Women's Fashion
The Insider | Yacht’s Claire Evans
By Elizabeth Spiridakis
The Insider profiles emerging tastemakers in the fields of fashion, design, food, travel and the arts. Here, the Portland, Ore.-based singer Claire Evans shares her essentials. Evans is the neo-Annie Lennox half of the electro duo YACHT. They just finished a mini-tour with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and are currently rocking Europe.
Name: Claire L. Evans
Age: 24
Occupation(s): Singer in the band Yacht, artist, science writer.
Home Base: Portland, Ore.
Retail Standby: Rad Summer, which is where my most Gothic, audacious show frocks come from, and Stand Up Comedy, for waterproof Slow and Steady Wins the Race pumps and sci-fi design zines.
Music Venue: The Mormon Temple Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.
Music: The best that the L.A. punk scene had to offer in the late 1980s: Descendents, Suburban Lawns, Black Randy & the Metrosquad, the Screamers, the Weirdos, Nervous Gender.
Provisions: Andy & Bax Military Surplus. A surprisingly comprehensive stash of tiny plastic bottles, ropes, hooks, knives, duffels, compasses, bungees and water bottles. Everything you might need to survive the apocalypse, essentially.
For gifts: The Internet.
Restaurant: I’m a vegan tourist. In Portland, Blossoming Lotus for raw vegan cheesecake. In New York, Blossom for celebrity drag-king sighting and seitan, or Red Bamboo for the callalloo soup. In Los Angeles, Elf for the mind-blowing kale salad.
Drink: Dirty gin martini.
Party central: The Rob Walmart van in Portland, wherever it may be.
Momentary style obsessions: Justin brand cow-roping boots, cupro, Alexander Hi-Tek ’90s Madonna-in-”Truth or Dare” round sunglasses, opacity, a post-apocalyptic spirit, Lindsay Crouse in “House of Games,” black, Gareth Pugh fall-winter ‘09, getting jewelry custom-made by a lapidarist and gem hunter in the West Texas desert.
Reading material: If it’s not one yellowing ’60s sci-fi paperback, it’s another. Right now I’m reading “Picnic on Paradise” by Joanna Russ, one of the great feminist fabulists. I’m on a long-term quest to become a living science-fiction encyclopedia. I even have a blog about it.
Art pick: Everything that AIDS-3D is doing, for perpetuity.
Museums: The Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The shows are always great, and if all else fails there’s usually (in fair weather) some very Euro-hesher critters skateboarding and bongo-drumming all over the beautiful marble statues out back. A close second: the 3D Museum of Art and Photography, in Portland.
Movie: “Paris Is Burning.” O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E!
Vacation destination: Deer Run on Big Pine Key, Fla. It’s a vegan bed-and-breakfast on an island covered in miniature deer. You heard it here first.
Something you are looking forward to this fall: Going on tour in China.
Claire’s Portland Neighborhood
Here are some of her favorite Portland haunts that she visits regularly. The map above is interactive!
View The Insider: Claire Evans in a larger map
3D Center of Art and Photography — A hole-in-the-wall collection of lenticular prints, rotating stereoscopic photography shows and a tiny 3-D film screening room.
Cameron’s Books — Everyone in Portland loves Powell’s Books, of course, but Cameron’s is for when you’re feeling a little seedy and you don’t know what you’re looking for. Eighty percent of my science-fiction novel collection began its life at Cameron’s.
Food Carts (SE 12th and Hawthorne) — Vegan poutine, late-night outdoor summer hangouts and some delicious thing called a “Whiffie.”
Huber’s — The oldest bar in Portland. Has an Art Deco, speakeasy feel, and is famous for its elaborate performances of flambĂ©ed Spanish coffees.
Junior’s — Definitive Portland brunch.
Nationale — Imported French sundry goods, papier d’acier and vintage pumps.
Rad Summer — Well-curated vintage, staffed by the most oppressively space-age psychedelic babes I have ever seen.
Stand Up Comedy — Margiela, Mary Ping and a periodicals collection that is way ahead of its time.
Sword + Fern — Handmade jewels crafted from sea glass, crystal and junked car parts.
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