Tuesday, May 17, 2005

The Clothing Show


Robin Polfus almost hidden in her clothing and toy lines with "Derek" the sock-huskey.

Sunday. The Canadian National Exhibition automotive building housed the clothing show this year. You might ask yourself why am I even here? I did. There were two reasons actually. A) I wanted a new spring jacket and B) Robin was there with her booth of sock monkey shirts. At least that's what her email said.

The cost was eight dollars to get in for the option of spending more money on clothes. Remember that purse blog? The stuff in here was I'd say about 90% geared towards females. To women: Most guys when they shop for clothes will have something in mind. Say a pair of shoes. They will go into the store. If there are shoes available, look okay and fit they will be bought. Purchase complete. Get the hell out of there.

The speed at which we will leave a store once everything is bought is like we just set up a grenade in there somewhere. We do not stop and look at other things, accessories, or things that go with the shoes like pants or other wardrobe. There are two exceptions. Shoe polish and that silver or plastic shoe horn. But only if the sales person asks us if we need it. By agreeing to buy the other stuff, we can get out of the store that much quicker.

The show horn because it shiney (if made of metal) or because it's a gadget which also helps get your foot in the shoe easier. As for the shoe polish, it, at least as told by the sales clerk, will extend the life of the shoe. Hence we can prolong not going back to the store to do more shoe shopping.

I eventually found Robin's booth and the first thing that came to mind was "Wow. Where did you find the sweatshop to make all this?". It turns out Robin has cranked the stuff out on her own with a little help from Chris (the boyfriend) who did the silk screens of a shirt line entitled "Glomponk". The designs were tiny doodles Robin did then Chris scanned them in, blew them up, and cleaned them on a computer and turned them into silk screens. I bought one named "carrot boy". It's the same color as those bright pale orange chamois.


Nas and Michelle. Nas Shows her cool new shirt.

After that I bumped into Nas and Michelle. To save time I thought I'd ask them if they'd seen any spring jackets. I figured, judging by the amount of bags and the cool new shirt Nas bought that they had been there for a while and may have noticed some jackets being sold somewhere. They told me they didn't really see much but said most of the stuff was for women and that I could fly through the store in minutes.

They were right. I zipped through the aisles of clothing and women looking through piles of clothing and found one place that had jackets that looked okay if you were going to apply for a gas station attendent job. Other than that nothing. I left the show with a T-shirt and 33 dollers less.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry you didn't find a jacket at the show. I only got into it as a vendor because I convinced the coordinators of the show that Men Buy Sock Monkey Shirts, and they know they don't have enough stuff for men. Mostly I sold Sock Monkey shirts to women buying them for their boyfriends. Fortunately a few men did show up to my booth, too. Thank you for coming, Derek. It means an awful lot to us artists stuck in our own personal sweat shops * when a friend comes out of their way to visit. (*Sweatshop of one, the artist, unless some innocent, hapless significant-type other is foolish enough to say, hey sweetie, whatcha doing? -have pity for the poor boyfriend!) I know you are not a woman-type shopper, and I have gone shoe shopping with you (took maybe 3 minutes or so to enter and exit with new shoes, no shiny shoehorn) so I hope the day didn't totally suck. Come to my next show at the Beaches next month. At least there'll be a beach and perhaps stuff to take pictures of. But I doubt there'll be jackets there, either.