ReTro MaGiK

The Story

Is it obvious I like Denim?

I was travelling around Northern Australia and had been invited to a film festival for my movie.

I never win anything. Except when I come last, then they just give you a little something so no one feels bad for you. Yeah, so that’s me.

Anyway, I decided that if I wasn’t going to win anything then at least I could look cool as hell. So I decided to make a hat on the road. I had some felts and some sewing paraphernalia in the van. So I started throwing it together.

With no Petersham or leather, I decided to cut up my jeans. So I chopped them up and added them to the hat. I made this cool little denim bow. But then I thought it needed another colour. So I pulled out my white denim jeans chopped them up too. I added them to the bow. I was pretty happy with it.

I found a dead roadkill Eagle on the highway, he stunk like hell but in my creative pursuit, I fought off the crows and plucked a few of his feathers.

I pulled some of the buttons from my favourite t-shirts and sewed them in too, cause why not?

When we got to the town of the festival, we had a hotel and I lay out my clothes ready to go and not win a single thing. But of course, I’d sacrificed all my best stuff. I had no jeans and a T-shirt with no buttons…

—That was an easy fix, a singlet under it (wasn’t that cool in the 90s?) but the jeans I had no options. Even if I had my trusty sewing machine I wouldn’t have had time to sew the 2 jeans together.

SO unbenounced to my girlfriend I raided her suitcase, yeah, I have a habit of cutting up her clothes for the benefit of the brand. She had these awesome red jeans. Skinny as sin even for her and I got a foot on her. Rock n Roll I thought as I slipped them on tougher than a wetsuit. I’m a director, right? I can pull this off.

I had other worries though, the hats had adopted a funky smell, the feathers I’d borrowed from my dead Eagle friend had seeped into the hat. It was really pungent.

But I’d sacrificed too much to not wear it. This was my lucky hat, I had my eye on last place and I needed the hat to get it!

So I did what (most) males would do, I went into Coles and sprays a can of Lynx onto the hat. Thinking it might hold it at bay, at least it might buy me a few hours to collect my last place trophy.

But as I sat at the formal seating of the festival and my producer in his black tuxedo not even subtly holding his nose at the stench of dead Eagle and African Lynx wafting from my head and now hair. An odd thing happened.

They started calling our name.

We’d won and not that metaphoric we won the last place we’re all winners kinda winning. We actually won the best film. And we kept winning, and drinking we kept drinking too!

So I actually don’t remember leaving but my producer thinks it might’ve been the intoxicating smell of the dead eagle on my head that offended people. But hey, we won. I don’t know if it was because of my favourite jeans sitting in a tight little double bow on top of my head or the flies that had accumulated around the feathers. But when I got home I cut up my girlfriend’s red jeans and drunkenly sewed them into the brim of the hat.

This combination was killer. My lucky hat.

The truth is I should’ve just cut up my girlfriend’s suitcase of Denim at the start and avoided the whole mess. BUT then again the hat would’ve been different. Like I would’ve taken no risk. I feel you have to sacrifice a little something, take a risk to get anything of beauty.

Risk and reward or something I dunno.

I have no idea where the awards ended up? I think the producer migtv’ve confiscated them off me, who’d blame him? I’d tortured him enough that night. Or maybe my mum has them Or maybe I just dreamed the whole thing? Who knows?

What I do know is where the hat remains, it hangs above my bed, still to this day. cursing me or bring me luck Or maybe a bit of both?

KM

★★★★★