Seattle style? New MOHAI exhibit showcases city's eclectic style and where it came from Despite what you've been told, Seattle has some styles of its own with roots in the geography and the culture

People listen to curator Clara Berg during a media preview tour through the new Seattle Style: Fashion/Function exhbit at MOHAI, which will be open to the public May 4-Oct. 14. From grunge to high fashion, the exhibit features garments that have defined the styles of the region from the mid-1800s to the present. less People listen to curator Clara Berg during a media preview tour through the new Seattle Style: Fashion/Function exhbit at MOHAI, which will be open to the public May 4-Oct. 14. From grunge to high fashion, the ... more Photo: Genna Martin, SEATTLEPI Photo: Genna Martin, SEATTLEPI Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Seattle style? New MOHAI exhibit showcases city's eclectic style and where it came from 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Seattle style isn't usually a catch-phrase because, to so many in the city, our "style" amounts to rain shells and flannels.

To be sure, those items are key components to the region's aggregate wardrobe, but there's a lot more to regional fashion than that.

Exploring the full wardrobe is the focus of a new exhibit that opens Saturday at the Museum of History and Industry. Seattle Style: Fashion/Function looks back across the city's brief history at the styles that have started locally as well as those that came from afar and trace how they came to be and why they mattered -- or didn't.

"One of the key ingredients of Seattle style is our location, the environment, the weather," said Clara Berg, MOHAI's collections specialist for costumes and textiles, who curated the exhibit and took media and other guests on a preview of it earlier this week.

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Wandering through the first section of the exhibit, Berg highlighted that much of Seattle's style has also had something to do with our place in the world -- mostly in that it's wet here.

An early GORE-TEX jacket from Mountain Safety Research showcased the most functional style, but around the corner were longer, more stylish coats that would shed the rain but also bring a touch of high fashion to the wearer. An REI April Fool's outfit called the ZipAll made fun of all the zippered and multi-use gear marketed for the outdoors.

Seattle's outdoor-oriented styles can be traced back to the Klondike gold rush days at the turn of the 20th century, Berg said. The outfitting business boomed in Seattle, the top jumping off point for people headed north to cash in on the rush. Many businesses sprung up from that era, among them Nordstrom and Filson.

Filson, of course (fully: C.C. Filson), was only the first of several major outdoor-focused firms to originate in Seattle, founded in 1897 to outfit miners and others headed north to the gold fields of the Klondike.

Another local outdoor retailer, Eddie Bauer, originated as a tennis shop in Seattle. But after founder Eddie Bauer developed hypothermia during a fishing trip, he began working on a new kind of coat that would, in 1940, be released as the Skyliner, the first quilted goose down-insulated jacket in the U.S. MOHAI included a surviving example of the jacket in the exhibit.

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Nordstrom, which co-sponsored the exhibit, started as a shoe store in 1901 under the partnership of John Nordstrom and Carl Wallin. Some early shoes from the company are included in the exhibit.

Nordstrom had returned from the Klondike with pockets full of money -- not from gold, though he did find some, but from the sale of the claim itself -- and recruited Wallin to co-found the venture with him. The company would later add other clothing items to its offerings, tailoring more to high fashion than outdoor gear.

High fashion -- couture, if you will -- had its place in Seattle, in some cases imported from as far as Paris at a time when the trip took days upon days each way. Berg pointed to Helen Igoe, who would make regular buying trips to Paris and elsewhere, traveling by train, boat and more to bring fine clothes from Europe back to the Pacific Northwest.

The exhibit includes several examples of locally crafted or sold couture items, also including some hats made locally.

Another key aspect of Seattle style is casual wear, a style that was birthed out of the region's preference for more informal clothing, and includes everything from flannel shirts (hello grunge) to the beginnings of the city's (and America's) fascination with stylish denim in the 1970s.

Seattle's Walter Schoenfeld got his first taste of fashionable denim wear while living briefly in London. He saw it as the next by trend and returned to Seattle to launch Brittania Sportswear, the first designer jeans company in the U.S. Schoenfeld's jeans would spark an entire industry in U.S. fashion, including a host of other jeans companies in Seattle, not the least of which was UNIONBAY.

Perhaps the most well-known Seattle style is that of grunge, a sort of quasi-casual, rule-breaking style that had its origins simply in thrift store shopping before it caught the national spotlight.

Flannel shirts, torn sweaters (an example of which, formerly owned by Kurt Cobain, is included with the MOHAI exhibit), Dr. Marten boots were part and parcel of the style coming out of the early '90s in Seattle, but it soon was being sold in the mainstream around the country. In retrospect, it's a sort of what-were-we-thinking moment for many, but it's still serious in the fashion world.

"People like to joke about that, but that was a huge fashion moment. And it's still a source of inspiration for designers," Berg said.

Notably, grunge is only a small part of MOHAI's exhibit. It's hardly the only style, even if it's one of the best remembered, Berg said. That is, if they think Seattle has any style at all.

"When I tell people about what I do and about the research I do about fashion in Seattle, the most common response I get is some kind of joke about, 'is there any fashion in Seattle?' or something about outdoor gear, or grunge," she said.

So often, people dismiss that Seattle has any style at all. But MOHAI's exhibit is, if nothing else, proof that Seattle has always had its own style, even if it doesn't always get a showcase on the runways of New York.

Berg said she didn't want to take herself too seriously putting the exhibit together.

"I want people to have fun with it," she said. "Seattle style is so eclectic, it is about so many different experiences in Seattle."

Senior editor Daniel DeMay can be reached at danieldemay@seattlepi.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Daniel_DeMay