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Lucky LooLoo's girl band fashion contest

Jewelry company wants you to sing for your bling

By Ling Ma
Published: July 2nd, 2004 | 1:34pm

If you’re a girl, and you’re in a band, and your band is a girl band, Lucky LooLoo wants to put her drill press to use for you. The independent jewelry company is gettin the word out about their quest to deck out a selected girl band with a year’s supply of arty bling.

The Girl Band Fashion Contest boosts quite an incentive, considering how Lucky LooLoo makes some pretty super stuff that manages to be both rocknroll and old-school bee’s knees. Citing rockabilly, pop art, and classic punk as influences, the Portland-based company is responsible for some crazily rambunctious and pretty pieces in which outlandish materials such as Mahjong game chips and surgical steel are fused together.

That kind of fearless-yet-informed aesthetic is what co-founders Rachel O’Rourke, an art school–trained designer, and Danny Ostrov, her business partner and boyfriend, are looking for when it comes to choosing a winner.

“A Lucky LooLoo Girl Band,” O’Rourke explains, “is full of sassy, independent girls who have struggled a bit to come together and find their passion as musicians.” And it doesn’t hurt if they happen to “know how to maximize $5 at the thrift store.”

The notion of a jewelry company collaborating with a band to amp up their fab look is naturally associative in O’Rourke’s mind. Long before Ostrov bought her the drill press that initiated the founding of the company, O’Rourke used to spend her high school and college years looking through secondhand stores for vintage findings, such as doll hands and dice, to make pieces for her musician friends. Thus, much of her creations reference the styles of female musicians.

“Growing up in the '80s, there was always a strong association between music and fashion,” O’Rourke says. “I was always fascinated by women musicians who could take a few dollars, go to the thrift store, and create fantastic and unique costumes for the stage.”

Not only are O’Rourke and Ostrov shelling out their pieces to a girl band, they hope such actions will encourage other designers to follow suit in aiding struggling indie musicians. Because, really, there’s no reason to be poor and not wear bling. As O’ Rourke puts it, “We want all of you indie girls out there to know we are looking out for you.”

CONTEST DETAILS

To enter the Lucky LooLoo Girl Band Fashion Contest, send a sample song, a picture of your band, a short letter about why you need cool jewelry, and a self-addressed envelope by August 1, 2004 to: