Photo: Scott Jones

***

This piece originally ran in The Daily Greens newspaper at Mondegreen

***

Lisa Simpson has been designing dresses for Jon Fishman for over a decade. She has helped to expand his onstage wardrobe with thematic donut substitutes, new colorways, and a customized fit for the drummer equipped for live performance needs. In the following interview, Simpson retells the history of Fishman’s famous frock and how you can own a piece of the backbeat’s historic garments and other associated goods at the Bizarre Bazaar where she will be a featured merchant. She also has taken on a new role at Mondegreen in creating a dress for the massive

Miles the Monster figure near the festival gates.

There’s so much phan-based internet lore about the donut dress, from its humble beginnings as a Salvation Army free box score to rumors of superstitious association with its concert wear. What’s the history that Jon has conveyed to you?

Jon has told me it was Amy Skelton who pulled it out of the free box at the Salvation Army in Burlington, Vt. He wore it just as a kind of joke—like, “Ha-ha, this would be really funny.” I think there’s some truth to superstition, if you will, of don’t take this off because it’s so great; we played so great because you’re wearing this dress. But I also think he continues to wear it because of its freedom of movement. It’s just easy to play in that garment.

You mentioned there were pre-existing iterations of the dress before your involvement. Did you create a pattern out of the original?

The original dress that came out of the free box—I’ve not actually handled that myself. The dresses he wears now are drafts I did specifically for him. I measured him and talked about his needs, what he liked, and what he didn’t like in a dress. So, there is the original dress, which is completely torn to shreds and tatters and is somewhere in the archives.

The dress that he was wearing when he came back after the hiatus was a dress that was made for him by an individual, I believe, in Japan, and it was at the end of its life. It was very heavy, sturdy, almost like a sail canvas kind of fabric. He was looking for something a little bit lighter. Also, the fit of the dress wasn’t quite what he’d ultimately like. So, I took that dress home with me.

Let me back up…When they came back from hiatus, I saw that he was wearing that same donut dress. I felt like it was stale. I was really optimistic. I felt this was like the second coming of Phish. We needed something fresh and new. And I thought, “I’m gonna make a dress for him that’s exactly the inverse of the red donut on the black-blue background.” So I flopped that. I did a red background with a navy blue X on it.

I made it and I had it for a while. Actually, I wasn’t sure how to get it to him. But I took it out to Dick’s Sporting Goods [Park] at the end of summer tour. And I was like, “All right, well, this is my last chance.”

This wasn’t the first dress I made for him and sent up to the old P.O. box in Burlington, Vt., where all the fan mail used to go. He got it and sent me a postcard, like, “Thanks very much, this is really great. I get a lot of dresses, but I’ll actually wear this one.”

But I didn’t know how to get this to him. So, I dropped it off at Dick’s early in the afternoon. They wouldn’t let me near anything, so I had to just leave it with security, who said that they were going to call production to pick it up and just let the universe take it and see what happens. That was on a Saturday and the next afternoon I put a note in the box about what it was, with my name and number.

I got a call from Jon who was like, “Oh my God, this is great! I need some new dresses, so maybe we can talk sometime.” And I was like, “Well, I’m here in Denver right now.” I met up with him before the Sunday show and ended up leaving after an almost-hour conversation, and leaving with his dress, which I took back to Boston with me.

I patterned that and had some conversations with him. I guess it was 2011 because a week later, the day that I returned from Dick’s, they announced the benefits for flood relief in Vermont.

There was yet another hurricane looming on the horizon, and I remember watching the weather briefly on TV that evening and seeing the hurricane symbol, then immediately thinking, “I’m going to test all this. I’m going to quickly draft a pattern. I’m going to test out all these amendments and I’m going to do this for Vermont flood relief, and maybe they can auction a dress, maybe they can make some more money for Vermont flood relief.”

So that’s what we did. Very, very quickly we pulled that together. A week later, he was wearing that hurricane dress at the benefit, which I believe they auctioned off through the Mimi Fishman Foundation.

Out of that dress, we then made some more tweaks. We got it dialed with a specific fabric that’s the weight he prefers. It’s been a bit of an evolution to get it where he wants it. And now that we have the fit and everything, I’ve just been supplying him with dresses.

It seems that, with your help, there has been an expansion of variety, particularly in color and textile patterns.

I had always wanted to do some deviations on this, like mix it up a little bit. Also, the dress that he was wearing was a very sort of dark palette and behind that big kit, you can’t see him. So I had wanted to do something bolder and he had been really resistant to that for a number of years. He’s my client, so I kept providing him with what he wanted.

