CarnalNation

Hello my darlings! Suzanne Forbes, fetish artist and San Francisco alternative-event habitué here!

I'm very excited to be writing a fashion column for CarnalNation, one of my favorite sex-positive homesteads on the web. Editor-in-Chief Theresa Ikard has listened to me gleefully ramble about my obsession with corsets, my fascination with latex design, and my disturbing mania for handmade tiny top hats, and now she's turned me loose on you all!

Let's start off with this year's Edwardian Ball, which was held on January 22nd and 23rd, shall we?

Suzanne Forbes with Justin Katz, founder and producer of the Ball in 2009.
Photo (c) nightshade, theblight.net

This year marked the 10^th anniversary of San Francisco's unique Edward Gorey tribute party weekend, the Edwardian Ball. The "Edwardian" in the name of the event refers not so much to the Edwardian era of history as to the late Edward Gorey, the eccentric and charmingly morbid author and illustrator whose works are extremely popular in the Goth subculture. Gorey's characters are shown in his stylized black-and-white illustrations wearing fashions from the Victorian era on into the '30s, and attire at the Ball runs that gamut. In addition, there are regular ball-goers who create costumes as tributes to specific Gorey works, which include such characters as the disturbing "Insect God."

The Ball started as a tiny event at the Cat Club, with Rosin Coven performing their pagan lounge music, aerialists and fire spinners violating every SF safety code in the tiny back room, and Goths in hoop skirts and feather boas crushed so tightly together their corsets creaked.

Even at the beginning, fashion was the focus of the party.

Costume events in the Bay Area and other major cities are often dominated by organizations like the Greater Bay Area Costumer's Guild, a group of historical costumers deeply committed to period accuracy and detail. The Edwardian Ball has been from the first an affectionate rebuttal to the notion of recreating period fashions and refined ballroom attire, with a special focus on the quirky and the macabre. Tossing aside the restraints of historical accuracy gave attendees the freedom to show off their assets—long fishnet-clad legs, pale bosoms prominently displayed, and bare-armed muscular menfolk give the event a naughty and sexy vibe.

Revellers in the early days donned gothic/burlesque looks like stripy tights, corsets and bustle skirts along with giant black feather hats and Doc Martens. Blue and purple hair was teased into ringlets and puffed into Gibson Girl pompadours. Top hats quickly became a staple for gentlemen, accompanied by steel-toed boots and tattoos. The edgy and the elegant became the signature aesthetic. Punks in tailcoats and burlesque dancers in skull pasties mingled with louche Jazz Babies in marabou and beads.

Gorey-inspired costumes, often worn by entire groups re-enacting a popular work, grew more elaborate each year. Fashion shows were held on a tiny runway, with models in 7-inch buckled platform boots teetering above the delighted partygoers. It became customary to begin planning your outfit for next year the morning after the Ball.

In 2007, the event was moved to the baroque Victorian setting of the Great American Music Hall, where a ballroom floor gave dancers space for formal gowns with vast layers of petticoats, hats the size of ponies and of course sexy girls on stilts. Dark Garden Corsetry's fashion show was a central part of the event, and ever more circus performers and musicians contributed a bohemian carnival style. The coming of age of the Steampunk trend was celebrated at the Friday night Edwardian World's Faire, with goggles, jetpacks, riveted brown leather and gears in evidence everywhere.

A large contingent was dressed as characters from "The Gashlycrumb Tinies," one of Gorey's most popular works, which details the horrific demise of a child for each letter of the alphabet. Saturday night became The Night for everyone in town—and dandies, clockwork dollies and drag queens travelling from Seattle and Los Angeles—to put on their most outrageously fabulous outfit of the year. Victorian, Edwardian, flapper, Mad Max/Gothic Lolita hybrid—any style, as long as it was over-the-top gorgeous or even hideous, was admired.

In 2009 the event moved to an even larger venue, the beautiful Regency Center. The Beaux-Arts splendor of the Grand Ballroom is the perfect setting for the Ball, with its balconies and chandeliers and rococo flourishes. The biggest and best Ball yet drew a sublimely elegant and peculiar crowd of costume lovers, Goths, Burners, ballroom dance enthusiasists, trapeze artists, apocalypse nuts, rogue taxidermists and even a few natty children in tailcoats and spats.

2010's Ball was once again bigger and better, with a new feature—an entire floor of clothing and accessory vendors selling exquisite, often one-of-a-kind designs. Dark Garden corsets were available, as well as local steampunk/Neo-Victorian favorites like Steam Trunk and Hey Sailor hats—who wouldn't want a tricorne in crimson brocade with a tiny three-masted schooner perched on the brim, or a pinstriped waistcoat trimmed in brass studs and leather cutwork? Artist and fetish model Nixon Sixx was selling a line of tiny hats with roe deer skulls and silk flowers; Katherine the Great had rows of that necessary item for the apocalyptic dandy, the hipslung pocketed utility belt. You need a place for your pocketwatch, your iPhone, your flensing knife and your bootleg clove cigarettes, of course. Parasols, petticoats, beaded purses and blue lipstick were all available, and business was brisk—as if everyone didn't look fabulous enough already!