Soia&Kyo Coats

This week, Sensation Mode and the city of Montreal celebrates its 15th season of Montreal Fashion Week at the Bonsecours Market.

With the help of the Government of Québec, organizers invited more than 200 national and international buyers and 300 media, in an effort to support designers that include designers from all over the country including Evan Biddell, Lucien Matis, Denis Gagnon, Soia&Kyo and Yves Jean Lacasse.

Québec continues to be the third largest production centre in North America – surpassed only by Los Angeles and New York – and is home to the manufacturers and designers that produce 50% of all the apparel made in Canada, including 80% of the Canadian Fur production.

Montreal Fashion Week

by Susie Love

Evan Biddell, winner of the first Project Runway Canada introduced his fabulous new Queen West Studio to the fashion scene of Toronto on Friday, October 3 with a party that included some of the hottest names in fashion and television.
Degrassi stars Nina Dobrev and Evan Williams charmed the crowd with their youthful energy. Sarah Jay (pictured below), having just returned from styling Project Runway Canada 2, rocked a perfect bohemian chic outfit, while taking a break from styling Biddell’s upcoming L’Oreal Fashion Week show (Oct. 22 @ 6 p.m). Biddell’s new studio is a beautiful bright loft with ample room for all the beautiful dresses and designs on display for his many visitors.

by Daniel Wilson

Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian writer, film maker and photographer, famous for pushing the envelope and then some. His films and his book, The Reluctant Pornographer, endlessly raise eyebrows as well as the bar in queer cinema. One of LaBruce’s most recognized films, Hustler White (1996) provided inspiration for one of John Galliano’s most notorious collections.

At the screening of LaBruce’s new gay zombie love story (that was censored by YouTube), Otto, or Up, With Dead People, I put on a children’s tiger costume borrowed from The AGO and went to Circa to meet Bruce, to talk about – what else? Fashion.

What celebrities or fashion icons today do you think might actually be zombies?
“I’m pretty down on celebrity culture in general, its become an epidemic. But possibly Paris Hilton or Sarah Palin.”

If you were a zombie what designer would you wear?
“Rick Owens is on the top of my wish list. He donated all of the costumes for the film including stuff from his own collection like this monkey fur coat he got at an antiques market and is now probably worth a fortune.”

Are there any current fashion trends you wish would die?
“Paris Hilton has the same expression all the time, but I guess in a way that is sort of charming in a zombie way. I hate Sarah Palin’s neo-conservative chic.”

What is the sexiest garment a man can wear in public, outside of your films?
“ I think a good hat is really sexy, 1940’s style worn at just the right angle, its great. Also it can hide flaws.

by Daniel Wilson
“We’re not just talking about teenagers in black here,” said Dr. Valerie Steel at her wonderful but all too brief talk at the swish Bloor Street sunglass mecca Ilori. Dr. Steel was in town to promote her new book Gothic: Dark Glamour, a gorgeous glossy tome on the history of the gothic fashion movement and aesthetic. And she went far beyond teenagers in black.

Adriana Fulop (pictured left) and Ryan Webber, the duo behind the sharply tailored Toronto label Plastikwrap, were at the party dressed to the nines in their own creations. Plastikwrap has the distinction of being the only Canadian label included in the book and it sits comfortably in the pages between Givenchy, Oliver Theyskens and Thierry Mugler. Steel, in fact, mentioned Plastikwrap during her talk in the same breath as Galliano era Dior.

Dr. Steel’s talk danced quickly over the themes of sex and death, the symbolism of black and the iconic “ruined castle”. She quoted from the John Berger essay Leopardi where a personified fashion says to Death “Don’t you remember that both of us are daughters of decay?”, and told anecdotes about a teenage Rick Owens as a goth growing up in Kmart California reading Victorian fiction.

Photos were shown from Dr. Steel’s exhibit at The Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology and the gothic influence was pointed out in the works of Hussein Chalayan, Yohji Yamamoto and of course Alexander McQueen.

But it was Dr. Steel as a person that proved to be the most fascinating part of the night. Meeting outside for fresh air (Ilori is very narrow and seemed to have insufficient air flow for the number of people there), she was disarmingly charming and down to earth. She confessed her love of anime and corsets, told stories of the Gobi desert and Japan and explained how the Rodarte sisters’ collection was inspired by the way blood moves through water in Japanese horror movies.

It is refreshing that in the fashion world where so many people have over inflated senses of self importance that a woman who truly is important in the bigger picture can be so humble and simply friendly (which is also rather rare).

Photos by Wingo Du

Neoprene coats | Jersey dresses

Ex-Project Runway Canada contestant Stephen Wong and partner Kirk Pickersgill give us all something to talk about each season a new gorgeous collection is presented – usually off-site during L’Oreal Fashion Week (whilst the duo maintain their independence from the trade event).

This fall 2008, Greta Constantine jersey drapes like silk in luscious cowls and is twisted into plump, generous braids, coinciding with international trends. A neoprene coat is shaped into a cocoon and ruffled asymmetrically for a high-style look.

http://www.gretaconstantine.com