I finally put forth a proposal, a couple of new colors. I said, “Let’s just try it.” It was blackberry and tangerine and grape and lime—two dresses. And the grape and lime have absolutely taken off. I think it was after wearing that grape and lime dress that everybody just loved that, and he felt a little bit more comfortable to deviate from the standard red and navy-charcoal.

What do you think caused the apprehension?

Part of the reason he was hesitant to deviate from that was he felt there was an expectation that he would always wear the same dress. I think we’ve proven that wrong. The deviation is OK.

Drawing on specific events like New Year’s Eve, where costume has played a distinctive component, and I’m sure your theatrical background comes into play, were you involved in the making of the clone dresses?

The year that Trey got stuck up on his platform. I did build all of those clones. The dress was originally going to be just solid red and I said to the designer, “Let’s talk about this because it’s not Phish without the donuts. I think you really need the donuts.” The designer was concerned that they were not going to look red if there were donuts on them. I was like, “No, no, no. It’s going to look red. Trust me.”

He actually took my suggestions, and I think that was the right decision. They looked spectacular, and I don’t think that the black donut on the red dress detracted from the whole solid color block—the theme that the designer wanted.

I would think that would qualify as a rather top moment. Is there a specific piece that you designed for Jon that you are particularly proud of?

I did the three new non-donut dresses for the Vermont flood fundraiser last year at Saratoga. The wave is really my favorite, but even going into it, the design that was my least favorite was the life preserver. Then, when I was there in the audience, watching it on stage, the way that the dress worked with the light was so much better than I could have imagined.

It’s difficult when you’re working on a design and looking at it within the studio you can sort of approximate how it’s going to look on stage with the stage lighting. But until you really get it on stage and see it in that environment—the transformation for that one was really amazing. It went from my least favorite to maybe my most favorite. The contrast of the white that was on there really popped out, too. I was very happy with all three of those. I would love to explore that space more going into the future.

On the topic of donuts and other patterns, are the designs that appear on the fabric original?

Yeah, I design them and send them out to print. It’s not a commercial print—it’s custom-made. For the ones that glow, after the fabric is printed, I apply paint, a glowing layer on top. That’s how you get the UV pigment on them. I have yet to find a textile printer that can print UV ink onto textiles, so that’s all done by hand. 

That’s a great transition into the Bizarre Bazaar and the products you’ll have in tow at Mondegreen. Are the available items made from the same original fabrics you’ve used to make Jon’s dresses?

It’s all the same fabric. It’s all custom printed the same way that I do Jon’s. In fact, some of the smaller items that I have may even be made from remnants of Jon’s actual dresses.

Can you talk more about the range of products that will be represented?

I do have T-shirts that glow. It was worn just once at New Year’s, the flaming donut. I will have a very, very small number of T-shirts with a glow UV reactive flaming donut on them at the pop-up shop. Most of the items in the pop-up shop are made by me in my shop on that custom-printed doughnut fabric. I’ve got dresses just like Jon’s, built the same as Jon’s—the only difference is they don’t glow under black light.

I have market totes that are made out of a heavier fabric like a canvas material so they make great tote bags. I’ve also got an Eco Canvas tote bag that’s made of 50% recycled polyester, [that can fit up to] five water bottles in every bag. I’ve got some smaller bags, like a tiny crossbody bag that carries just your essentials, your phone and your credit card, for shows. They’re small enough to be compliant with most venue’s bag sizes.

I have a couple of very small keychain little zipper bags. And then, of course, the flaming donut shirt. Aprons! Oh, gosh! I’ve got these fantastic barbecue aprons with flaming donuts on them because that’s what everyone needs when they’re barbecuing. Plus, I’ve got some 100% Belgian linen dish towels with some of my designs—the water flood donut from last year’s flood relief, the yellow and blues that’s based on the Japanese print, “The Wave.”

Now that Phish festival has finally returned to form, what are you most looking forward to?

Just having a festival again. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get another. I’ve been to a lot of Phish festivals. I was at the first festival at Clifford Ball. I think I missed one of them in Maine. I can’t remember if it was IT that I missed… You can’t miss a Phish festival, so I’m just excited to be at a festival and see people that I haven’t seen in a while and super excited to be asked to vend in this Bizarre Bazaar with people like Pollock and Rene’s photography and the JEMP Records. I just feel so honored to be there. 

I wouldn’t be serving the dress community if I didn’t end with one last question. Does Jon’s dress have pockets?

Yes, it does, and the pockets are very important. If it didn’t have a pocket, he wouldn’t be able to wear that dress because of the electronics for his earpiece. In fact, there’s even a hole in the top of the pocket and in the side of the dress right above the pocket where the wires are fed through. 

You can’t go wrong with a tactical pocket.