Fashion, In Santa Cruz?

Last week I got to go to a real live fashion show, right here in Santa Cruz. It was a real treat, and I'm glad my friend Debbie encouraged me to attend with her. We splurged on the VIP tickets and got to go early to swill champagne and eat chocolate dipped strawberries for dinner (yum).

This is the 3rd annual Fashion Art Runway Show put on by Michaelangelo Gallery Art Studios, and it combines art, wearable art, high fashion and commercial fashion.
A real hodge-podge, whiplashing between the sublime concept and the mundane jeans and t-shirt look so often seen here in casual Santa Cruz. I wish I could credit each artist or designer but the program doesn't coherently list a description of each person's work. I figured out a couple though.

This art piece was called post-apocalyptic fashion, the details were amazing, pottery shards, nails etc. sewn on in very pleasing designs.
These three outfits are made out of recycled tires by Michelle Stitz. Bicycle I think. The dress really had a lot of movement for how stiff it was.
The skirt on this outfit as well as the bracelet is made out of slides, the bag a slide carousel, by an art-history professor lamenting the end of the slide show and the advent of PowerPoint presentations. I guess she had to do something with the slides...It was a swingy, interesting skirt.
This was my favorite one, completely out of recycled materials. I wish the picture wasn't so fuzzy, the skirt is two old pairs of jeans, upside down, and the vest is a recylced army sweater with really neat details.

These two outfits were made out off stuff from a coffee house, the boots on the left-hand model were covered in designs of whole coffee beans. Creamer package tops, etc. very creative use of basically just trash.
This was a nice looking skirt made out of repurposed ties, it had a lot of swingy movement on the runway.
This was one of the designers, Michael Ange who presented a full collection, he's pictured at the very end of the line. Isn't this some great stuff? I love the brown coat.
This final dress in his collection was really beautiful.

This one was made out of painted cardboard packaging, you know the stuff that is kind of accordion-ish or kind of net like. Beautiful isn't it?

There was a whole lot more show that I don't have pictures of because I was nice and lent the excited husband of one of the designers borrow my camera. He was so cute, had a baby with him, and it turned out at the end of his wife's show, their daughter came out too. So he got some pictures since his batteries had worn out on his camera. But unfortunately then so did mine, so I missed capturing some of the best stuff to show you here.

If they have this show again next year, I'll be going!