Fashion Forward, by Margo Davis

Couture by Chinese designer Guo Pei at the Vancouver Art Gallery, 2018, photograph by Margo Davis (USA). 2018.

​Fashion Forward                   
                  
Five mannequins animate a raised platform in puffy layered finery. In the hushed Vancouver Gallery visitors gasp at these flawless faces beatific as six-year-olds. Their knee-length starchy crinolines of blue, yellow, white-gold befit an invitation to Alice’s tea party. This worn observer, a fractured fairytale in tennies and a sagging cable knit sweater long out of vogue, resists a photo op alongside chic young women who hung the moon and now bask in its ethereal glow. Their swishy poses hint at a sophistication not yet acted on. Nor should they understand what their teasing couture, those bejeweled eight-inch platforms, might propose as each peeks through feathery sequined masks. Could I coax them out of here, like Pied Piper? Girls, your chariot awaits. Their dangling earrings chime a delicate alarm. From atop a nearby spiral staircase, Simon says,  Tip this way, that. Freeze!  ​

Margo Davis

Margo Davis is a recent retiree with wanderlust. Last fall she revisited all major Madrid and Barcelona museums, Malaga and the Alhambra. Her home base is Houston. A recent Pushcart nominee, Margo’s more recent poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, The Fourth River, and The Houston Chronicle. Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary and Echoes of the Cordillera.