Hailed as “the Stacey Abrams of the concert industry,” the club owner became a national leader who brought independent promoters together — and $173 million to Minnesota venues.
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Star Tribune: “People took it for granted there would always be a live music venue on the corner of 1st Avenue and 7th Street in downtown Minneapolis. All of a sudden, there was a very real possibility that would no longer be the case,” Dayna Frank, the owner of First Avenue Productions, said with an intense shudder.
First Avenue was among the few independent concert venues that were likely to survive the pandemic. And yet, Minneapolis’ most iconic performance space teetered on going black. That’s how Dayna Frank knew things had to be incredibly tough all over.
“And if First Avenue was in danger — with all its history and assets and support from the community — then so many smaller venues didn’t stand a chance.”
It’s what Frank did for all the others, as president of the National Independent Venues Association, that earned her designation as the Star Tribune’s Arts Person of the Year.
Frank’s passion led to millions in relief money that helped shuttered venues stay afloat through the pandemic. It’s hard to think of any person who had a greater impact on the Minnesota arts scene in 2021 — including all facets of the performing arts, not just music.
Link here to read more about Frank’s work this year and other Minnesota artists who deserve an honorable mention.
RUNWAY: Can a color predict the future? After the many uncertainties of 2020 and 2021, many are looking for signs from any source. The Pantone Color of the Year 2022 is a new shade, Very Peri, one that, according to Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, and Laurie Pressman, the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, embraces the uncertainty and cautious optimism of our moment. “It is a color that really places the future ahead in a new light,” said Pressman on a Zoom call earlier this week. “We feel this was the perfect color to get those feelings about the future across.”
Xüly Bet spring 2022
Photo: Ismaël Moumin / Courtesy of Xüly Bet
Iris van Herpen haute couture fall 2021 Photo: Courtesy of Iris van Herpen
Saint Laurent men’s spring 2022
Photo: Courtesy of Saint Laurent
Balenciaga haute couture fall 2021 Photo: Courtesy of Balenciaga
Louis Vuitton men’s spring 2022 Photo: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
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The new shade of periwinkle is a result of almost a year’s worth of research and trend forecasting from the Pantone Color Institute, which begins looking at color trends in the late spring. “We look at so many areas, from sports to fashion, to see what people are talking about,” said Eiseman, emphasizing that increased interest in the metaverse and gaming platforms helped inspire 2022’s Color of the Year. “There is just no question that gaming influenced the continued usage of Very Peri,” Eiseman said as screenshots from video games that use the shade flashed on the screen, “and we really want the Color of the Year to be reflective of what is happening in the world around us.”
Marques’Almeida spring 2022
Photo: Ugo Camera / Courtesy of Marques’Almeida
Isabel Marant spring 2022 Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
Lanvin spring 2022 Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
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Aside from being a tone used in the high-contrast games popular among Gen Z, the shade also has roots in the natural world and in wellness, with lilac, lavender, and periwinkle plants offering a calming sense during a chaotic time. Very Peri also appears in a lot of beauty and fashion trend forecasts—Pantone’s official presentation of the color includes looks from Lanvin, Chet Lo, and Louis Vuitton men’s.
Valentino haute couture fall 2021
Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
Valentino spring 2022 Photo: Alessandro Lucioni / Gorunway.com
Still, a warming purple tone might come as a surprise as the shade of 2022 after the more obvious colors Pantone chose for 2021: Ultimate Gray and a shade of yellow called Illuminating. In a release, Pantone explained that 2021’s duo was meant to signify the light at the end of the tunnel after 2020. But as many continue to battle the Omicron variant and the world enters yet another phase of uncertainty … well, can Very Peri save us? If anything, the color offers a new perspective; as my colleague Kiana Murden wrote to me this morning, “At least it’s a new color!” After two years of sameness and struggle, we are all feeling for something new—and the runways reflect this with tenor-shifting brands like like Threeasfour, Iris van Herpen, Xüly Bet, and Tomo Koizumi embracing the color.
Alexis Mabille haute couture fall 2021
Photo: Marievic / Courtesy of Alexis Mabille
Thom Browne spring 2022 Photo: Courtesy of Thom Browne
Tomo Koizumi haute couture fall 2021 Photo: Courtesy of Tomo Koizumi
Threeasfour spring 2022
Photo: Alessandro Viero / Gorunway.com
Tod’s spring 2022 Photo: Alessandro Lucioni / Gorunway.com
Missoni spring 2022 Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
Gucci spring 2022
Photo: Courtesy of Gucci
Alberta Ferretti spring 2022 Photo: Daniele Oberrauch / Gorunway.com
Lutz Huelle spring 2022 Photo: Courtesy of Lutz Huelle
… BY STEFF YOTKA …
We feature products from our 140 acre farm in Plato, MN, where we follow ecological principles that produce the most nutritious food possible while respecting our animals and environment. We also partner with select local vendors to round out our assortments.
