To conclude The Armoires Week at Outsideleft, singer, writer and keyboad player, Christina Bulbenko provides a lowdown on what it takes to dress The Armoires way... And how Burbank shopping isn't what it was...
Early on, shortly after we'd decided we were actually going to be a band called The Armoires, we definitely had a feeling that we wanted to have a look and that we might as well have an aesthetic that would go along with our sound -- a sort of “committing to the bit” type of thing. That we weren’t just weekend warriors or being super casual about this. We wanted to demonstrate that we were putting an effort into an aesthetic. That's one of the reasons why we also created our signature logo and all these other unique identifiers that we put in place in addition to just being a band.
Rex and I both liked paisley. We definitely had a connection to the Paisley Underground bands and then the '60s bands that influenced them, so that was a big deal to us. Paisley definitely became one of the possibilities.
On our first shopping trip together, we went to the American Way thrift store in Burbank. On that fateful day we scored two, (one each), signature items. An aqua paisley dress for me and an immaculately detailed earth-tone paisley shirt for Rex. They both had a similar pattern and line quality to them. They complimented each other nicely. It was serendipity, we thought! And we later discovered that there were many ways for us to pleasingly pair our paisleys and we still strive to do so to this day.
Ten-ish years ago we both thought that we’d be thrifting our way to our look forever, but finding those types of treasures here has since become nearly impossible. There are film and television studios all over Burbank -- Universal, Warner Bros. and Disney, just to name a few. And ever since then there's been a burgeoning of period films and shows for streaming services. Wardrobe departments needed vintage clothing and they would have budgets for finding just the right things. As a result, the vintage store associates are the first to sift through new arrivals at the thrift stores to put their finds on display in their own boutiques to entice those studio wardrobe professionals. Hence, Rex’s $3.00 shirt is now $50.00 in its new home and my $5.00 dress is now $100.00 but we’re sure they’ll look just swell on those stars in that upcoming '60s dramedy on Netflix, hrrmph-hrrmph.
That being said, we did succumb to shopping at the lovingly curated vintage shops, just much more sporadically… but it was fun and a point of discussion for people. They began calling us “the paisley twins”, especially after we both started to dye our hair platinum blonde and wear similar glasses. We definitely ‘committed to the bit’ of embodying an aesthetic that we would cook up for The Armoires... one that would shift slightly throughout the years.
Aside from vintage shops and thrift stores, Rex developed a new tactic. We were gigging so much that he was trying to make sure he wasn't repeating the same shirt. He would ask himself what the holes in is color palette were and then go on eBay, set some parameters, and every once in a while, an Alan Flusser or Relco became available that wasn’t what the Fashion Mafia, especially in Britain, were buying up and wearing that month because it was the newest and hottest. I had purchased a brand new Relco shirt as a gift for Rex but at least one other person would show up to our gigs wearing the same one… cringe. Flattering, yes… but still… cringe.
It didn't take that long or cost that much money for us to amass a pretty substantial wardrobe of paisley shirts via thrift stores, vintage shops and eBay. It became our day-to-day garb. Rex also has this uncanny ability to perfectly pair his collection of various band logo T-shirts beneath whatever shirt he was wearing. He calls it ‘mental illness,’ but I call it aesthetically astute.
Okay, so torso adornments have been dealt with above, but what about the cladding of the nether regions, you ask? Hmm. When I first met Rex, he was always in skinny jeans and black & white Converse high-top sneakers. It may have had something to do with his “Doctor Who” fandom, but I only think that because I was wearing those exact sneakers for that very reason and so were some of my friends. It could be true, though. I ended up gifting Rex a pair of side-zip Rockport Toloni boots on his birthday just to vary things up a little and those “Beatle Boots”, paisley shirts and skinny jeans actually became the definitive aesthetic from then on. Especially since those boots were broken in on Matthew Street right before a gig at the Cavern Club. It didn’t take much to break them in, according to Rex. They were comfortable from the get-go and the sneakers became a quirk of the past. 
Rex remembers Steve Coulter dropping by and saying “you two are really committed to the paisley!” Steve is the drummer for Tsar, The Brothers Steve and Ridel High bands and also known as music journalist S.W. Lauden. Rex responded by saying: “No it's just that’s all I have anymore. I mean, if I just open up my closet that's what's there. It's kind of second skin-ish to me. I don't have to go looking for it. I just don't have anything else anymore”. That makes things easy!
Aside from our usual haunts of Burbank thrift stores and vintage stores or Ebay and Etsy online shops, while we were in England, we went to Soho on Bold where Rex found a unique paisley number. I should also mention that whenever we’re driving up to Central or Northern Cali for gigs, we always stop at the Boot Barn stores on the way. It was Peter Watts of Canterbury’s Spygenius who let slip that whenever he was here for a visit, he would always make a trip to Oxnard, CA. At the time we thought he was joking but it turns out that the closest Boot Barn was there and had a shocking selection of paisley on offer! Of course, not too much later, we would find out that Blake Jones of Blake Jones & The Trike Shop had also cracked that very code. He lives in Fresno and we’ve counted at least three Boot Barn stores between here and there. Like Rex, Peter and Blake also have a vast array of paisley shirts in their collections, so it makes sense that they would frequent the Boot Barns. Strange… but true!
Interesting fact: Our drummer and brilliant author/music scribe, John Borack, has a vast collection of Converse sneakers – “Chucks”, as they are known, and currently referred to as such in reference to Kamala Harris's “Chucks and pearls” look. John has somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pairs, and he doesn’t seem to wear the same ones twice to our gigs! John is also a Beatles fanatic so he owns many articles of clothing and shoes with various representations of The Fab Four. He also wears colorful pants that pair perfectly with his paisley shirts and shoes.
