Two designers, Emily Ryan and Leanne Marshall for her line Leanimal, create sculptural pieces with innovative surface details. Emily Ryan’s horizontally-smocked rigid charcoal trapeze gathered circular insets on a caped dress (with the cape attaching at the waist… a PFW theme of sorts) took surface detail and turned it into structure. Leanimal showed complex dresses with puffed skirts, gathered insets in organic shapes, and jabot-like flounces at the neck.

Emily Ryan and Leanne Marshal

Suzi Johnson’s delicious cashmere line Souchi looked as fitting for spring as for fall. She showed great tanks and shorts and wrapped cardigans and some extraordinary Helmut Lang-esque deconstructed dresses.

Souchi

For men, A Broken Spoke by John Blasioli (who costumes the Decemberists) showed quirky sweater vests, crisp jackets, and well-cut denim with the kinds of details and cuts that you expect from a women’s line like three fabric covered buttons at the back neck of a seafoam sweater vest or another cream-colored sweater vest cut almost like a jumper.

A Broken Spoke by John Blasioli

Emily Katz does perhaps the most wearable modern line—clothes that will be first out of the closet—with a great ruffled fleece raincoat called “Wow,” and smart basics like organic cotton wrap and cowl-neck dresses.

Anna Cohen, who has worked at a number of Italian fashion houses is among the designers most fiercely committed to sustainability. Her spring collection was very strong a meeting of artful draping and crisp tailoring with superbly cut jeans and trousers and trim little jackets.

The organizers of Portland Fashion Week attempted to make the whole event sustainable with a bamboo runway, recycled fabrics and materials, low-energy lights. The hair team used eco-friendly Sidlab hair products (based in Portland), and all the food and wine was organic.

With luck Portland Fashion Week will itself prove to be sustainable over the long term, serving as a spotlight for the city’s growing community of fashion designers.

Portland Fashion Week
Date: October 19th – 24th, 2007
Place: Vigor Industrial
Address: 5555 North Channel Avenue, Portland, OR 97217
http://www. portlandfashionweek.net