experience, we found that batik was the aesthetic that shone through.”
To better educate customers about the labour involved in making an Osei-Duro garment and to give a face to the makers honouring their local artisan culture, the company boasts a stories pillar on its website. “Our brand is so process-driven; it’s one of the most exciting elements about it,” says Mathias. “The story behind the clothes can almost tell itself.”
Halifax-born actor Eli Goree has appeared in hit shows like The 100, GLOW, Ballers and Riverdale but his latest project is undeniably his big breakout moment. Starring as Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) in Regina King’s feature directorial debut, One Night in Miami, Goree delivers a knockout performance, bringing both a swagger and a vulnerability to his portrayal of the boxing champion.
The film, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, takes place largely over the course of one night in 1964, following Clay’s famous defeat of Sonny Liston to take home the title of World Heavyweight Champion in Miami. Based on a play, the film depicts the reunion that night of Clay with three other American icons: activist Malcolm X, athlete Jim Brown and singer Sam Cooke, all of whom were close friends in real life. Larger-than-life public figures though they might be, the film humanizes them by imagining the private conversations about racial justice, duty and Black empowerment that may have taken place between them amid the political and social turmoil of the ’60s.
Goree, who had auditioned years earlier to play Clay in a different film that never got made, says he never let go of his dream to play the boxer on screen one day. “I said ‘I’m going to keep working on this because at some point there will be another opportunity to play Cassius and I want to be prepared,” he tells FASHION over the phone. So he continued training with boxing coaches as well as dialect coaches, and when the opportunity came just a couple of years later, he was ready. “I got in to see Regina on my second audition and felt more than prepared from all those years of training. And then she took it to another level with her expertise and her ability to make things very human and not make them just a performance or just an imitation. ”
Watch the One Night in Miami trailer below and read on for our interview with Eli Goree.
Muhammad Ali is such an iconic figure and cultural icon. What did you love the most about playing him?
People for years have told me I look like a young Cassius Clay. Obviously he’s someone that had a huge impact not just on the Black community but on the world in general. He was a magnanimous figure who spoke his mind, who was fearless and uncensored, and not afraid to stand up for what he believed and pay the consequences for what he believed if necessary. I think there’s a lot to take from his experience and his example in terms of how to be unapologetically bold and confident yet at the same time humble and loving and gracious to others who don’t have the same opportunities. He really was a unique person in history and he touched so many lives. I’m glad this film was just about one night because you can’t really capture his whole life in a two-hour film but you can take one special moment and maybe give some insight into that moment and that’s really what this film did well.
What was the hardest thing to nail about him?
It was a challenge all around. I had an idea of his rhythm and his cadence, it’s very famous and many people have heard it. He didn’t have a standard American accent, he had a unique and particular accent from Louisville, Kentucky. So Trey Cotton, my dialect coach, was really instrumental in getting the Southern accent done first, and then we put the Ali-isms in the speech. And the boxing itself—learning how to stay on your toes and the jab movements… There was a lot of training. I put on 20 pounds of muscle. You can never fully emulate someone who was the best ever at what he did but you want to honour and respect it, and create a sense of authenticity so when people watch it they don’t get taken out of the story. It was a big undertaking and I really gave it my all.
Not only were you starring with some incredible actors [Leslie Odom Jr, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Aldis Hodge] but you were being directed by a total legend, Regina King. What was it like working with her?
As much as she’s awarded and acclaimed for her acting, I won’t be surprised if at the end of her career as an artist she’s more remembered for her directing because she’s so meticulous, she’s so gracious, she pays attention to detail, she knows how to communicate with actors and get performances, she knows how to communicate to crews and focus on different things. She’s the real deal. She’s an incredible person.
This movie was set in the ’60s but the conversations about racial equality and justice are just as relevant (and necessary) even today. What do you think about the film’s timing now in 2020, and where it kind of fits into the larger cultural conversation?
As a Black man this movie is really relevant at any point in my life. Now, with social media and camera phones and 24-hour news cycles, a lot of people who haven’t seen these things happening are starting to see these things. When it comes to police brutality and social inequity for African-Americans in regard to the justice system and policing, that’s been a constant throughout American history, throughout Western civilization since slavery. I do think that right now it’s good to have this film because it really creates a conversation in a public forum amongst Black men that I don’t know that we’ve heard, at least not in this generation. With everything that’s happening politically and socially, it gets at all the different sides of the argument. You have Sam Cooke, who’s overcoming oppression through economic independence; you have Jim Brown, who’s overcoming oppression through resisting stereotypes; Cassius Clay, by literally fighting and beating up every single person who gets put in front of him to be able to say ‘I’m mentally and physically fit’; and Malcolm X, who says we should be able to determine our own future as a nation of people. I think that this film was made with excellence, with attention to detail and with truth. So those statements and thoughts and arguments put forth will resonate.
