The sartorial eccentricity of Burning Guitars

by MIKE CHAIKEN

CTFashionMag.com

As rapper Smiley Jonez’ music thumped, and as the models – male and female – walked the runway, some musical thoughts came to mind during the Burning Guitars fashion show.

The latest collection shown at Art Hearts Fashion in the Angel Orensanz Foundation made me think of iconic, iconoclastic musical eccentrics of the not-so-distant pass. I thought of performers whose appearance was slightly mad, outrageous, but, in their own creative way, entirely sensible. Burning Guitars newest collection can best be summed up as upcycled Ziggy Stardust meets Robin Williams in “The Fisher King.” Think of a fashion Mulligan’s stew of jazz artist Sun Ra, funkster George Clinton, and Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav.

The pieces, when examined closely, do not seem as they should go together. But there’s a slightly out-there logic to it all.

I’m not sure where one would wear Burning Guitars, but in the realm of fashion as outsider art, Burning Guitars deserves to be framed on a body.

PHOTOS by MIKE CHAIKEN