Last year Martha Parks, owner of SoHo Clothing in Cameron Village, held a showcase for local designers in her store. This year, she wanted to do it again, but bigger.
"The point of the whole concept is to get more people on board," Parks said. "We want attention drawn to local designers."
And so Thursday, the sidewalks in front of her store and six others became an open-air presentation of artisans and an outdoor market for art lovers. Called "Travel the Village" the event brought out, on a small scope, the range of arts and crafts - wearable and not - available and made by local hands.
There were bow ties, Amy Flynn's junkyard-elegant Fobots, luxe bags, Dan Nelson's scene scapes, the campy Beehive Girls line, Zac Schell's hard-edged yet somehow delicate chain-mail bracelets and necklaces, and some jewelry tastefully using bottle caps.
The bottle caps jewelry came courtesy of Hazel Cole, a line of sterling silver pieces designed by two sisters and their mother. It all started six years ago when mother Susan Cole Cannon took a class at Pullen Arts Center. "When I turned 21," says daughter Rachel Cole Cannon, now 23, "she asked me what my favorite beer was and she made a necklace with the cap."
Since then, they've made bottle caps cufflinks too, flattening the caps, cutting them and fitting them into the sterling silver. Local breweries Raleigh's Big Boss and Mother Earth from Kinston are favorites. Since then, sister Sarah Hazel Cannon, 18, has added necklaces, rings and headbands with silk flowers; she's on her way to N.C. State University's College of Design.
Lucky for them, the Cannon sisters were stationed inside Wardrobbe. Just outside, in the sweltering heat, were the men of Lumina, a line of exuberant, tasteful ties founded by three friends from N.C. State.
It started with a quest two summers ago for skinny ties, says co-founder Barton Strawn. The look was re-emerging and he and friends Jordan Pung and Justin Carey wanted to find some for an event. They landed in a sea of black, white and red.
"We started talking and decided we could make some," Stawn says. And they did, for themselves and for friends. Then they started making bow ties, and then they added traditional neckties. Now they sell at Wardrobbe and McKenzie Tribe at the Lassiter in North Hills.
Young and ambitious, they're now thinking of broadening their scope by making button-downs. "We figure that's a good transition piece."
Leigh LaVange, a designer at last year's event, has made a transition of her own. Now living in New York since February, the NCSU College of Design grad works for a clothing company and gets to go to factories every day to explore fabrics, buttons and trims.
That's how she found the inspiration for the pieces she sold at SoHo: dresses, skirts and vests of a soft bamboo jersey or loose knit jersey. After seeing how the fabric flowed and moved against the body, she fashioned black, purple, gray and turquoise looks, some fitted, others draping, with asymmetrical hemlines, and one dress with a hood.
"I'm always doing something with a hood," LaVange says. "I like taking something that's seen as feminine and pairing it with a hood - that sort of [toughness]."
LaVange says she likes coming back to SoHo, where she worked as a student, because it's where she learned to use her creativity, looking at the avant-garde pieces Parks sells in her shop. She feels the same about the Triangle.
"I think it's great," she says of the fashion scene. "There's so much talent. It's a small community, so I feel like I know a lot of people. In New York, everybody is doing their own thing."
Gigi Karmous-Edwards, the founder and co-designer of the Uvo, a rectangular, high-end handbag, sees the promise of Raleigh as a fashion incubator. "I thinking Raleigh is a haven for [fashion]. I think this could be a real fashion district."
Karmous-Edwards' mother was a professor at N.C. State in the textile department on the more scientific end; the designer thinks that because the school has added an emphasis on fashion and apparel, there's potential for future stars.
"I was just at Parsons The New School for Design in New York for the independent handbag awards," Karmous-Edwards says. "Maybe Raleigh will begin producing the kind of people they produce. I honestly believe Raleigh could be that place."
