All aboard.

On Tuesday night at The Box, Elena Velez transported guests west with a gritty yet playful collection inspired by vaudevilles, vagabonds and crust punks while the sounds of an old train car rumbled on against a genre-mixing soundtrack.

“Looking very much into the 1930s to the 1970s of youth-led subcultures that are very anti-conformist but also have a sense of adventure, heroism and mysticism wrapped into their proposal of reality. I thought it was a bittersweet conversation around escapism,” Velez said during a preview, using historical references she finds as through lines to feelings of today.

Her overarching themes of prewar discourse and the Dust Bowl landscapes of the Great Depression; American literature like Kurt Vonnegut and John Steinbeck, and crust punks — “a hipp

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