Not long after the new Design Collective boutique opened in Uptown, its display window featured a two-tiered, amphibious-looking skirt whose ruffles, shaped with wires, were so impressive they stopped a passerby in her tracks. “It makes me think of a nudibranch,” explained Barrett Johanneson, months later, as he fished the skirt out of the trunk of his Volkswagen, where it had been stored since a fashion show some weeks ago. “It’s a sort of sea snail,” he added, before there was a chance to ask.
Johanneson is the soft-spoken founder and leader of Labrador Style, an ensemble of five friends who are also clothing designers, and who share a fascination with sea life. (They take their name from the coastline-rich northeasternmost province of Canada.) Other one-of-a-kind Labrador designs include a top made from layered and hand-stitched strips of terrycloth and a men’s white dress shirt with hand-painted aqua blue stripes—a watermark, so to speak, of Labrador’s oceanic motifs.
It’s hard to believe all this plum, avant-garde fashion comes out of the unglamorous, garden-level apartment near Cedar Lake that Johanneson shares with his friend Adrianne. “I do feel bad about the times I leave it kinda dirty,” he said, typifying male roommates.
Johanneson and his fellow Labrador designers use the apartment’s spartan, bare-walled living room as their studio space. There’s a sewing machine, a mannequin bust, a tiny cabinet stuffed with notions, a glass-topped worktable, and an overhead projector used to throw patterns onto fabrics and tees, so as to allow hand painting. “When we’re getting ready for a fashion show or photo shoot, we basically all live in this room,” Johanneson said.
He opened up a hallway closet, where some of Labrador’s most interesting creations are stowed. Out came a squid-shaped hand bag, dyed with squid ink and part of a whole line based on a squid motif. “This is a bikini constructed out of East German surgical masks,” he said, holding up a particularly puzzling item from the stock.
While the wire, squids, and medical equipment attest to Johanneson’s avant-garde leanings, he also has a special affection for vintage fabrics, which he acquires from antique stores, thrift shops, and on eBay. He even keeps a few sentimental swatches close at hand, such as a remnant of seafoam silk with gold accents, which his mother used to make her prom dress. He likes busy patterns as much as the next guy, but prefers materials with a softer touch that, again, remind him of the sea. He picked up a rich, azure-colored fabric. “Feel it. It’s watery,” he said. “That’s going to make a fantastic dress someday.”
That dress will have to wait while the designer works through his current obsession with jeans. A couple of just-finished pairs are tossed over an end table, one with a dramatic surf-like curve at the front pockets, the other with wavy panels running along the outside seams. “These are a study in tiny jeans,” said Johanneson, a tall fellow, holding an unfinished pair to his legs. They looked like they’d fit a five-foot fashion model. But oh no, he said. Exuding the sort of whimsy and drama that come through in Labrador’s clothing, he whispered, in all seriousness, “Someday these will be mine.”—Christy DeSmith
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