My daughter and our violist, Larysa Bulbenko dresses very eclectically. I would call her style retro-futuristic-boho-punk-glam. It’s inventive, artistic, usually incongruent and always interesting. She also frequents thrift stores and vintage shops for her most unusual looks.
Bassist Clifford Ulrich usually dresses in earth tones or darker tones and he usually places himself on the part of the stage with the least amount of light. He also plays with his eyes closed. We think he secretly pines for an invisibility cloak to complete his on-stage disappearing act… which completely belies his genuine warmth and his delightful wickedly dry wit! When Cliff finally opens his mouth to speak the result is either genuine captivation or hilarity and always worth the wait!
Up through 2019, The Armoires had sort of a Bohemian family aesthetic about us, but when we were getting ready to shoot the video for “Pushing Forty”, from our album Zibaldone, we committed to a more uniform look. We found shiny gold paisley jackets for everyone online and also teal satin paisley vests. We wore them for the video, press photos, and for one or two gigs. It was going to be our look going forward but then COVID-19 hit our shores and they remain in our closets to this day… Sigh.
Incognito started out as secret pandemic project where we decided to record and release unrelated singles under fake band names every month on our Big Stir Records label. On April Fool’s Day in 2021, we surprised everyone by releasing those very same tracks but as The Armoires. The CD comes with a slipcase over it where each of us are wearing masks of our choosing and when it’s removed, our bare faces are revealed. That’s mostly how we amused ourselves and made it through those trying times.
Fast forward to our recently released album, “Octoberland”. We were worldbuilding from its inception. The artwork and everything associated needed to feel like it was of-a-piece, artifacts of the realm we'd created. Rex’s daughter Ridley was commissioned for the album artwork and her inspiration was a painting that’s been hanging in their home based on Alphonse Mucha’s Art Nouveau “Cognac Bisquit” advertisement. The color palette of that particular representation is much more vibrant than the original poster and its copper and teal accents informed even our own wardrobe choices. Rex had his hair dyed teal and I went in the copper direction. And, when you see us promoting the album, our clothes compliment our hair color. It’s lovely how some people will notice and then are pleasantly surprised when we tell them that it’s intentional. They may secretly believe we’re insane, but at least to our faces, they seem intrigued!
In preparation for the music videos for “We Absolutely Mean It”, “Here Comes The Song” and “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” we each chose the direction as a band that was both evocative of the harmony, peace, and hope of the “Belle Epoque” period but also very earthy and pastoral like many of the subjects in Mucha’s artwork. It was supposed to be non-futuristic but also not specifically tied to a time or place either, if that makes sense. Larysa suggested that we stay away from Steampunk for the apocalyptic setting for the “Ridley & Me” video for that very reason and I’m glad we did. She always knows best.
For the “Here Comes The Song” video, Larysa chose an olive-green “Infinity dress” she bought online (it’s actually possible to wear the dress several different ways because of how it’s designed), and she layered it with wraps that I found at a studio wardrobe warehouse clearance sale. It was called Valentino’s Costume Group and has since sadly shuttered its doors. It housed “over 400,000 items which were a rich part of the glamour of cinema, the drama of live theatre and the sparkle of drag performances”, according to an article penned by Lynn Lipinski for the MyBurbank.com website. I found the hat that I’m wearing in the photo above there, along with the crimson jacket that I’m wearing in the “Ridley & Me” video. It’s so sad to lose such a treasure of an establishment. It’s happened far too frequently in the past few years.And Cliff is just great because if you describe the vibe of what we’re going for, he'll own it. And the Octoberland looks that he's come up with could be representative of his finest hour. He's always great, but when we said we're looking at an 1890s/1900s turn of that century type of thing, he's a very smart guy and intrinsically knows what that looks like. The rest of us all sort of hedged that because we didn't want it to look exactly period, but he didn't hesitate to play it to the hilt. Cliff arrived at the shoot wearing a Dixieland straw hat and a tweed jacket, which was very cool especially for the drawing room tableau that we staged!
Rex was in his signature paisley with a snake around his neck, Larysa and I chose maxi dresses and wraps that were evocative of that time period but we needed someone to be completely in that time. Cliff is a quiet one in the background in a certain sense but he's the one anchoring everything, tying it all together with that look. It’s delightful!
So, as a band, no one seems to have any problem visually being part of the team and slotting into the vibe that we’re going for on any new release or its associated events. That’s emblematic of the way we collaborate musically as well. We established early on that having an identity as a band is an important, although not a pretentious or grandiose thing. And, part of that identity has been something that everyone has had fun dialing into. Each of us has always had our own style, and we’ve never been a fashion band per se but we’ve definitely always been a ‘vibe’ band, and the vibe gets tweaked for each album. They’re not necessarily radical shifts but things we lean into to describe this little world we’ve built or the work itself. It’s not really retro or futuristic but pulling from different time periods at the same time.
For The Armoires band, every aspect of the “Octoberland” experiment including our wardrobe -- a word ironically synonymous with “armoire” in one meaning! -- has been an intense amount of work, but also endlessly rewarding. It's daunting to think that, the next time we set out to do a record, we'll probably be reinventing our look yet again, and in a direction that we have no way of predicting. But these things, along with the sound of the band itself, have taken on lives and personalities all their own and we're excited and open to making any sartorial shift the music may demand of us in the future – as long as it doesn’t involve wearing Lycra or shaving our heads, haha! Uh-oh… maybe I shouldn’t have thought that. You never know what intentions the next set of songs may have!
Essential Information
Play Vintage Store is here
It's Armoires Week in Outsideleft!
More about The Armoires at Big Stir Records, here
