Toronto's L'Oreal Fashion Week Fall 2006
Designer Features & Collections | Sonja Andic Diary | Ashley & Jodi Experience | 5 Day Fashion Industry Q&A | Social Scene Photos | After Party Shots | Models Backstage

Izzy Camilleri

Izzy Camilleri is a PC designer. No, not Politically Correct - or Progressive Conservative either. I propose a new meaning for the acronym PC, and that is Perfectly Cut. Her princess seams are eased to curve without a wrinkle. Her waistlines skim the body like oil over water. Even the exaggerated proportions of her oversized collars look right with the belted waistline she championed for fall.

After spending several years perfecting her skills as a custom designer in the film industry dressing big names like Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie, Camilleri returned to ready-to-wear last year. Her spring collection earned her a place along side Toronto’s most innovative designers, but she hit her stride for fall with a muse that could have walked straight out of a Von Sacher-Masoch novel.

Skin tight black leather pants were topped with voluminous silver fox and coyote jackets that rippled as models walked, cropped at the waist and accented with wide red leather sashes. Cropped palazzo pants in brown leather looked totally of the moment with a belted, eskimo hood top made from bleached raccoon fur. Hard-edged black boots, short leather skirts, leather short shorts, mini dresses and one very, very tight, white, leather catsuit gave one the vague impression that fighter-pilot goddesses had decided to decend from heaven to catch the show.

She kept a light touch throughout though, by mixing up the head to toe black look with surprising textures and silhouettes. Eveningwear featured dropped waistlines, backs and necks, with a nearly naked look that floored the audience. One skirt was seamed into channels of black and white leather which wrapped around the hips and then back up the waist like the lines of a Greek statue. A hazelnut coloured leather mini dress embedded with oversized black and white pearls down the front and arms with matching jeweled boots looked straight out of a sixties spy movie.

Camilleri’s sense of character has most definitely evolved from her years spent as a costumer. But unlike some costumers-turned-designers, she translates her muse into wearable designs instead of the literal interpretations that some of them fall prey to. Camilleri effortlessly mixed soft with tough and feminine with masculine, heralding the return - not of the uber-bitch of the nineties, but a new kind of strong woman - tough and confident, but glamourous and feminine as well.