by Aanika Eragram The New Haven independent
A dress garners applause at Dixwell Fest fashion show.
“Are we feeling her?”
Draped head to toe in a red pantsuit and a veil that billowed in the wind behind her, model Jasmine elicited a cheer from a 50-person crowd at the Dixwell Neighborhood Festival’s fashion show on Saturday.
“Then show these kids some love,” said Donald Carter, the designer and emcee of the show, whose time as an instructor at Co-op High School rendered him a beloved New Haven figure. When looking for volunteer models for the show, his former students came to bat.
Originally slated to have 60 models before the festival was rained out in May, he had 15 on Saturday. Some were out of town for New York Fashion Week; for others, school was back in session. But Carter was undeterred.
He gestured towards one of his former students, now a model, who made it back to Dixwell during a break between shows. It is clear that when Donald Carter, an icon of the New Haven fashion scene, you answer.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon in a side lot of the Dixwell Community “Q” House, it seemed that everywhere, calls were being answered. Every corner I turned, neighbors were running into each other, “Hello”s and “How are you”s ringing abundant. It was difficult to get a moment alone with Diane X. Brown, the organizer of the festival, who seemed to recognize every face she saw.
It was Brown’s 13th year planning the Dixwell Neighborhood Festival, which on Saturday was celebrating the legacy of Freddie Fixer, a fictional character named after Dr. Fred Smith, a heralded New Haven doctor. In 1962, Dr. Smith led a neighborhood cleanup effort in the Dixwell-Newhallville neighborhood. A children’s contest resulted in the birth of the festival’s mascot: Freddie Fixer.
Sixty-three years later, the spirit of Fixer is still alive in Dixwell. Four to five hundred attendees made it out this year, according to Brown. From paintings to lemonade to cigars, there was little you couldn’t find at one of the 50 vendor stands. Flanking this market space, affordable housing coalitions and NAACP volunteers sat ready to answer questions.
The Dixwell celebration was the seventh neighborhood festival hosted this year by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, a New Haven organization dedicated to supporting arts and culture programming in the city. Other festivals took place in Fair Haven and Newhallville. The festival was also hosted by 94.3 WYBC, which ensured that a steady medley of house and jazz music rolled all afternoon.
“When I walk around I seldom see people that I know until I come to something like this,” said Shari Caldwell, a longtime New Haven dance instructor whose move to Maryland in 2018 made trips back to New Haven less frequent. Born here in the ‘60s, she’s seen many generations come and go. But for events like Saturday’s festival, she makes it back to Dixwell. “Here I can see everybody, I see the new folks, so many of the older people.”
The Dixwell Neighborhood Festival created an intergenerational pulse in the city. Twenty dancers flooded the block with Scheri Walker, an instructor with Connecticut Line Dancers, an organization dedicated to promoting wellness through movement. Swaying in unison and turning on beat, it was clear that the partnerless dance was nonetheless still rooted in a spirit of community. It’s all about getting people — young people, old people, everybody — moving, said Walker. Her motto is “be well, or stay well.”
On the makeshift catwalk, the flood of former students was interrupted by a model that Carter introduced as very dear to him. “Who here remembers the ‘70s?” he asked as Lisa Gilliard walked out, donning an off the shoulder prairie dress in maroon. Carter and Gilliard have been friends for nearly 50 years. “Here’s a model from back in the ‘70s, into the ‘80s, and she is serving, serving, serving.”
Though Carter, in his Marie Antoinette-style yellow ball gown and cufflinks, was running the show, he certainly was not strutting alone. Every model he introduced was met with a response from the audience, cheers and names shouted out and choruses of “That girl, that girl!” Everyone was a participant.
“I grew up with this,” said Brown, who was born and raised in New Haven. “I grew up with this… these types of things happened all the time when I was a little girl.” Year after year, Brown pulls off the feat again, entirely on her own. “I don’t get paid, this is free. I do this because I want the little kids to have what I had.”
As the fashion show came to a close, a gaggle of children gathered on the grass. Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, a multi-hyphenate playwright and theatermaker, sat on a chair. He held up a buck-toothed rabbit puppet. “Mom, it’s starting!” one child shrieked. The rabbit opened its mouth. The kids squealed in delight. So the story began.
Donald Carter applauds his models.
Iyaba Ibo Mandingo puts on a puppet show.