Digging Around Underground

Sure, Fashion Week is the place to see what’s new from heavyweights like Ralph, Calvin and Oscar, but what about the undiscovered talent? It used to be, editors and buyers had to travel to far-flung warehouses and galleries to see style-makers bubbling up from the underground.

But this year, underground style bible Paper magazine is making it easier, by sponsoring shows on Thursday and today by small, fringe designers at Bryant Park, the tented area behind New York Public Library where practically all the designers now show their collections.

The Organization for Returning Fashion Interest, an edgy New York house, will show its fall collection there, and a designer named Savoia will trot out his zoot suits. The design quartet who make clothes under the Future Planet of Style label will show. And L.A. designer Jenisa Washington will present her leather collection that was made famous by Madonna in her Harper’s Bazaar geisha layout last year.

“These designers are making innovative things, sometimes in their homes, and wearing them out at night to the clubs,” said Paper editor Kim Hastreiter. “Then retailers are going into the clubs, copying their designs, and it goes up the food chain until we see it in the mall. By then, the young designers are on to something else.” She hopes Paper’s sponsorship will help give underground style-makers the credit they are due.

The “Paper Project” kicked off the other night with a party in one of the Bryant Park tents for the hipper-than-thou. The sourpuss girls were out en masse--you know, the look personified by model Esther Canadas. Maybe it’s the sunny Southern Californian in me, but I say, “Please! Smile, laugh, cry . . . do anything. Just don’t pout!”

Party-goers also got to see an exhibit of costumes designed by and for nightclub denizens, produced by the Downtown Costume Institute. The institute was founded in 1997 when club promoters Chi Chi Valente and Hattie Hathaway realized no one was documenting this slice of contemporary culture.

Costumes came from the midnight stages of Paris, Berlin, San Francisco and New York. Nocturnal dandies like Oscar Wilde were represented by a reproduction of a circa-1900 suit with velvet pantaloons and a brocade jacket trimmed in green peacock feathers. Johanna Constantine’s 1993 Toast Dress, which she designed for the Black Lips Performance Cult, is a vintage gown covered with pieces of dry toast and dinner rolls. (The costume had to be re-created because the original was destroyed by mice.)

Other looks included a nun’s habit with found panties (eew!), a light-up maillot, and a Hugo Ball performance costume from the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire in Paris, circa 1916. The get-up included a paper hat and skirt over vintage undergarments.

If all this sounds very strange, just remember: It’s very street. Check it out at https://www.mothernyc.com.

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Reebok--the brand that influenced fashion in aerobics studios and on the streets in the ‘80s (remember Cybill Shepherd’s orange high-tops at the 1985 Emmy awards?)--is using Fashion Week to make a comeback.

Reebok’s three new fashion-oriented collections won’t be in stores until spring, but the company is offering a perk to fashion reporters and editors and store buyers: It will allow them to order the new sneaks for free during Fashion Week. (I do not accept merchandise from subjects that I cover. Anyway, I wear Nikes.)

There were plenty of free-shoe takers at the Paper party the other night, where the sleek black leather Marathon Racer was a popular choice. Perfect for dashing from club to club, if you do that sort of thing.

Reach Booth Moore at booth.moore@latimes.com.