Review: ‘Dishonorable Discharge’ put upcycled utility garments, odes to protests on the 237 runway

The peak of last Saturday’s Dishonorable Discharge, the Basement Collective show at Cedar Rapids’ Eastern Iowa Arts Academy, came halfway through. Poet Henry Morray, outfitted in a heavy camo jacket with an upside-down flag painted on the back, wheeled in a frenzied goosestep up and down the runway, barking the Rudyard Kipling poem “Boots” through a squawking megaphone. The clapping and stomping that had been a constant part of the show prior was replaced with only Morray’s voice and a driving techno beat playing underneath.

The show took place April 11 as part of 237 Collective’s Fashion Month, and featured 20 looks of screenprinted, lino-printed, sewn and patched garments.

Basement Collective is the brainchild of Kaylea Staab, a Cedar Rapids native who came back to CR during COVID and fell in love with crafting. She’d eventually move on to clothing swaps, and from there met Abby and Paxton Long of 237 Collective — in fact, in her introduction to the show, Abby credited Staab with being the reason for 237 Collective’s existence. Most of the artists involved in 237 at the start met at the initial Basement Collective clothing swap.

The show’s theme, Dishonorable Discharge, was a response to the constant inundation of war that’s saturated the media landscape in recent years. Staab described it as “…a plea for the future I want and a critique on what we’ve gotten so far.”

Aesthetically, Staab took inspiration from past protest movements. “I’ve been really interested in the way our daily lives have been exposed to the atrocities of war over the last decade,” she told me. “I’ve been especially enamored with the Vietnam War and the protesting that’s taken place around it … I’ve been really involved in the protest scene, especially the anti-ICE protests that have been going on in the last year … It seems there’s so many things to protest now. But I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from those of the past who have fought these fights before.”

While the ’60s and particularly the ’70s have been having a moment en vogue in fashion, the show’s political references felt slightly dated as a result. To be sure, most of the materials for the show were vintage and surplus, heavily featuring army fatigues and camo. Living in Cedar Rapids, where everyone knows someone working for Collins or BAE Systems, I was hoping for some comment on the military-industrial complex just a few blocks’ drive away.

For the final model walk, the models marched up and down the aisles to a “no justice, no peace” chant, which felt like the clearest political thesis of the show.

The runway formed a gigantic U shape around the room, with an upside-down American flag at the center, painted live by Spike Dupree. Models marched around the runway and back in Staab’s upcycled tees, soft lino-printed slips, and bead-embellished tops.

The pieces were highly wearable — I imagine that when 237 Collective sells their runway pieces from this month, Basement Collective’s work will be the first off the shelves — but in the context of a runway, I felt that there were some aspects that fell flat. Tiny beaded messages sewn onto T-shirts, surrounding larger-format motifs or standing on their own, were impossible to read from the seats. A projector screen displaying the finer details of the pieces, possibly intercut with war or protest footage, would have made the messages stronger and easier to read for the audience.

Each look was cohesive on its own, though I would have preferred to see more aggressive transformation of the upcycled pieces — changes in structure or form. A couple of pieces stood out in this regard; a halter-neck patchwork dress had an elegant combination of pattern and color, including the eight-ball iconography common throughout Basement Collective’s work. Another admirable iteration was a khaki dress with a unique pleat detail down the back, reminiscent of the pocket of a safari jacket and fitting well into the military aspects of the show.

I’m interested to see more of Staab’s work. Several pieces have a strong graphical sensibility that I enjoyed, particularly a broken-chain large-scale print that found its way onto several pieces. I’m also looking forward to the final show of 237 Fashion Month next week, edify, featuring nine local designers at Groundswell.