Designer Jimmy Lee Curtis has some answers to all the nostalgia for a Provincetown that was more outlandish and subversive than it is now and where eccentricity and whimsy were the norm. His annual fashion show is one of them. That old Provincetown magic was in the air at the Commons on Aug. 24, when Curtis, known here as “Momma Lee,” held his fourth annual show, this one called Le Grande Tour.
The event raised money for the Benji Fund, created in honor of artist Benjamin Weinryb Grohsgal, who died on July 13 of glioblastoma at age 37. The fund will support studio space for artists in need.
Thirty models — mostly local artists and performers — wearing Curtis’s handmade ensembles strutted, frolicked, and danced down the sidewalk in front of the Commons for the more than 300 guests who spilled onto Bradford Street. A 50-foot-long hand-drawn mural of a train by Mark Adams hung on the facade of the building behind them, and DJ Mark Louque, “The Father Figure,” spun dance-y tracks from 1980s bands like the B-52s and Missing Persons. Adams’s pastel illustrations and Louque’s synthy music stylings harmonized endearingly with Curtis’s maximalist punk glamour designs.
Momma Lee landed in Provincetown about 20 years ago, invited by friends for a getaway from his peripatetic life in fashion. He was living in Los Angeles, but he had studied at the Atlanta College of Art and then at the American College in London, where his style took shape.
“I was a club kid in the ’80s in London,” he says, an admirer of Leigh Bowery, Michael Clark, and Boy George, of London fashion, and of the music that defined the club kids’ scene.
Still in college, he started selling his hand-painted silk scarves at a friend’s fashion house on King’s Road in London, the fulcrum of the city’s fashion world. Curtis’s scarves, made in bright colors and avant-garde patterns, were favorites among magazine stylists of that era, one of whom used a scarf to style Christy Turlington for the cover of British Vogue. “That was really the highlight of my time there,” Curtis says.
After relocating from West Hollywood to Provincetown, Curtis ran some fashion shows at the Burch House, where he worked as the house manager. The shows were a way to showcase his scarves and team up with friends to design outfits. Life intervened, and the shows faded from view, but in 2020 Curtis teamed up with longtime friend Dave LaFrance, who was a fashion buyer before he became the operations director at the Commons, to bring them back.
LaFrance dedicates time during the winter to helping Curtis curate outfits. They begin their search in the fall, hitting thrift shops from Mass Appeal in Wellfleet to the Methodist Church in Provincetown.
This year’s fashion show theme, Le Grande Tour, draws inspiration from travels farther away — the name refers to European art tours that aristocrats embarked on in the early 20th century, Curtis says. His stylings mock the idea with exuberant haphazardness. For the evening’s finale, TaDonna, filmmaker Todd Flaherty’s drag persona, hit the runway in a bonnet and a gown that Curtis made entirely of shower curtains.
Louque matched the evening’s sartorial irreverence with a travel themed playlist featuring tracks like “Around the World” by the Creatures, “Destination Unknown” by Missing Persons, and “Roam” by the B-52s.
This is the first year LaFrance has produced the event with a budget to pay for clothes and chairs for guests. The Red Inn donated the drinks, Crown & Anchor handled the audio and visual setup, Marc Guerrette stage managed, and Ahbi Nishman, Justine Crosby, and Shaun O’Connor volunteered to do hair and makeup. “It’s a village of artists that make this work,” says LaFrance.
For the grand finale, Curtis and LaFrance orchestrated a dramatic exit.
“I always want there to be a surprise,” says Curtis, who had a dress drop out of the sky at last year’s event. This time, a Provincetown Trolley rolled up to the Commons, and Momma Lee and the models jumped on board. From the trolley window, Curtis waved a simple goodbye: “Thank you for coming.”
