Outing the Outlaw Spirit: TAB Fashion Show, A Review

05 Mar Outing the Outlaw Spirit: TAB Fashion Show, A Review

Note: This is the second of what we hope will be a series of posts and images by long-time local talent Ingrid Lundahl, author of “Telluride: The Outlaw Spirit of a Colorado Town.” Most know Ingrid as a killer photographer, but she started out in the professional world as a writer. (For more on Ingrid and how to buy the book, see below.) Here’s Ingrid’s spin on the Telluride AIDS Benefit’s recent fashion show.

It has a somewhat bawdy reputation, the Telluride AIDS Benefit fashion show. In fact, the runway action has been blowing heads back on the front rows for two decades.

Models Tyler Landers and Jordan Spasov. Photo by Ingrid Lundahl

Twenty years ago local neophytes strutted down a makeshift runway at the old Quonset Hut, formerly located on the Telluride Elementary School grounds. Check out the historic b&w fashion show image, and you will see the signature rounded Quonset ceiling.

The 1996 TAB Fashion Show  Here, Genevieve Gaelyn & Erica Clum are bridesmaids to Tiffany Martinides in the 2nd TAB fashion show directed
by Daiva Chesonis, at the now defunct Quonset Hut. This image is featured in the BENEFITS & BASHES chapter of “Telluride: The Outlaw Spirit of a Colorado Town,” available at Ingrid’s website

As the show has transformed into a larger, longer, louder presentation, the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village has become the ideal locale, complete with complicated lighting effects and surround-sound boom-boom.

And the number of designers, both global and local, who send their creations to our tiny town has grown over the years. The TAB Show has a certain reputation. It is still on the ascent.

Over the past twenty years, there have been acrobatics; painted nude bodies; suggestive dance; flaming baton-twirling; condom-festooned costumes; brilliant flashes of seasoned professionalism presented by the runway appearances of local and former super-model, Sunny Griffin; convoluted headdresses that could topple a normal mortal…and off-the-hook hairstyling by Mooney, LA stylist who transforms mortal women into taller, commanding goddesses, and men into perhaps their more real selves, or their heart-stopping alter egos.

Jewel, Grammy nominee of global renown, was a surprise prelude to the evening’s visual delights at the Telluride AIDS Benefit 2015 Fashion Show. Photo, Ingrid Lundahl.

This year, as always, it was a Thursday night packed house for the big event. The auditorium and bar area were full of veteran-show-attending locals and artists who had donated to the art auction.

This year, a seasoned former Joffrey dancer and Telluride fan, Michael Anderson, was the show director…”funny, kind, and directs like a choreographer,” disclosed Luci Reeve, backstage dresser/seamstress for 15 years.

Masters of the Show walk the runway at the Telluride Conference Center, after the Thursday Night Locals Show during Telluride’s annual and epic Telluride AIDS Benefit weekend.
Quenten Shumacher, Creative Director and Michael Anderson, Show Director. Photo, Ingrid Lundahl.

Luci also shared that the “new blood was wonderful.” She developed a bond with Quenten Shumacher, the creative director stylist, sharing a reverence for the use of black safety pins.

Michael and his team created a story line that toured the four seasons as a metaphor for the evolution of the AIDS pandemic. The story featured an Ice Queen, who represented the early stages of the disease, when AIDS was a cold killer. The part was played by Telluride’s star of stage and cross-dress, Sasha. It appeared Ice Queen reigned until the Prince arrived. The Prince appeared as a no-nonsense, level-headed young man in shiny mail, shades of Game of Thrones. He tussles with the Queen and she ends up bowing to his power. The prince, played by Jeff Davis, represented hope for the future demise of the HIV/AIDS scourge.

The Ice Queen, as played by Sasha, and the young Prince, as played by Jeff Davis, after reaching some sort of truce. The frosty Ice Queen finally smiles –perhaps because of the warm applause. Photo, Ingrid Lundahl

After the show, I heard how much folks appreciated the excellent lighting, the flattering hair-styles, the apparel that could actually be worn by you and me, and the pro feel of the action on the runway.

And happily, each year, there are more and more local Fashion Collections. We scream, we yell, we caw like jungle birds when we see our neighbor strutting his or her stuff, or wearing a creation of a local designer.

Lovely lasses wearing locally designed dresses glide up the runway. Left to right: Cara Bunch, Alysha Patterson, and Molly Wickwire Sante, a 12-year veteran of the show. Photo, Ingrid Lundahl

TAB keeps raising more dough. Our beneficiaries include but are not limited to Colorado’s WestCAP, a grassroots response to the epidemic, and Manzini, Swaziland, our sister African town, rife with the HIV virus.

Cheers to the outlaw spirit of Telluride that generates, year after year, wild, dazzling, uninhibited entertainment that eventually morphs itself into serious money for a serious cause.

About Ingrid Lundahl:

Ingrid Lundahl, a Telluride homegrown photographer since 1978, launched her art/history/photo/fun book, “TELLURIDE | The Outlaw Spirit of a Colorado Town, in 2014.” It celebrates the wild energy of Telluride and is the talk of the town. Some of the chapters are: OUTLAWS, SALOONS, WILD WOMEN, FILM, BLUEGRASS, THE MOUNTAIN. You can buy this light-hearted history book on her website: ingridlundahl.com and at various bookstores across Colorado, most especially Telluride’s Between the Covers bookstore in the heart of downtown, and also at: between-the-covers.com.The book is also available at Telluride Naturals Gift Shop in Mountain Village.

Ingrid was a writer before she dropped out of the corporate advertising world in the 1970’s to move to Telluride. Creating the Outlaw book has kicked her writing muse into action, and thus has been birthed this column, Outing the Outlaw Spirit.