Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast returns: Medical punk, face masks and the soul of Taipei

You know the town's about to get weirder when Denver's Japanese-street-fashion-obsessed couple Andrew Novick and Janene Hurst bring back their Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast pop-up shop, which is filled to the rafters of Mod Livin's upstair gallery with Asian pop goods you won't find anywhere else in these parts. And...

By Susan Froyd

October 3, 2011

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You know the town's about to get weirder when Denver's Japanese-street-fashion-obsessed couple Andrew Novick and Janene Hurst bring back their Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast pop-up shop, which is filled to the rafters of Mod Livin's upstair gallery with Asian pop goods you won't find anywhere else in these parts. And that's a good thing, especially for people who like to dress up, from cosplayers to Halloween-season revelers. For this year's shop, an amalgam of Gothic Lolita wear, non sequitur-emblazoned t-shirts, kawaii paraphernalia and other pop-culture oddities, Andrew and Janene traveled to Taipei, bringing back a little of that city's particular pop flavor, from Relax Bear iPhone cases, which sport cute little ears to the ubiquitous face masks that Taiwanese scooter-riders don to fight pollution. Those masks -- which picture characters of every stripe from manga girls to Hello Kitty -- in particular fit the Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast theme of the season: Medical Punk, a style that plays doctor in all the worst ways: with hospital uniforms, seriously Gothic makeup, spiky hair, bloody bandages and, yep, face masks.

The Halloween-worthy trend will show up in spades later this month, when Gimme Gimme Pillow Toast hosts first a Medical Punk Fashion Show at Mod Livin' on October 15, and second a Medical Punk Dance Party in RiNo on October 29 And the pop-up? It'll be open right through January, serving all your wackier holiday shopping needs.

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Susan Froyd started writing for Westword as the "Thrills" editor in 1992 and never quite left the fold. These days she still freelances for the paper in addition to walking her dogs, enjoying cheap ethnic food and reading voraciously. Sometimes she writes poetry.

Contact: Susan Froyd

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