What I like about the film is that it really feels like you’re listening to a conversation between friends. There’s obviously such a specificity to the Black experience but there’s also a universality to it. You can imagine friends of different backgrounds having these conversations.
When you deal with humanity and injustice for a group of people, it ends up being something that can resonate with lots of different people. With this film, it’s okay and it’s important to say ‘yes it’s about these Black men who are dealing with these issues,’ but you can feel empathy for that and you can relate to that because anyone who’s ever experienced injustice or oppression knows that it’s a feeling they don’t want to go through and knows that that’s something that no group of people should have to endure. It speaks specifically to this issue but it also resonates with people from all different walks of life.
Buoyant, shoulder-grazing tresses are a prominent feature of Crown Lands, the genre- bending psych-blues rock band comprising Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau. “They’ve definitely become part of our identity, for sure,” comments Comeau. “Our hair is important to the band and what it represents.”
The pair, who hail from Oshawa, Ont., began their joint hair journeys six years ago, back when Bowles (vocals, drums) and Comeau (guitar, bass, keys) first met and quickly bonded over their shared obsession with Canadian progressive rock band Rush. Their look developed out of necessity rather than an active decision, shares Comeau. “It was more about the fact that I had spent all of my money on guitars, so I didn’t have any left for haircuts.”
Their lengthy locks have become a trademark that creates an impact onstage and are as unforgettable as their “heavy, loud” music. “It’s a presence thing,” expresses Bowles, who identifies with the non-binary pronouns they/them and isn’t shy to enhance their cascading curls with wild outfits, body glitter and makeup. “When people see us, they’re like, ‘Wow, sick!’ They know they’re in for something interesting.”
Headbanging and hair whipping while shredding his guitar is paramount to Comeau’s showmanship. “It’s my only way of dancing because I’m standing and playing keyboards with my feet, so I can’t move around,” he explains. “Before touring ended this year, I’d almost built up some choreography: I had movements for each song.” And that feeling of hitting the stage to perform for a crowd? According to the duo, it’s like a time-escaping, transcendental moment that changes you, inside and out. “When the sound waves hit your body, you become bigger,” expresses Comeau, mentioning music and religion in the same breath. “It’s the same reason why people go to church or join sports teams – it’s to serve something that’s bigger than yourself. And I think that’s a huge part of human nature and societies. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. That’s what Crown Lands represents for Cody and me. It is so much more than the sum of its parts.”
A greater mission is written into the band’s name. It’s a direct nod to territorial areas once belonging to the British Crown that were passed on to the federal or provincial governments – lands that Indigenous peoples traditionally occupied. It’s a blunt and powerful alias that compels the duo to create music that educates people about Indigenous injustices and Canada’s troublesome history. “It’s our duty to speak up about things that really matter,” states Bowles, who is half Mi’kmaq (an Indigenous tribe from the Atlantic region of Canada). And in the wake of a global chorus calling for a reckoning with anti-Black racism, policing and inequality, Crown Lands’s passion to raise marginalized groups is burning stronger than ever. “There’s a spiritual revolution happening, and we have a duty to be the soundtrack to it,” says Comeau. “As a straight, white-presenting male, I have a huge responsibility to be a good ally.”
Their 2017 song “Mountain” paints a picture of colonization and the damaging government-sponsored residential school system (an attempt to eradicate Indigenous youth of their cultural language and practices that caused long-term intergenerational problems among Indigenous communities). Then there’s “End of the Road,” which was released this year and shines a spotlight on the notorious Highway of Tears, a remote stretch of road in British Columbia known for the dozens of women and girls – mostly Indigenous – who have vanished or turned up dead in the area. To this day, most of these cases are still unsolved.
As much as this rock band creates music in the hope of sparking change, it has also become a potent outlet for Bowles’s mental health. “Music has helped me through so many hard times in my life,” they share. “It has helped me through major depression.”
Comeau, on the other hand, is quick to flip the script. “Listening to music helps a lot with mental health, but creating it can sometimes be super straining,” he says. Especially when you have to “tear your soul apart to write a good record” and hit the road for a whirlwind tour that pulls you away from loved ones for lengths of time – realities that are often not spoken about in the music industry. Comeau adds that he reached his lowest point this past February while recording Crown Lands’s latest creation, Wayward Flyers, a five-track acoustic EP. How did he cope? With weekly therapy. “It’s never the wrong time to get therapy,” he states. “Finding someone you can talk to? There’s no shame in that whatsoever. It’s been the best investment in my life – other than my guitars.”
