Screenshot from Flare.com
“I can’t smell anything,” I said to myself, trying to take a whiff of the Americano I got in place of a beer. I keep brushing back and forth under my nose (snot), do people think I’m doing blow? This fashion cold is getting worse, so I opted to have a fashion burrito on the way to the tents. (Try it, put fashion in front of a word. You sound really stupid.) Sustenance, that will make me feel better. If not, I currently have seven packages (and counting) of free chewing gum in my duffle bag, and chewing gum keeps me from vomiting. Thankfully, I’m not quite there yet. The environment was much busier yesterday, and that had everything to do with the Joe Fresh show. It certainly wasn’t busy for Canadian fashion. Not quite.
“Is this the cone of silence,” NOW’s Andrew Sardone said to me on the way home in a cab. He was making a joke, but sharing industry gossip was the name of the game inside the tents on Wednesday night (Not Sardone, he keeps pretty tight lipped about most things, except feminism). Flare’s Liz Cabral is leaving the magazine, but she took her front row seat for Mackage and Joe Fresh. Where’s Miranda Purves? This time she’s late because she was doing 30 minutes of Tae Kwon Do with her kids. She’s a monster. And all of this on Wear Canada Day, an arbitrarily constructed holiday from Flare magazine that instructs attendees to wear Canadian designs. I know it seems like the focus of this column is that publication, but these days, it really is. There’s a mass exodus happening: Mosha Lundstrom-Halbert, Liz Cabral, Ryan Porter and more. And the rumour is, they’re on the hunt. But no more drama, not on Wear Canada Day. Except, it’s fashion week, so:
The objective of Toronto Fashion Week is to showcase Canadian design. To show, in part, that it exists, and that it is competent. According to co-owner of Nicolas in Yorkville,
Steven Kalatzis, such a thing does not exist in the Canadian market. “The only place to get well-made clothing manufactured is Milan,” he’s overheard saying to Styleblog.ca blogger Nelia Bekbulatova, repeating his shop’s devotion to Jil Sander. When asked during the Lucian Matis show if he carries any of Matis’ work, Kalatzis went off on a rant that decried “we only carry pieces that are well-made. You can’t find that in Canada, or China, or the US.” And yet Kalatzis stayed until the very end of the night, for Mr. Joe Fresh himself, perhaps in the hopes that something would strike his fancy. But given his stance, it was likely more of an act to be seen. To his discredit, he was heard, too.
A thriving fashion economy can’t rely on positive media impressions alone. If the support doesn’t exist within the retail sector, how does it grow? Not every young fashion star has the experience or the backing to open up a store. It’s about time we’re able to readily find the fashions we see. And not just at a studio sample sale.
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Kevin Naulls is a Toronto-based writer and former editor of The Goods and The Hype at Torontolife.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevinjn.
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