SWAMPOCALYPSE was a fashion show displaying a conceptual collection of wearable art in collaboration with Humble Haberdasher and the Cowboy Prince. All garments handmade by the Cowboy Prince and Brooke Sauvage with hats by Humble Haberdasher.
Photography @bordelonza
Fundraiser for trans youth in New Orleans. Raised $1,000.
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THE CATS CLAW REIGNS SUPREME IN NEW ORLEANS.
Most traces of man skulk in the submerged city like bygone barges and boldly rusted bottlecaps, evidence of a time past, of lost time, in what used to be known as the birthplace of jazz, the home of blackened redfish, the Crescent City.
Now they call it the Sunken City, the Latest Atlantis. Those who remain, anyway.
In 2018, New Orleans celebrated its 300th birthday with a pedestrian mall on Bourbon Street, an outlet mall on the Riverwalk, and the citywide expansion of a private police task force. AirBnBs and boutique hotels duked it out for prime real estate on brightly colored street blocks. A 2 o’clock curfew was imposed. Live music could only be heard before midnight, not to exceed a gentle lullaby. A pipeline between Texas and Louisiana barreled through the legislature, lubed along by lobbyists.
And to think, it all started when they took away go cups.
The citizens began as a trickle and ended up a deluge. Oogles squatted AirBnBs in protest. Canoe catamarans thronged the marshes; music tinkled over the empty offshore in ethereal floating cities. Impromptu parades swarmed the city’s major thoroughfares; a rogue krewe hijacked the Rampart streetcar line and rode along passing out satsumas from neighbors’ trees.
There was hope then - until they came.
The men in uniforms appeared in Jackson Square one day, under the snorting, rearing horse. Nothing would ever be the same again.
The Battle of Esplanade erupted in a blaze of motion & glory! when a busking musician raised her violin under a full moon, refusing to abide by the noise ordinance. Citizens downriver banded together against the uptown alliance headed by Mitch Landrieu, Sidney Torres, and the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. The downtown bandits went by many names, and came together in many krewes, but when it was important, they called themselves: Swampocolytes.
The Swampocolytes established a boundary that day. Backyard speakeasies unfurled in joyous celebration amongst the jasmine and homemade batches of pirate’s absinthe; flags stood in every yard that sang out RESIST. RESIST. RESIST. A tenuous peace was felt for the first time since the uprising.
But then the pipeline broke. Whether by accident or by sabotage, no one would say. Toxic waste seeped into the groundwater. Chemical lagoons coiled in culverts and bayous, and strange fanged creatures grew new appendages and haunted new corners.
But when Hurricane Jezebel came to spit on the city, neither side was spared.
Some how, by some groovy way, some strange Swampocalights survived - between St. Roch, the 7th Ward, the Marigny, and the Bywater. They found each other, wading through the gators and the fanged fish; they found each other, foraging for swamp fruit and nutria fur; they found each other, in a cobblestone courtyard where hope did again bloom.
THIS IS
SWAMPOCALYPSE.