Anik Lacasse-Richard of Montreal in Style
“You can sum up the big difference between living in Toronto versus Montreal just by thinking about style,” said a friend of mine recently who, like me, is a Montrealer now living in Toronto. We were sitting on a Parkdale patio with a couple of other ex-Montrealers at one of our seemingly impromptu, but surprisingly regular, Montrealers-now-living-in-Toronto faux support group sessions. “If you wore a garbage bag down the streets of Montreal while strutting your stuff, people would applaud and yell, ‘Work it!’” he continued. “Here, they’d throw lighter fluid at you and set you on fire.”
Sure, he was being a bit dramatic, but I understood where he was coming from. I’ve been living in Toronto for just over a year, and while I love some of the amazing things this city has that Montreal doesn’t (employment and family doctors, to name just two), it doesn’t have Montreal’s appreciation for fearlessness when it comes to style. I’m not saying Montreal is a better dressed city than Toronto. In fact, I’ve seen more Labradoodles decked out in designer duds this year than I’ve ever seen on actual humans in Montreal. And don’t get me started on the tailored suits of the financial district. You’re telling me those guys have jobs and tailors? Sign me up! That said, Toronto definitely doesn’t have Montreal’s balls when it comes to putting yourself out there and risking public ridicule for the sake of fashion. Just yesterday, I was standing outside my building on Queen West wearing a T-shirt that says “Smoking Kills” with a hot pink mini skirt, and a guy walking by told me that I was “disgusting” and that I also “deserve to die.” Perhaps the cigarette I was puffing on as my statement piece offended him, but he clearly didn’t understand that that’s what made my outfit, so I shook it off.
In French Canada, it’s nearly impossible to shock people with your attire. If a guy wearing a top hat, a metallic gold crop top, jean cut-offs and faux fur platforms strolled down Blvd. St-Laurent and asked a group of locals for directions, they’d simply direct him where he wanted to go without blinking an eye. In Toronto, I’d half expect people to clutch their Louis Vuitton bags in horror as they dialed CAMH to report an escaped patient. At the very least, an Instagram photo frenzy would go down. In Montreal though, dressing in what makes you feel awesome and sexy, no matter how outlandish, is just a normal part of life. Thinking of cutting off the arms of an old fur coat and wearing them as legwarmers? Great idea! Want to max out the use of your Dracula Halloween costume by rocking a floor-length cape year-round? By all means, please do! You can understand why Cirque du Soleil had to come from Quebec and nowhere else.
“Do you think it’s because Montreal isn’t a money city like Toronto is?” I said in response to my friend’s garbage bag visual. “Like, our style has to come from a creative place because we’re so broke we can’t actually follow trends?” Play the mildly offensive game “Hipster or Homeless?” in Toronto and you’ll be bored to tears because Urban Outfitters tops, Opening Ceremony pieces, and expensive vintage garments stand out like the pearly white teeth of a trust fund kid. Play the same game in Montreal and you’ll be challenged, stumped even, given that hipsters aren’t that far removed from the homeless demographic. Fine, I’m exaggerating, but not by as much as you think.
The average rent I paid in well over a decade of living on my own in Montreal was only around $300 a month even up until a couple of years ago. It was always for a shared pad with other aspiring “artists” or a boyfriend or sometimes both at the same time when I was really boho-ing it up in the Plateau or St-Henri. One of my neighbours for a short time was even a street busker who paid his rent in cash, well, coins more specifically. My starting salary at the indie mag Strut where I began my career was actually below the poverty line. I barely had any money to spend on my wardrobe, let alone groceries, for almost five years of my adult life. Instead, I resurrected old high school clothes, embraced hand-me-downs of any kind, and shopped at the Salvation Army out of necessity, not choice. I cropped and altered garments, dyed and patched things and paired unlikely items together. The best piece of style advice I ever received came from one of my best friends Jean-Luc, the former fashion editor of Strut, right before he took me to my very first fashion show. I had just nervously confessed to him that I had nothing remotely high fashion to wear: “You work in fashion,” he said. “You know what’s in style now, and you know what’s in style six months from now. Go spill ketchup on what you’re already wearing and show everyone you don’t give a damn.”
I wasn’t a rare case either. In fact, I was the norm for my age group. A city with cheap rent attracts a ton of artsy types who would rather focus their time on their artistic endeavours, or at least getting drunk or high, than spending 40-plus hours week at a mind-numbing job they hate. That means Montreal is full of the kind of people who would rather scour endlessly for cool clothing before they’d ever bother getting a corporate job to pay for J Brand jeans and Mink Pink kimonos. Montrealers even take pride in telling you the weird story behind their cheap or free garments: “Oh this feathered bandeau top? I found it on the floor of Mado at 4 a.m. after this wild drag show.”
