What a long strange trip it was for this year’s Snowdown Fashion Do’s & Don’ts.

In a blast from the past, many dressed in their favorite hippie attire or as their favorite counterculture icon on Wednesday.

From John Lennon to Austin Powers to men in dresses, residents packed the La Plata County Fairgrounds exhibit hall.

One of the Fashion Do’s and Don’ts directors, Anne Stokes, said people camped outside the El Ranch Tavern last Saturday to get tickets. Ticket sales opened at 6 a.m. and sold out by 7:20 a.m. that day.

Stokes said this year’s theme was an easier feat than last year’s Shakespeare theme, but added that music was challenge for the hippie theme because of the slow melodic nature of the psychedelic rock era.

“We’ve had to be creative to find those songs that for a fashion show are upbeat,” she said.

Stokes and an entourage walked down the runway to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “That Smell.”

She said the event has really grown over the years. Because last year was the event’s first year back from the COVID-19 pandemic, people have become really enthusiastic about it.

Some of the notable acts walking the runway were “Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene,” featuring Sara Beth Hunter and Hannah Zorn. The fictional Taylor Greene had a sign on her back pointing at the fictional Boebert reading “I’m with stupid.”

Another was peace, love and skate featuring Stephanie Roberts, Leslie Emerson and Shaheen Hangval. The trio relived the infamous roller disco era as they boogied down the runway.

The finale saw the “Big Bottom Village Divas” featuring Donna Middleton, Susan Servcie, Winnie Neunzig, Rochelle Park and Michelle Lashbrooke jam to the Village People’s hit song “Y.M.C.A.”

“We also tried to make the food pertinent to the theme,” Stokes said. “In years past, it was like food that was so jokey it wasn’t edible, but we were trying to make it good food now because people pay good money.”

There were some peculiar and creative costumes in Wednesday’s crowd, most notably the “drug buddies,” a group of five dressed as a marijuana joint, birth control pills, a psychedelic mushroom, a “sugar cube” and quaaludes.

Ashley Stapleford, who was dressed as a package of birth control pills offered a bit of background on her costume.

She said the pills weren’t available until 1960. But before 1972, a woman had to seek her husband’s consent to access them.

In the same group, Bridget Maloney was dressed as a joint.

The name of her specific strain was “La Planta County” and featured a smoke machine coming out of the top of her costume to simulate being lit.

Also part of the show was Bradley Boerger, who performed as one of the “Mind Flowers” of Love, peace and Snowdown.

The member of Durango’s Secret Circus Society did so on stilts, which raised him about several feet off the ground. He said the stilts weren’t actually that hard to use.

“We usually just duct tape the base,” he said.

The tape provides better grip for the user. This was Boeger’s first year participating in Fashion Do’s and Don’ts, but he’s been involved in the Snowdown Follies in the past.

He said he became interested in joining the circus after high school. After playing sports in high school, he was intrigued to perform acts like using stilts.

tbrown@durangoherald.com