Below, the duo unpack what their hair (and beard) routines consist of.
“I apply a leave-in conditioner concoction that I make. I use coconut oil with a blend of castor oil and this amazing oil that has nettle extract and some other really good stuff in it. I mix it all up with some water and go to town.”
“I started my hair journey basically stealing Cody’s shampoo or conditioner on the road, and I
got hooked on Maui Moisture’s Coconut Oil line. I always shampoo and condition at night.”
Before quarantine, my enjoyment of going out was heightened by the promise in anticipation. If there was a party I planned to attend, the way I prepared for it always started with choosing an outfit. Placing myself in a considered look featuring an array of playful colours and outlandish silhouettes – vintage Pucci or Moschino, perhaps – helped me understand how I could move through a room and be myself, no matter what came my way, with ease.
As I got older, this process often became an exercise to quell social anxiety, and eventually, with practice, I could overcome any obvious nerves. Only in the isolation of COVID-19 did I realize that this ritual was integral to my love of clothes. The journey started with the thrill of coming across certain pieces, imagining all the possibilities of wearing them and then finally living in them. For me, that was the joy of fashion.
When there was suddenly nowhere to go, my relationship with clothing had to adapt to new circumstances. Though I have considered myself a collector for many years, my obsession reached a fever pitch during isolation.
My experience with resale websites goes back to my early days of thrifting; it is an expertise that includes knowledge about textiles and fashion history and understanding the difference between how much something is worth and what you’re willing to pay for it.
When there was suddenly nowhere to go, my relationship with clothing had to adapt to new circumstances
As time passes, sourcing items that meet certain standards of quality craftsmanship becomes more and more difficult – those with a discerning eye notice that some luxury houses are not manufacturing their clothes like they used to.
In the unsettled moments before bed, I opened the apps: Poshmark, eBay, The RealReal and Depop. With the possibility of physically going to stores largely out of the question, these platforms were my only outlet. The search, often like dating, was held up by the hope that something might come along that I wouldn’t want to miss. I scoured for hours, with a vague idea of what I wanted and the certainty that it must exist somewhere.
A few weeks into quarantine, I stumbled across a dress from the infamous Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 1995 Cyber collection, which is easily recognized by optical illusion-style dots that echo the curves of a woman’s body. Thanks to luxury vintage sellers like Pechuga Vintage, pieces from the collection have resurfaced; Gaultier’s dots have recently been seen on the likes of Kim Kardashian and Cardi B. I purchased the dress for $30, and the rush of serotonin that resulted from the thrill was the only vice I had left.
What started as a way to fill hours while isolating at home suddenly became filled with purpose.
My knack for describing garments has been honed by the eBay search bar, and my various watchlists are filled with items that are attainable, fantastical and, of course, so novel that one can only find pleasure knowing they exist. I’ll look for Bakelite handbags that resemble giant rounds of butterscotch or for archival pieces like the original Paco Rabanne disc bag from the ’60s (now re-released). I can scroll through countless pages to find specific pieces from collections that hold historical and cultural significance to me – my very own Criterion Collection of clothes. A $6,000 museum-quality set – consisting of a corset, a bustle skirt and a balloon-sleeved top – from Vivienne Westwood’s Spring 1996 show has been sitting at the top of my eBay list for over a year. Westwood’s designs that season mimicked the rococo style, with Watteau gowns and corsetry interpreted with her signature playful twist.
What started as a way to fill hours while isolating at home suddenly became filled with purpose. I bought floor-length dresses, bustiers and large ornate hats. As I showed my wares to friends over FaceTime, they would say “But where are you going?” It did not matter. I was preserving remnants of my former life through my wardrobe – a life that may no longer be possible in a post-COVID-19 world. I snapped up pieces from specific collections, always with the presumption that I could sell them if I wanted to; but the bliss I derive from having them in my closet is almost better.
As I showed my wares to friends over FaceTime, they would say “But where are you going?” It did not matter.
It’s not that I may one day have a place to wear them – it’s their association with the past that feels like a fantasy. What used to be an object filled with possibility is now a relic from an era long gone.
Away from other people, this obsession feels intimate and personal. Whether I am curating a digital museum or dreaming through my closet, I can surround myself with objects I find beautiful, and this gives me comfort in times of uncertainty.
When it’s possible, I will wear these clothes into the future to commemorate the beauty of the past.