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Field Notes from the Farm
Thank you for supporting our small farm with big dreams.
We are honored to be providing you and your family with food that is good for the earth and good for you!
Our 2022 Summer CSA Shares are now available! For detailed information and to secure your share, link here.
All produce for the CSA share program is sustainably grown without toxic chemicals at Tangletown Gardens’ 140 acre farm and greenhouse facility in Plato, Minnesota. Our Summer share begins mid-June and continues through mid-October. Members will receive 17-18 weeks (weather permitting) of in-season, freshly picked, grown produce. Every weekly share includes incredibly flavorful, hard to find heirlooms and long standing kitchen favorites. Whatever is at its peak of ripeness goes into your weekly share, washed and carefully packed. Your share will offer as much diversity as the season allows with fresh, healthy vegetables, herbs and fruits, with an occasional surprise. We also offer Coffee, Mushroom, Thanksgiving, and Easter Shares!
New performance and radical theater return to the Walker with three boundary defying productions for OutThere 2022. Featuring works by leading American female visionaries—Kaneza Schaal, Annie Dorsen, and Annie-B Parson—this year’s annual OutThere series is spread across five weeks January 12th through February 12th. Opening with a world premiere and featuring two new Walker commissions, the program reflects a heightened commitment to supporting artists at this historically challenging moment. While the works examine complex and urgent issues of our time, they also reimagine new worlds with ingenuity, virtuosity, and distinctive spirit. Link here for schedule.
The featured works include an intensely theatrical solo that addresses the impacts of brutal colonialism in Central Africa (and its residue in our everyday lives); a musical meditation on indeterminacy and living in the moment; and a modern-day Chekhovian rumination on privilege, mass denial, and societal divisions in the United States.
All photos courtesy of Everett Collection / Collage by David Vo
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FASHION: There are few creative mediums that go together quite like fashion and film. Whether it’s a director’s knack for capturing the dramatic movement of a gown on screen, or the contributions to the movie world made by fashion designers over the decades, the symbiotic relationship has created some of the most memorable on-screen moments of all time.
So whether to satisfy your curiosity about an industry so often wrapped up in mystery, to provide the backstory to some of the most important moments in fashion history, or simply to indulge in a little sartorial escapism, here, find all the most iconic films about fashion you can watch now.
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Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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Funny Face(1957)
As far as fashion films go, they don’t get much more joyous than Funny Face.Audrey Hepburn stars as Jo Stockton, a shy New York City bookshop assistant who dreams of studying philosophy in Paris. Her aspirations are realized through the unlikeliest of means after she becomes a muse to the celebrated fashion photographer Dick Avery, played by Fred Astaire. Packed with gorgeous Parisian set pieces, delightful tunes by George and Ira Gershwin, and exquisite dresses crafted both by legendary costumier Edith Head and regular Hepburn collaborator Hubert de Givenchy, it’s a perfect ode to the joys of haute couture.
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Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings in Blow-Up. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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Blow-Up(1966)
One of the more sinister entries on the list, this darkly glamorous thriller directed by Italian auteur Michelangelo Antonioni is set within the heady heights of Swinging Sixties London. It weaves an unlikely tale of intrigue centered around David Hemmings’s lusty fashion photographer Thomas, who believes he has accidentally photographed a murder taking place. With hindsight, the complicated protagonist’s attitude to his female subjects is very much a product of its time—but the film’s menacing thrills are leavened by a number of fabulous cameos, from Veruschka to Jane Birkin. Blow-Up today serves as a fascinating document of a pivotal moment in fashion history.
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Models in Who Are You, Polly Maggoo. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?(1966)
Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? may have been released in the same year as Blow-Up, but its vision of the Swinging Sixties is altogether more surrealist and willfully satirical. Directed by the American photographer and filmmaker William Klein, the film pokes fun at the excesses and frivolities of the fashion industry in a way that manages to be both glamorous and grotesque. Come for the costumes—which offer as a brilliantly realized time capsule of 1960s style and have since inspired Jean-Paul Gaultier and Marc Jacobs—and stay for the brilliant performance by Grayson Hall as Miss Maxwell, an imperious, Diana Vreeland-esque fashion editor whose pithy remarks can make or break a career.
