‘wearable Art’ Celebrates 20 Years Of Transcending Fashion In Dunedin

Monsters made of balloons.

A dress made of meat (long before Lady Gaga).

Full metal corsets, a headdress that shot glitter, a bra that shot Silly String, and a skirt made of ping pong balls.

Those are just a few of the eye-popping creations (by artists Mark Byrne, Rogerio Martins and Frank Strunk III, respectively) that have sashayed down the runway at Wearable Art, the fantastic annual spectacle produced by the Dunedin Fine Art Center. A showcase for the wild imaginations and sheer chutzpah of designers, artists, and models, the show has delighted audiences since 2005 (minus the pandemic years), and on Saturday WA celebrates its 20th anniversary.

“There’s nothing like it anywhere,” says Danny Olda, the Center’s curatorial director since February of 2025. The closest such extravaganza may be the World of WearableArt (WOW) competition in New Zealand, which in the past has awarded prizes to Strunk and to two of this year’s Wearable Art designers: Dawnamatrix, who specialize in latex, and Olga Saretsky of Kikimora Studio, who describes her other-worldly body of work as “High Fashion Circus.”

Organizing Wearable Art is part of Olda’s job, and it’s a lot. He looks at all the submissions—CVs, bios, images of past work, proposal sketches, artist statements—with a view to how well the applicants have thought out their themes and the feasibility of fully realizing them. This year there were 20 applications for six places—down from 10 last year so that DFAC could offer each artist a larger stipend ($2,500 to use as they see fit, including purchase of materials and hiring of models).

DFAC doesn’t set a theme for the artists to follow (though as this is the event’s 20th, or Platinum, anniversary, there’s bound to be some shine on the runway). But he does watch out for proposals that “slip out of art and into fashion, or out of the visual arts into cosplay.” Because for him, the “Wearable” is less important than the “Art.” Fashion at least aspires to be worn, he points out. Even the outlandish-seeming outfits coming out of Paris and Milan trickle down to become fast-fash trends at H&M. But wearable art, he says, is about “using the human body as a wonderful constraint to make artwork on.”

That first Wearable Art show in 2005 was Kaya Jill’s idea. She was DFAC’s director of special events at the time and still in her 20s,“the youngest person at the Art Center.” After seeing an “insane” fashion event at the Vitale Brothers warehouse in St. Pete in which Frank Strunk’s pieces stole the show, she spoke to board members and then-CEO George Ann Bissett about doing a similar event at DFAC. 

“Most of the people who came to the Art Center were, you know, older,” Jill says. “I knew this could shake things up a bit.” A fundraiser in the usually slow summer months had particular appeal to Bissett, who was then just a few months into what would be her long and successful tenure as CEO.

“We were in a very bad financial situation,” Bissett remembers. So, when Kaya came in with her Wearable Art idea and suggested that the show could bring in maybe a thousand bucks, Bissett was sold.

“Good,” she told Kaya. “We can make payroll.”

Neither of them knew whether the thing would work. The Center was just 16,000 square feet (“That was before I got the building bug,” says Bissett). The “catwalk”—a bunch of sculpture pedestals shoved together—had to be set up in the foyer, and was only about waist-high.

“It was a risk,” says Jill. “We had all these designers involved, working for months [including Strunk and Carly Champagne, who created a dress made of condom packages]. George Ann really took a chance.”

But for whatever reason—word of mouth? hunger for something different? a sexy ad in Creative Loafing?—on the night of July 29, 2005, the place was packed.

“It was unbelievable,” says Bissett. “We couldn’t stop the people coming. Everyone from a well-known local attorney with an oxygen bottle to kids in mohawks. I had one board member tell me, ‘George Ann, you must do something about this crowd!’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me? This is wonderful!’ I had never seen so many people in this art center.” 

So many, in fact, that the fire marshal told them they’d have to start turning people away.

There were no seats (though one was found for the gentleman with the oxygen tank), and the catwalk was so low that “half the people probably couldn’t see the show,” says Kaya. “But it didn’t matter. Everybody was saying, ‘I couldn’t see anything but it was great.’”

“It was a joyous event,” sums up Bissett. “It was just sort of thrown together, but it was magical because of the whole ensemble of Kaya and [then-marketing director] Ken Hannon and [then-curator] Catherine Bergmann and the artists and the community…. It just makes my heart beat very fast thinking about it.”

In the second year, a better runway was procured that stretched from the atrium into the galleries, with tickets going for more than the original $10. By the fourth year, the event had grown so popular that it was moved to the much larger Dunedin Community Center, walking distance from the DFAC campus, where it will be held again this year.

The six artists in Wearable Art 20 include both mainstays of the show and newcomers.

The Bay to Bay Wearable Art Collective (better known in past years as The Garden Fairies), can always be depended upon for a blast of color and good cheer. This year, says Danny Olda, the group is showing “‘mythological goddesses who rise again as a futuristic forces collective.” 

Saretsky’s Kikimora Studio has shown some truly mind-boggling designs—performances, really—on the Dunedin runway, always a highlight of the show. “Her artwork feels very light-hearted,” says Olda, “but she takes her work very seriously.” 

Two artists who showed together in 2025 are presenting individually this year: botanical artist Talia Craig, who will be using living plants in her wearables, and Charity Grace, founder of Whimsy Forge, a fitness-positive community of crafters and creatives. The collective is doing “something post-apocalyptic about women regaining power,” says Olda. Expect Mad Max-inspired body armor and perhaps some of Grace’s “artistic bikinis.”

Dawnamatrix (Dawn Mostow and Ben Gould) are first-timers on the DFAC runway, but they’ve won international acclaim for their work with latex, including awards for wearable technology. “They’ll put on a good show,” says Olda.

And one more artist is a newcomer: Tampa native Chase Parker, who five years ago gave up his 19-year career as a hairstylist to pursue his artwork full-time. In his regular practice, he uses molds of models’ bodies to create metal sculptures and 3-D paintings in which figures seem to be bursting from their frames. Using these techniques to make “wearable” garments out of metal is no easy task, but he’s loving it.

“I feel like I’ve had so much pressure from people telling me how to make my art—a lot of commissions and corporate work. This is the first time in a long time I’m able to express myself freely—it’s 100% me from concept to creation.”

In addition to these six artists, the runway show may also include appearances by designers who have shaped the event over the years.

For Andrea Nalls, who joined DFAC as President & CEO in 2023, this year’s Wearable Art promises to be “a great celebration of our history.” One of her favorite parts of any WA show, she says, is “the moment when they honor the stylists and the makeup artists. I always adore the very end when everybody does a final walkout. It feels like a tribute to teamwork.”

Which, of course, has been the case since that first crazy night in 2005. 

Former Curatorial Director Bergmann sums it up. 

“As one who was witness and later curator for most of the 20 years of Wearable Art, I can say it was an annual high energy blowout of collaborative JOY, devotion, vision, sweat, generosity of spirit and creative genius from the designers, stylists and production team (Salon GW + Production Source, Inc. were there from the beginning) and for DFAC’s staff and volunteers, an absolute labor of love.”

PS: I’m joining in the Joy myself this year, as the Wearable Art 20 emcee. Fashion tips welcome. (I will not be wearing a metal corset.)

Tickets for Dunedin Fine Art Center’s Wearable Art 20: Platinum happening Saturday, Aug. 22 at Dunedin Fine Art Center in Dunedin are still available and start at $40.

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