RENTING
Fashion mag is well turned out on third-floor
February 13, 2010
David Hayes
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
In Worn Fashion Journal you'll find articles about colour and gender (why pink is for girls, blue for boys) and the "beauty as duty" propaganda campaign during World War II (reflecting the new role of women in the military).
You'll find essays on the history of mannequins, on forgiving Elvis his late-career jumpsuits and the enduring influence of the iconic, black pilgrim buckle pumps worn by Catherine Deneuve in Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour.
You'll read a profile on a pair of photorealist weavers and browse through visual glossaries of footwear and shirt collars. For one memorable feature, 23 artists were asked to customize a pair of Keds.
And, on any given day, from about noon onwards, you'll find founder, editor-in-chief and art director Serah-Marie McMahon at work on her biannual creation in the 650-square-foot one-bedroom apartment she shares with her husband, Ted Kulczycky, and their three black-and-white cats – Betsey (after designer Betsey Johnson), Cale (after avant-garde rocker John Cale) and Ronette (after Ronnie Spector, "the original bad girl of rock `n' roll").
"My goal is to take fashion seriously," says McMahon. "There have been no alternatives to mainstream fashion magazines in Canada. Worn looks at fashion from a historical, cultural and political point of view."
No one would mistake it for a mainstream fashion magazine. It's a tiny circulation available by subscription, in some news outlets and on the indie Arts-and-Crafts website Etsy, although it's as popular in Japan as it is here. It has the spunky spirit of the defunct Sassy (the cult teen magazine too good to survive commercially) and its design borrows from cut-and-paste zines and the more eccentric side of über-hip New York style-bible, Paper (which McMahon credits as a prime visual inspiration). As a result, it can sometimes be a bit like trying to read a Jackson Pollock drip painting, but so what?
The models don't look like models and the aesthetic isn't so much "fashion forward" as "fashion sideways." (A Nancy Drew-themed fashion spread manages to be simultaneously pretty and subversive.) The website (www.wornjournal.com) is whimsical and funky. It's a fashion magazine with an indie heart and a grad student's soul.
Today, McMahon and Kulczycky are sitting in their living room (a.k.a., Worn's production office) around a green Formica table. The 30-year-old McMahon, is full-figured and has a warm manner and a round, sweet face framed by dark hair falling below her shoulders. She's wearing her favourite purple cardigan with its pearlized buttons over a floral print dress, the effect of which is a kind of Value Village chic. Kulczycky, a decade older, has salt-and-pepper hair and looks like he could be Billy Bob Thornton's dishevelled younger brother. He's a musician, bartender and "cat wrangler" (his title in the magazine).
"I'm the art director," says McMahon, "but we have guest layout and design people working on each issue. That gives it a bit of a disjointed appearance if you look at several issues." Shrugging, she adds, "but I figure if it's always disjointed it'll be cohesive."
In 2005, fresh out of art school, McMahon launched Worn in Montreal where she was living at the time. In the spring of 2008, when she and Kulczycky decided to move to Toronto, they narrowed their search to Leslieville, where Kulczycky's parents lived, Kensington Market, where McMahon had once lived years earlier, and Parkdale which was, as McMahon puts it, "sort of like Mile End, where we were living in Montreal, except replace the crack addicts and hookers with Hassidic Jews."
Bearing in mind financial considerations, a space that would allow her to produce Worn, and the cats, McMahon was looking for a pretty specific kind of place. And, for a mere $675, it turned out to be the third floor of an old house near Dufferin and King where six volunteer staff and eight revolving interns drop in and out. (As we talk, 18-year-old Avyn Omel, an intern, arrives wearing black leggings and a sweater under a denim dress she made, that looks like it was repeatedly slashed with a box cutter.)
About renting, McMahon says, "We're very urban and always will be. And buying a house in the city is so out of our reach."
"We also don't know for sure where home will be in the future," adds Kulczycky. "If the right opportunity came along for Worn to move to New York or San Francisco or Calgary or wherever..."
Raising her eyebrows, McMahon says: "We're not moving to Calgary."
What about the cultural perception that a person isn't successful unless they own property?
"I'm only 30 so I don't know many people who own houses," says McMahon.
"Or, at least, who live anywhere I would want to live. Sometimes, yes, I think I should have more of my stuff together by now and have a car and a house and a baby. But I don't worry about it on a regular basis. We're pretty dedicated to our renting lifestyle."
David Hayes is an author and award-winning feature writer who has been a renter most of his life. If you have stories or information to share about renting, he can be reached at lifelong_renter@sympatico.ca.
Toronto Star