FASHION Magazine

Jeremy Scott upcycles car parts for a Hyundai-branded couture collection Former Moschino creative director Jeremy Scott is known for his cheeky, irreverent style, so it’s no surprise that his latest gig designing a couture collection using upcycled car waste is a bit “outside the box.” Shown at Seoul Fashion Week on March 22 as part […]

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Fashion Art Toronto returns for the fall season Toronto’s fashion scene continues to heat up. The evidence? Fashion Art Toronto (FAT) announced this week that it will host a Fall 2022 showcase — an unexpected second event for the organization this year. Set within the historic Parkdale Hall from November 10 to 13, an all-encompassing […]

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See the best from [FAT] 2014 »

Arts & Fashion Week Toronto, otherwise known as [FAT], is now in its ninth year and continues to has a reputation as the city’s best contemporary fashion and design showcase, as well as being an unofficial cool kid hangout. Known for its innovative fashion shows, live performances—this year had some seriously talented modern dancers—films and wicked art installations, each year the weeklong extravaganza focuses on exploring our modern relationship to fashion and clothing. This year’s theme of Infashion/Unfashion was spread out over five nights, each taking on a different pair of contrasting ideas (masculine/feminine and grit/glamour being just two of them). Designers in turn interpreted the night’s theme within their collections and the results range from totally wearable to beyond provocative. Read on to see some of the top looks from [FAT] 2014 and our favourite designers from the week.

Is it just me, or are we all still recovering from the whirlwind that is fashion month? From constantly refreshing the home pages of my favorite fashion sites to trekking down to the tents of David Pecaut Square for Toronto’s own collections, it seems that this so-called “month” is years long! Before we close our books on the Fall 2013 collections season, there is one more week to get excited about in Toronto–that is of course–[FAT] Arts & Fashion Week which took place last week in a beautiful warehouse in the up-and-coming arts neighborhood off Sterling Road in the west end.

Industry insiders, fashion fans and fellow designers all piled in to check out the burgeoning talent coming out of Toronto, Montreal and new partners Focus Mexico in a week-long extravaganza of runway shows, photography exhibits (Toronto ex-pat Hannah Sider‘s portraits were stand out), art installations, live performances and fashion films (a particular favorite from the always incredible Diego Armand at Perfecto Magazine)

Founder Vanja Vasic first put together an alternative fashion week while a student in Ryerson University’s Fashion Design program. I remember attending one of the first presentations, as my big sis happened to be showing alongside Vasic and her fellow students. The evening was a haphazard collection of musical performances, runway shows and modern dance–needless to say, FAT has come a long way since then.

Attending shows at Arts & Fashion Week reminds me why I love fashion. Vasic and her colleagues have created an incredible platform for unknown designers to present their collections in front of the fashion community, media outlets and supporters. I’ll admit to getting a bit misty-eyed as a group of high-school and first-year university students presented their designs as part of PACT Fashion, an organization founded by Make Den owner Irene Stickney which gives under-privileged youths practical skills and creative outlets. It’s organizations like PACT that make FAT what it is today–a community of creative minds working together to make fashion and design accessible to those who otherwise are forced to sit on the sidelines.

Here’s a look at some of my favorite collections from the week.

After having spent most of her formative years in daylong dusk—she was raised in Alberta and studied for a time in Finland—Jessica Mary Clayton now brightens our fashion landscape by illuminating the oh-so-standard palette.

Against too many blacks, whites and a mess of monochrome, Clayton’s most recent line plays a lively riff on the classic prototype. Her latest collection features a broader greyscale, a scheme well known and well loved by many Canadians. Done by Clayton though, grey is translated with a sweeter, softer spin.

The second half of [FAT] shifted from presentations of (relatively) wearable street fashion seen earlier in the week to runway-shows-come-performance-art that featured some truly impressive avant-garde and theatrical designs.

Night three with its theme of ‘Fashion/Unfashion’ drew unprecedented crowds hovering on tip-toes around the coveted seating to catch shows of buzzed about designers like Breeyn McCarney and Heidi Ackerman, whose capsule collection was accessorized with sculptural bent wood adornments by industrial designer Lindsay Sinclair. Our favourite looks from the collaboration were a gold parachute coat and a black chiffon one-piece pantsuit, the lightness of which was balanced by a panelled wood collar that spanned from the model’s breastbone to above her ears.

When attending [FAT], Toronto’s alternative arts and fashion week—with its norm-subverting, boundary-busting mandate—it’s impossible to predict what’s in store for the (equally eclectic) audience. Runway presentations over the first two nights have featured ballerinas, acrobats and a puzzling—albeit comical (though maybe not intentionally)—light-saber dual. But beyond the showmanship, we were delighted to discover some true talent. Here are our favourites from the first two nights:

If the future of sustainable fashion were laid on the shoulders of wildly inventive Heidi Ackerman, we’d be in good hands. Known for her boldly-printed knits and space-age silhouettes, the designer has found the magic medium between wondrous and wearable while completely disavowing Holly Hobby’s claim to the aesthetic of sustainable clothing.