Alicia Lawhon

Even with five years’ experience as a designer and custom-clothing supplier to musicians, Alicia Lawhon retains the flavor of a fledgling designer stitching up one-of-a-kind pieces on a lark. Her fall show, staged in the faux-rustic Big Foot Lodge in Atwater Village, was so stocked with fans wearing her clothes, it was difficult to determine who was a model and who was a Lawhon friend wearing her polo shirts with the hindquarters and tail of a fake rat sewn over the polo pony.

What came down the runway wasn’t as cynical, but it was just as wildly anticommercial. The designer earnestly described this fall collection, titled “Homegrown,” as “clothes you can walk in the woods all day in, then at night, just brush off the leaves and go out.” Imagine hiking up Mt. Wilson in arty duds crafted from the fashion equivalent of a junkyard of car parts.

Lawhon made clothing collages from sailor collars attached to dresses, blue jean pockets and waistbands affixed to felt circle skirts, and jackets crafted from a crocheted tablecloth. The strong do-it-yourself look of her clothes made them seem impossible to duplicate, which in the end, they just might be.