FASHION Magazine

One of the biggest events at Toronto’s World MasterCard Fashion Week wasn’t just about the fashion: The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s The Heart Truth show was part celebrity showcase, part awareness campaign and one huge party on the runway. The annual charity event brought together on-air personalities, Olympic athletes and other notable names, each wearing a custom-made red dress by Canadian designers such as David Dixon, Stephan Caras and Ashtiani. Jamie Salé showed off a growing baby bump in a lacy Farley Chatto number, while Jennifer Valentyne revealed even more with a custom pair of bloomers under her frilly Momo frock. However, the real stars of the show just may have been the three “models of health”—real women nominated to participate in the show.

View FASHION’s 35th anniversary party photos »
Check out our archive of every FASHION cover since 1977 »

What’s better than a birthday party? Your own birthday party! On Wednesday night, the FASHION team (well, that’d be us) celebrated the magazine’s 35^th anniversary, and as you might expect, Toronto’s most stylish guys and gals were out in full force. 700 of our closest friends packed into the Distillery’s Fermenting Cellar to toast us with Skyy Vodka cocktails, mini burgers and musical performances by Divine Brown and The Parallels.

View the full collection »
See all Toronto Fashion Week coverage »

David Dixon has let it go to the birds for fall. Ruffling more than a few feathers, he sent out plumed frocks in a literal homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s famed classic, The Birds. Drawing on a feathery palette, he focused on stiff silk faille in black, cream and teal cut into shift dresses, pencil skirts and eveningwear fit for any Hitchcock heroine. His texture play—fluttering chiffon petals, thick swaths of lace, nubby tweeds and giant paillettes—kept the simple shapes feeling fresh and ready to take flight.

View the photo gallery »

Having an end-of-week time slot on the LG Fashion Week calendar is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because by this point, we’ve all honed our lenses to focus on important trends and notable details, but bad too, because the week’s shiny lustre has mostly worn off, and having seen a week’s worth of summer wares, we’re looking for newness to keep our sensory-overload interest alive. Did David Dixon deliver? Sort of. Staying true to his design sensibility, he showed a black, white, and lemon-curd yellow collection that was heavy on the springtime imagery—fluttery flower appliques, silver paisley lamé, and butterfly prints. While the stiff ‘50s cocktail dresses didn’t look particularly new, it was the seamed jersey dresses (the floor-length ones in particular) that looked most modern, and gave a defined body shape without veering into tricky body-con territory.

When you say “Ikea art,” I think of generic, upper-middle-class “art” by the truckload: Warhol portraits, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s stills, or stock-like glossy photography of hothouse flowers. But the Wednesday-night opening of exhibitIKEA, a Toronto pop-up at the corner of King and Peter streets, smashed that perception to bits.

Four Canadian creators were called in to work their particular tricks with IKEA’s wares. Dressmaker populaire David Dixon turned bolts of standard-issue IKEA fabric into sweet frocks. George Whiteside snapped Instagram-style still-lifes of vases and such (not so dissimilar to paintings by B.C.’s Joseph Plaskett). Sculptor/stacker Bruno Billio made a curvilinear tower of alternating black-and-white chairs—a bit ’70s-conceptual, as is the trend, and cool. And the piece de resistance was by one-time enfant terrible, now established art dude Thrush Holmes. He assembled a small wreck of a house out of not only IKEA products but also their packaging, adding his own improv’d scrawls of paint and neon. It reminded me a) of one of the most fun exhibits I’ve seen, “FischGratenMelkStand” in Berlin last summer and b) not to take any of this too seriously. After all, these good artists are only doing what good college students and yupsters do every September: reassemble IKEA’s clean, straightforward, easy-for-everybody goods into something personal.

exhibitIKEA runs through Sunday August 21, 2011.

View photos of the exhibit »

By Allyssia Alleyne

Has one too many H&M shopping sprees left you broke and with nary a hanger for your favourite cocktail dress? Kristy Wieber and Lisa Delorme of Rent frock Repeat (rentfrockrepeat.com) are here to help.

With 16 years worth of shows at Toronto fashion week under his belt, David Dixon has reason to celebrate. In honour of this milestone, his Fall 2011 show was preceded by a “Sweet Sixteen” retrospective of design highlights from his career. Set to a slideshow of family photos and monologues that served as inspiration for his past collections, this intro served as a reminder why Dixon remains one of the most celebrated designers in Canada. The main collection opened to the sounds of a bustling airplane, signaling that we were en route to Indonesia for an “Escape to Jakarta,” the designer’s theme for this season. “My love for the exotic and the South Pacific became my mental escape while designing this collection,” said Dixon. Flowing maxi dresses in vibrant animal and tribal prints swooshed down the runway alongside a dreamy selection of LBDs, while poppy red dresses in Italian matte jersey provided a fiery alternative to basic black. Leather polka dot georgette and diamond appliqué gowns were red carpet ready and a laser-cut clover bolero was the perfect cover-up for a cool evening breeze. We can’t wait to see where Dixon’s creations take us next year, and for another 16 after that.

View the David Dixon photo gallery »

David Dixon presented his new diffusion line to Montreal Fashion Week on Monday night. In this video he talks to Ashley Joseph about his inspiration and presenting his first MFW show. See looks more video from Montreal Fashion Week» See our full coverage of Montreal Fashion Week»

The post Video: David Dixon tells us about his new diffusion line appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

By Ashley Joseph

Montreal Fashion Week opened with an off-site event at MFW veteran Marie Saint Pierre’s St-Henri studio, where editors, bloggers, photogs and fans filed in for a behind-the-scenes look at where the magic happens. The ever so classic collection, punctuated by Saint Pierre’s signature ruffled and crinkled fabrics, was presented showroom-style as seamstresses continued to work in the back room.

Next, the crowds shuffled to restaurant-turned-runway Vallier to take in Eve Gravel. Buyers from across the globe sat front row to take in Gravel’s girlie looks (Galeries Lafayette’s Berlin rep happened to be perched next to me), which echoed with a retro nautical aesthetic that was punctuated by pretty florals.

Comrags always puts on one of the most genuinely fun shows at Toronto Fashion Week. This season, the models were sporting big smiles (due, we’re sure, to the totally reasonable footwear–fur-trimmed flat boots) and big, bobbed masses of kinks and curls.  Photographer Angela Y. Martin went backstage to take model portraits before the show. Enjoy! […]

The post Backstage beauty: Big smiles and bigger curls at Comrags appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

We always knew that David Dixon was a popular guy, but the massive crush at the door (we even had to kick a few brazen imposters out of our seats!) was a true testament to his reputation as an established Canadian designer.  The collection was safe, shape-wise, and Dixon focused his lens on blending cultural references for his new “Global Tribe.” This meant showcasing swaths of Spanish woven raffia on cocktail dresses, Japanese print jackets, Canadian wild fur stoles and Indian mosaic tile mirrored dresses to deliver his melting-pot message. But it wouldn’t be a Dixon collection without a little romance, so his finale dresses featured red carpet-ready, fluttering, feather-like appliqués.

See the full collection after the jump.

In the last of our Paris Fashion Week videos, Bernadette Morra heads to the Louis Vuitton show. Catch the runway finale, the Vuitton fans, Anna Piaggi’s LV blanket and a chat with Toronto couture fan Stacey Kimel. See all our coverage from Paris Fashion Week

The post Video: We catch the Louis Vuitton finale and get up close to Anna Piaggi appeared first on FASHION Magazine.