Bag Ladies

Fendi, Gucci, Chanel, Prada -- these names mean life or death to a certain type of someone. Thankfully, the counterfeiting industry has the matter firmly in hand, churning out remarkable clones days after designs hit stores and giving poorly funded fashion ding-a-lings the opportunity to appear in public. But no one, save the 3 a.m. crowd in the T.L., is going to mistake Stephanie Syjuco's work for anything on store shelves. The artist takes images of designer bags she likes, grabs rolls of yarn, and crochets them herself, coming up with "lumpy mutations" or something equally charming. She's worked up a global scheme called the Counterfeit Crochet Project -- outposts reach Manila, Beijing, and Istanbul -- which encourages people to make fakes in both a wry homage and a pretty fair slap to high fashion. If you have the skills with the needles and are sick of making socks or hand puppets or whatever it is you do, head down to Counterfeit Crochet Workshop to meet Syjuco and start your career in the fashion industry. The workshop appears conjunction with the exhibit "The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics" and occurs throughout the run (to read more about the show, check out Traci Vogel's column on page TK).
Sat., April 19, noon; Sat., May 10, noon; Sat., May 24, noon; Sat., June 14, noon, 2008