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Diana Ross in Mahogany. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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Mahogany(1975)
As far as portrayals of fashion designers on-screen go, they don’t get more decadent than Diana Ross’s turn as the American design student Tracy Chambers, whose clothes become an unlikely hit in the salons of high society 1970s Rome. Directed by Motown Records’ Berry Gordy, the film’s celebration of fashion at its most flamboyant and excessive also features a political message that remains relevant to this day, as Tracy is torn between her love for a Black activist fighting gentrification in her hometown of Chicago, and the glamorous but ultimately empty promises of her modeling career in Europe. Also featuring a soundtrack for the ages, Mahogany is a campy—and surprisingly conscientious—fashion fantasy.
Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren in Prêt-à-Porter. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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Prêt-à-Porter(1994)
In Robert Altman’s sprawling, starry, and very much satirical ode to the fashion industry, nothing is quite as it seems. Employing the filmmaker’s signature mockumentary style, there are celebrity cameos from the likes of Julia Roberts, Sophia Loren, and Lauren Bacall, all playing various fashionistas descending on Paris Fashion Week in the wake of the death of Olivier de la Fontaine, the head of the city’s fashion council. While the film was both a critical and commercial bomb, the initially bemused response of the fashion industry has softened over the years into affection. As a document of the thrilling heights of the 1990s runway show, there’s no better film to watch,
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Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, and Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada. Courtesy of Everett Collection
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The Devil Wears Prada(2006)
As far as bringing the rarefied, secretive world of fashion media into the spotlight goes, few films have been as successful as The Devil Wears Prada. Starring Meryl Streep in a thrillingly vicious, Oscar-nominated turn as the editor-in-chief of Runway magazine, we follow the journey of Anne Hathaway’s initially style-illiterate Andy Sachs as she enters this cutthroat world as Miranda’s assistant. An endlessly quotable and uproariously funny insight into the obsessive nature of those who work in fashion, the film also benefits from brilliant supporting performances by Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. But could the real villain of the film in fact be Andy’s boyfriend? It only takes a quick scroll through Twitter to see that debate roaring to this day.
If you’re looking for a dose of fashion history, you can’t go wrong with Audrey Tautou’s sublime performance as Coco Chanel in her early years as a seamstress, before she would go on to found her eponymous house that would redefine the modern woman’s wardrobe. With the help of elegant cinematography and art direction—and perhaps most memorably, stunning style moments courtesy of the French costume designer Catherine Leterrier, whose work on the film earned her a César Award—it’s the rare fashion biopic that goes deep below the surface, offering a moving insight into the inner world of the designer it profiles.
You may need a strong stomach to sit through some of the more grisly moments of Nicolas Winding Refn’s psychological horror The Neon Demon, but you’ll get your reward through plenty of eye-popping fashion, too. Elle Fanning’s young modeling ingenue soon gets swept up in the scene’s darker underbelly, resulting in demonic possessions, serial killer photographers, and a particularly horrifying final sequence involving an exorcism, necrophilia, and a lot (a lot) of blood. While its sideways swipes at the darker corners of the fashion industry may be a little heavy-handed, The Neon Demon makes for a bracing and gloriously gory guilty pleasure.
Few films capture the obsessive, exacting nature of haute couture as deftly as Paul Thomas Anderson’s claustrophobic and brilliantly eerie Phantom Thread, which charts the relationship between the high society designer Reginald Woodcock—loosely based on Charles James—and a young woman he meets at a seaside café who becomes his muse. Daniel Day-Lewis’s Oscar-nominated performance is more than matched by his co-stars Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville, bringing this dark fairy tale to vivid, believable life. Phantom Thread’s window into the world of post-war fashion is an intoxicating, beautifully woven fairy tale—but one that ultimately feels closer to a nightmare.
While Disney’s fantastical take on the world of fashion may be a little far-fetched, it gets more right than it does wrong. It tells the origin story of 101 Dalmatians’ infamously stylish villain Cruella DeVil, here played in her youth by Emma Stone. Her beginnings as a renegade fashion designer—when she pushes back against the florals and frivolity of 1960s London style and introduces something darker and more dangerous to the mix—has plenty of parallels in real-world figures such as Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano. The costumes may be ahistorical (albeit intentionally so), but the tale of egos and excess in fashion is undoubtedly timeless.
