Dress Code Cracker: the podcast -- style and communication

Gigi is a long time vintage collector, appreciator and wearer. And an even longer time lingerie enthusiast! She is the owner/operator of Toronto's only Vintage Style Lingerie Boutique : Gigi's House of Frills.

We talked about 'everyday vintage', and her dedication to fashion and details from the 1930s to '50s. I love how her store makes you aspire to a more glamourous lifestyle, where you might entertain in loungewear or do your pincurls in a nightgown from the 1930s.

You can follow Gigi on her twitter: @gigisfrills

Instagram: gigisfrills or gigi’s house of frills, and of course her website which features information about the store and lookbooks....

More at www.dresscodecracker.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dresscodecrackr

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dresscodecracker/

Amazon Syren is a queer, poly leather femme, a sex-workers' rights activist, and a Professional Naked Girl.  She's also a witchy glamazon who sings opera, writes poetry, reads tarot, grows veggies, works magic, spins her own yarn, cooks, preserves, and darns a lot of socks.  The secret ingredient is always love.  She lives with her wife and an assortment of metamours in 1821.

DIY is very close to her heart.

She has opinions! Which is what I love! We discussed the business of being tall women (she's 6'4" and I'm just under 6'2"), from slouching to people's surreptitious checks to see if we are wearing heels.

We also covered her 'femme muse' Musetta from La Bohème,  queer hanky codes, what a newly minted dyke wears to pride in 2008,

DIY is a big deal with her, from knitting and handspinning yarn to gardening, preserving and cooking. She also weaves and sews. As an urban homesteader, the 'little house in the big woods' thing is no joke.

We discussed the terminology around ethical non-monogamy, and the idea of being "solo” poly, which she points out has no meaning unless you're working from a coupled default position. She also clarified the differences between pansexual and queer poly (spoiler alert it's hetero-normativity).

She recommended:

Music: @solstafir

And please find Amazon online via her twitter, @amazon_syren, and also her two blogs:

Urban Meliad and Syrens. 

Thank you so much Amazon! It was a pleasure. ♥

www.dresscodecracker.com for more info and images! Thanks for listening. 

I encountered Amanda Harris’ work via a Gender and Media class.

Her photographs have been published in Glitter & Grit: Queer Performance from the

Please see images at www.dresscodecracker.com also! 

Amanda’s art and activism has been informed and nurtured by

I liked hearing her perspectives on collaborating with vs

….also to a wonderful resource for femme articles and

Of course in the bonus round I asked Amanda for her book

She mentioned Amber Hollibaugh, whose book My Dangerous Desires is a favourite of mine

The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch

She recommended work by 

And…Amanda contributed to a recent book, Glitter & Grit: Queer Performance from the Heels on

Her music recommendation is GAYmous which you can find on FB

Amanda’s latest project Y’all Come Back

Crystal is a fat activist who moved from fashion blogging to tackling more contested spaces in fat feminist thought: cultural hatred of fat bodies; and how fatphobia can manifest as violence in intimate partner relationships. She's in her second year of a PhD gender, feminist and women's studies.

Crystal was excited about Charlotte Cooper's Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement  --which is out now!

Please go to www.dresscodecracker.com for more information and photos of Crystal. 

I can be reached at sarah [at] dresscodecracker.com --feedback, comments, and recommendations for future episodes all very welcome! 

Thanks for listening. 

Jenna Danchuk is a writer, researcher, and occasional maker of things. Jenna Danchuk is an Assistant Editor for Spiral Nature, a magazine style website dedicated to alternative spiritualities, practical magick, and exploring occulture. She is also a PhD student in the Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies program at York University where she studies the role of cultural production in feminist witchcraft and magical communities. Jenna is a former Associate Editor of WORN Fashion Journal and her writing has also appeared in Shameless Magazine, FUSE, and on Bitch Media’s blog. A training ceremonial magician, but a feminist witch at heart, she has an interest in reconciling the two.

We talked about fashion and chaos magick, shopping guilt (this comes in so many varieties!), imagining an aesthetic bridging goth and new age, kung fu, academia, spirituality, astrology, and women of the esoteric western spiritual traditions.

Thanks for listening! 

Images and info at: 

www.dresscodecracker.com

Vivek Shraya is a multimedia artist living in Toronto with strong ties to prairie malls.

She's produced 10 albums, written 3 books (with 2 more set for release next year) and created 4 short films, all to great acclaim. She talked to me about the production of art, how performance grounds her,

Her debut novel, She of the Mountains, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2014. A three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Vivek has read and performed at shows, festivals and post-secondary institutions internationally, sharing the stage with Tegan & Sara and Dragonette, and has appeared at NXNE, Word on the Street, and Yale University.

Vivek is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, the 2014 recipient of the Steinert & Ferreiro Award for leadership in Toronto’s LGBTQ community, recipient of Anokhi Media’s inaugural Most Promising LGBTQ Community Crusader Award in 2015, a 2015 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award finalist, and a 2015 recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize Honour of Distinction. Both Vivek’s debut collection of poetry, even this page is white, and first children’s picture book, The Boy & the Bindi, will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2016.

Her POC fashion project (co-edited with Karen Campos Castillo) is at 

http://heart-beats.ca/HDB/

We talked about Rihanna, Beyonce (duh), gender expression, performance vs 'real life', and style as class privilege. She also educated me in the nicest way possible about being so judgemental about other people's style. 

Thanks Vivek! You're amazing! 

I'm baaaaack this week with Andrea Zanin, a butch/femme academic and leatherwoman who writes prolifically and teaches about BDSM/Leather/kink, power dynamics, non-monogamy and queer sexuality. She's also pursuing a PhD in Gender Feminist and Women's studies (I didn't realize when I booked her that we're in the same program!) --and her thesis is about Canadian leatherdyke history.

Andrea's erotic short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies.

Her online home is here.

Andrea co-organizes the annual Canadian leatherdyke weekend An Unholy Harvest and runs a pervy book club called The Leather Bindings Society.

FInd Andrea on twitter too: @sexgeekAZ

Thanks for listening!