Last weekend Squaw Valley hosted its first annual prom ("Enchantment Under KT"). It was supposed to be a fundraiser, though I'm not sure anyone there knew what the funds were being raised for exactly. My guess is that most people were more drawn in by the prom's '70s theme and the "enchanting" prospect of feathering their hair and/or wearing hideous ruffles. I dug the theme, and was super lucky to find all of the decade-correct components of my get-up in just a few mad hours on Haight Street. It's not every day that you walk into a vintage store, beeline it for a long backless red polyester dress covered with purple cherries, and feel the odd combo of joy/creepiness that comes with fitting perfectly into an outfit that was once heavily worn by somebody else. Add giant sunglasses, six inch platforms, a rainbow of green-purple-white eyeshadow, and several layers of lip gloss, and I was ready for a corsage.
Some of the outfits were amazing, and if my camera hadn't keep telling me that it was out of memory I would have captured more of them. I definitely would have snapped a closeup of the guy who seemed to have attached his '70s moustache with crazy glue, and taken a "canopy" shot of the '70s fros about a dozen guys were sporting. I would have tried to capture some of the "Is this '70s or more like early '80s...?" confusion reflected in many (most) outfits. I would have taken a picture of the huge movie screen playing "Hot Dog...The Movie," a very B flick about a guy who competes in a freestyle skiing championships at Squaw in between hot tub/steam room makeout scenes (the movie was made in 1984, further adding to the '70s/'80s confusion). And I would have snapped an incriminating shot of Johnny Mosley, the fallen-from-grace former freestyle Olympic gold medalist whose profound drunkenness rendered him incapable of reading off raffle ticket numbers, which is why he chose instead to just throw prizes out into the crowd, nearly taking out a few fros in the process. But alas. Just a few shots.
