“Doesn’t anybody out there care?,” is a question we were faced with regularly over the last year and a half as Dusty Couture slowly built its presence on the web. After almost a year of posting, the 2010 burn came and went with nary a nod from those writing articles about Burning Man.
We were about to put Dusty Couture on the backburner and start a new blog when it happened: Los Angeles Magazine picked up the phone and called. Their Buzz: Au Courant columnist Monica Corcoran needed a playa fashion expert to provide background info for an upcoming article on “Burning Man” being used as a buzz-word in the default fashion industry. The end result? Dusty Bacon ended up being quoted as saying that Alexander McQueen’s styles would “fly all night” at Burning Man.
Even though the article wasn’t specifically about the fashions of BRC, we appreciated receiving credit for our small portion and were proud to let the default fashion industry know that their works of art would be respected on the Playa.
That mention lead quickly to a much more fulfilling collaboration with LA Weekly’s Style Council author Sophie Duvernoy who allowed her interview with “Bacon” to become half the content of their 2011 Burning Man Fashion Survival Guide. The article does what we believe to be a great job of translating a banquet of playalicious style concepts into tasty nibbles for default world fashionistas.
What really impressed us though was that Sophie paid heed to our passionate plea to her that she accurately represent our desert tribe by first researching for herself Burning Man’s 10 Guiding Principles and the true fashion ethos of Black Rock City which she concluded the article with: ” … don’t expect to go to Burning Man and dress to fit in — the whole idea of fashion there is to stand out as much as possible … ”
We finally felt like our message got through in an article that we got to guest-author for Heather Vaughan’s Fashion Historia blog. In her recent series on the fashions of Burning Man entitled: “Nevada’s Desert Dress“, Heather invited several very knowledgeable fashion experts to share what they know about our tribe’s rapidly developing fashion palette. Since each guest has a different background and relationship to the event, the series connects a wonderful variety of dusty dots.
Speaking of “Dusty”, Mr. Bacon was again the one who spearheaded the writing of this article and it is arguably his best work to date. Click Here to read A Liberation of Fashion.
Writing isn’t the only thing we’ve been collaborating with others on. The newest urban-adventure hotel on Reno’s strip contacted us needing models for an upcoming advertising campaign. They found out about us during our recent collaboration with Black Rock Arts Foundation for their 2011 Pre-Playa Party (click here to learn more). While they asked for models in “burner costumes”, we just couldn’t put Burning Man up on a billboard for a commercial development. Instead, the models (pictured throughout this article) were instructed to dress for a radical re-envisioning of what Reno could become in their wildest dreams.
As you can see they fused ne0-tribal with classic show-girl, a steamy future that never was with the classic styles of Reno’s last golden era. The results (photographed by Frank Haxton at Digiman Studios) are stunning and the development (which will remain nameless for now) couldn’t believe their good fortune at having had access to such radical beauty. As you can see, the ladies we called in to model thoroughly enjoyed themselves!
We hope these collaborations are the beginning of a significant trend. We’ve been at this almost two years now with only one goal: to show the art-form that is Burning Man fashion to all who might be influenced by it. We can say with certainty now that people are noticing, people are seeing, the message is getting through and we will be there to keep that message pure and in line with the 10 Principles.
UPDATE: Check back after the Burn for a very exciting announcement!
it’s been open. 9-year veteran burner ManBabe is the founder of SFA, here’s the story of this marvelous gift in his own words:
