WESTENDER
July 16, 1998
Fashion By Janet Smith
Designer Goes Berserk with Girl Power
Female touchstones provide inspiration
Kingi Carpenter may not have had a formal business plan, but visions of lipsticks, bouffant hairdos and Eiffel towers danced in her head when she started print- making a decade ago.
"I had a vision of a store with all these cute colors and me all dressed up," said the woman behind Peach Berserk, a whimsically-printed line of dresses, jackets, jewelry and more that made its debut fashion show at DeNiro's last night.
The line - named for a nailpolish in Helen Gurley Brown's career gal bible Sex at the Office - is very much Carpenter's vision. On her first visit to Vancouver, she was decked out in her trademark color - pink. Her cropped fuchsia sweater was emblazoned with her signature fish buttons, her own blue martini earrings dangled, and her necklace was a glittering array of cocktails, glass beads and strawberries. Since she launched her line our of her one-bedroom apartment ten years ago, Carpenter has created more than 100 prints - mostly drawn freehand during her downtime at night. The dancing mascaras, lipstick tubes, bouffant hairdos, irons, brassiers, and (her original print after a stay in Paris) Eiffel towers are a one-of-a-kind mix of retro '50s prints, early-'60s illustrations, Andy Warhol pop cult repetitions and ironical female icons.
Carpenter explained, "Things traditionally female are art to me. Irons should be elevated to art. If you take lipsticks and bras and you put them on clothes, you think about them in a different way.
"And anyway, what's cuter than a lipstick tube on earth?!"
Carpenter created her line of 'girlie' prints and pink prints long before Courtney Love, the Spice Girls and ravers like the Sneaker Pimps rediscovered baby-doll dresses and colors. Around the time she opened her shop on hip West Queen Street in Toronto, it was surrounded by boutiques catering to the black-uniformed artists and clubcrawlers that populated the neighbourhood. But she was also reacting to another fashion trend of the day: the dreaded power suit.
"I want to be inspiring people who are like my type - people who don't fit the mold and people who dont want to follow the rules," says Carpenter. "If I hadn't found my niche, I'd probably be in a job I hated right now. I want to inspire other people not to give up."
Carpenter won't be opening up a boutique just yet in Vancouver, though she
sees droves of visitors from the West Coast at her shop on Queen. For now,
her designs - an ever changing collection that includes long, sleeveless
shifts with princess waists, cocktail dresses perfect for a night at the
Blue Lizard, and comfy white t-shirts emblazoned with her "Lovely Ladies"
print - are available by catalogue and through a new local distributor at
602-9408.