MOFGA's Common Ground Fair is a big deal where I live, in Belfast, the progressive, artsy small town right on the water in Midcoast Maine that is also the county seat for rural Waldo County. The fair takes place in Unity, which is also in Waldo County, about 40 minutes inland from Belfast. While you might not think a country fair as a source of style and fashion inspiration, the Common Ground Fair is not your typical country fair!
Rather, the Common Ground Fair is a truly unique celebration of organic and local food, small farms, folk arts, progressive values, traditional Maine culture, music, politics, animals, nature, the earth, and more. It's also got a much more sophisticated and deliberate aesthetic than your average country fair: just check out the poster above. Every year, the Fair sponsors a contest for a design, and the design is printed on posters and t-shirts which are hung, collected and worn by folks all over our great state.So it's a fair with a difference, and those who love it also know the Common Ground Fair is a great opportunity to dress up in your coolest countercultural outfit and let your freak flag fly!
This year, the year I'm starting this blog, 2011, is perhaps only my 4th time attending the fair, but from the very first time I went, I knew it was pretty much my idea of utopia. Incredible healthy and delicious food, fascinating workshops on things like composting toilets and making your own elderberry syrup, stunning crafts, old-timey music, and in general, just an unbelievable energy to the event, all in a pastoral rural setting that cannot be beat.
I am also someone who gets really excited about style--and notice that I say style, not fashion. I think of fashion as that stuff I can't afford in fancy magazines, or the trendy stuff that's mostly made in sweatshops by large corporations. Most of us can't afford fashion, and fashion is probably not too good for our planet, but I think of style as healthy and sustainable: anyone can have style. And as someone who really enjoys clothes and hair styles and shoes and all the rest of the stuff that goes along with personal adornment, I am most inspired by the outfits I see regular people put together--not things worn by models or rich folks, but creative, individual, exciting looks put together by folks on the street. Street style.
There are a lot of great blogs out there about street style, but from what I've seen, most of them focus on what is worn by young, thin, trendy folks in major cities around the world, places known for their fashion industries. One of the most well known street style blogs, The Satorialist (which I do enjoy), often shoots right outside of major fashion shows! My street style blog, on the other hand, features people of all ages and economic backgrounds in a very different setting: the country. Some of these folks are farmers, midwives, fisherman, activists, craftspeople...and as you will see, they have a fantastic sense of their own style.
So this blog is an ode to one of my fave passions, which is looking at street style, along with one of my other passions, the Common Ground Fair, and the utter ecstasy I feel when the two come together in one wild, stunning autumnal display.
I hope to post pics of beautiful people from the Common Ground Fair every year for years to come.
