April 22–29, 1999

naked city

Naturally Fake

The "techno-bohemia" of Jay McCarroll's Maitatoo.

by a.d. amorosi

The only thing more garish, wonderful and cocky than his space-age, straight-jacketed, patchwork-quilted designs is Jay McCarroll himself. Speaking from his studio in Lehman, PA, McCarroll tells me he knew he was destined for fashion design in the first grade.

"I told Adrienne Casey that her red socks didn't match her pink sweater. It made her cry. I realized then the power of fashion and the impact it makes on people's emotions."

Today, though, the 24-year-old McCarroll wouldn't hesitate to pair pink with red.

The former Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science student recently showed his designs at Shampoo, under the name Maitatoo. The name is from a Cantonese word meaning "fashion," or "kind of," depending on the dialect, and it's also based on a Cantonese symbol tattooed on McCarroll's arm.

Maitatoo's spring line is filled with opaque, luminescent and soft designs with high necklines and big zippers. McCarroll contrasts a palette of gray, midnight blue, turquoise, powder blue, white, flesh, hot pink, red, oxblood and black. The cuts range from billowy and bulbous to lean and clean.

"I like things that follow the body, rather than dictate its shape."

	Amber Evangelust in a McCarroll design.

His work is both silly and serious, plastic and natural, futuristic and age-old. Rooted in images from his childhood—Punky Brewster, Rainbow Brite, Land of the Lost, The B52's—McCarroll calls his look "techno-bohemian."

City Paper first caught sight of McCarroll in 1997 when his wild work screamed from the catwalk of a Textiles student fashion show.

"Those first works of mine were earthy and deliciously nerve-racking," says McCarroll. Back then, working on pieces for a student competition in Korea, McCarroll was inspired by nearby Wissahickon Park. There he found mud, twigs, leaves and incorporated them into his daring women's collection. But while that collection mimicked natural surroundings, his menswear collection was inspired by mental illness.

"College was crazy. I found myself focused on a hot color palette representing obsessive compulsive behavior," he says.

Studying at the London College of Fashion, selling his wares in Camden Market and competing in Japan gave the admittedly abrasive McCarroll a worldly confidence. Before he left Europe, he contacted Patricia Field, Manhattan's premier strange clothier, and within a month, he was selling at Field's and Hotel Venus in Soho.

Though his clothes come in a myriad of fabrics—from nylon to microfiber to fur to bubble-plastic to cotton ("Anything that feels ironic next to one another")—McCarroll's clothes are functional.

"All garments should be worn on the streets, out to dinner, to Wawa to get cigarettes," he says.

His favorite piece in the collection is a Siamese twin garment, to be worn by two people.

Which brings me to sex. Maitatoo clothes have no gender.

"I'm not going to put a man in a sequined skirt, that's for drag queens. I will put a man or woman in sheer fabric. I love the power that sheer creates as far as layering or changing texture. It's also an excuse to expose a part of the body that might not want to be exposed. I love a peek-a-boo aspect. An exposed nipple is vulgar, whereas mesh over a nipple is erotic."

Erotic, cloistered, fabricated or natural, Jay McCarroll's Maitatoo paints a deliciously odd vision of the future, a place where men and women, loosely gathered or rigidly fitted, live as one.