Down and Out in Denver

The models and band for Pioneer

The DaOiD boys and their friends ventured out last night to the FM Magazine party in the Sugar Cube Building in LoDo.  And much to their surprise they were surrounded by hipsters.  Hundreds and hundreds of hipsters.  Skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors and mullets and tattoos and fringed purses and Vans and plaid shirts and unkempt hair and unwashed bodies.  It was enough to make you feel like you were in Williamsburg or Silver Lake or the Mission.  In other words, it was fantastic!  While we cannot make any claims to hipsterdom ourselves (we are, rather, two tasteful and reasonably au courant gay boys who tend toward muted tones in their wardrobes), it is so reassuring to see that some people in Denver can.  Multiple times throughout the night we turned to each other to ask: “Where did they all come from?  Were they bused in especially for this event?”  There were even some gay hipsters!  (Including the salesman in the men’s jeans department at Nordstrom.)

Scot Lefavor's paint-by-numbers mural (detail)

the candle runway

The main events of the night were a paint-by-numbers mural designed by artist Scot Lefavor and a fashion show called “Pioneer,” which was art-directed by Olivia Plyler and styled by Liz Eckland.  The runway itself was simply an aisle of lit votive candles that had been placed down the middle of the massive warehouse space at least an hour before the show actually began.  What this meant was that the candles were repeatedly kicked over by clumsy party attendees while a harried coordinator raced back and forth righting them.  Finally the show began. The clothing, all for women, was vaguely Western in theme and the models – including one pregnant woman and another who had a baby in a sling on her side – had clearly been taking some lessons from Tyra.  Their facial expressions were all nonexistent.  It was as if the organizers had given them one keyword: VACANT.  ”There should be nothing there at all as you glide back and forth down the runway/candle aisle.”

Much fun was had as hipsters (and interlopers like us) drank discounted beer from the Great Divide Brewery and vodka cocktails courtesy of 42 Below (though they had run out of ice later in the evening, which made for some lukewarm drinks – icky). If nothing else – and while we recognize that hipster couture is itself something of a uniform – it was just reassuring to see so many people looking so different.  There were no baggy jeans here, no Abercrombie and Fitch, no North Face, no fleece of any variety!  It was enough to make one feel that one wasn’t in Denver at all.  And that’s perhaps why we liked it so much.