But poverty alone isn’t a driving source of style. If it was, Detroit would be the fashion capital of North America. Montrealers have the confidence, some would even say the audacity, to go outside wearing a potato sack they safety-pinned into a mini skirt while thinking, “I look fucking awesome today.” It’s a trait that’s not widespread here in Toronto, a shameless sense of sexiness that just oozes out of a people no matter what they’re wearing, even if it’s literally garbage. It got me to thinking about cities and why some are just sexier than others. Despite being one of the coldest cities in the world most of the year, Montreal is right up there with Buenos Aires and Barcelona when it comes to its status as a sexy metropolis. How could a city where people wear goose-down jackets six months out of the year be so acclaimed for its hotness and sexy style?
It’s pretty simple, actually. Most Montrealers believe we’re from the greatest city in North America, and the only city that truly has any European liberalism when it comes to sex and drinking. Sure, in the ‘60s, Montreal may have been an international business city but, these days, thanks to the political climate that’s pervaded for the last handful of decades, the population is static and big businesses just aren’t bothering to open there the way they used to. Nevertheless, the city’s belief in its own greatness and international importance has never dissipated, and that’s what makes it so sexy. Confidence, no matter how unreasonable, is hot. If Montreal was a person, it would be Pamela Anderson, but not early ‘90s Baywatch Pamela Anderson; more like 2013 Pamela Anderson. Sure, she’s got Hep C, her face has seen better days and she barely works anymore, but she still believes she’s a sex kitten and, because she does, you sort of do too.
Just like Pam, we Montrealers have a delusional idea that our city oozes sex and beauty everywhere. Everyone from the Anglo-hipsters to the hardcore separatists will boldly tell you they live in the most beautiful city in the world while gesturing dramatically for you to behold the magnificence of Parc Lafontaine, which is really just a decent city park with people urinating on trees and universities kids drinking beer out of brown paper bags. We’ll point to a 300-year-old building and wait for you to marvel at its wonder like it’s the Parthenon or Acropolis. Part of you is seriously wondering, “Dude, have you ever traveled?” while another part is like, “Tell me more!” Sure, even a first-time visitor can easily see that the city’s appeal as a tourist destination comes from its lax attitude toward the drinking age and what you can do to a stripper, and yet almost everyone who lives there feels confident about the city’s sexiness and this trickles down into our belief in our own hotness.
So why doesn’t Toronto feel the same? It’s home to a lot of stuff Montreal would kill to have: the most important film festival in the world, a population that recently outnumbered Chicago, an NBA and an MLB team, awesome art galleries as well as amazing new restaurants that seems to open every day. Did it just get too big too fast without developing a sense of self-confidence in between? Toronto obviously had a huge growth spurt over the decades where Montreal declined and businesses packed up and headed west down the 401. It’s not exactly the sexiest city story to tell of why your city is so awesome. That said, Toronto is now growing in ways that have nothing to do with Montreal, and it feels only right that its sense of sexiness and style should finally sprout some balls too.
If Montreal is Hep C era Pamela Anderson, then Toronto is like a young supermodel on the cusp. Sure, she’s opening every show at Paris Fashion Week and she’s already scored the cover of Vogue, but while everyone around her knows she’s destined to be a superstar, when she’s not on the runway, she goes back to being a lanky teenager, confused as to why everyone is looking at her. She hasn’t been a big deal long enough to know she’s going to surpass all the other girls to be the next Linda Evangelista, even though other people see it. When Toronto finally gets that it’s hot, perhaps Torontonians will start oozing the same sense of sexiness and fearlessness that Montrealers have in surplus. Besides, it’s slightly warmer here, which means people only need goose-down coats for, like, 5 months of the year. And if also else fails, more and more Montrealers are relocating to Toronto for these weird things called “jobs” we’ve heard so much about. The next time you see someone who looks lost wearing faux fur platforms and a potato sack mini skirt on the street, don’t call CAMH or start Instagramming; just say, “Bienvenue à Toronto!” Then point us in the direction of the nearest Salvation Army. We’re just trying to find something amazing to wear for our first day at the office.
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Vicki Hogarth is a Toronto-based writer and associate editor for View the Vibe. Her work has also appeared on Jezebel, Vice, and xoJane.com. Follow her on Twitter @Vicki_Hogarth.
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