FASHION Magazine

On Thursday, August 13 at noon, the doors of Nova Scotia’s first H&M will open in Dartmouth’s Mic Mac Mall (21 Micmac Blvd., 902-466-2535) and, you know what? I’ve got mixed feelings.

It’s blasphemy, I know—we’re too often ignored over here on the East Coast and I should be celebrating with the giant “Thank you!” H&M billboard I spied earlier this week. But I just can’t. That same jealous twang that popped into my childhood heart when I realized my BFF had other friends and, gasp, they had matching friendship bracelets, too (!) is holding me back. You see, I’m admittedly selfish about my relationship with H&M.

Challenged to dress a local musician for the stage, the four remaining Off the Cuff competitors were back with new work on on August 2. Heather Rappard dressed her musician, a harpist, in a floor-length midnight blue gown–but was again warned by judges to step up her technical game.  Bree Mackin, paired with Mary Stewart, dressed the guitar-strummin’ songbird in a bubbly party dress trimmed in black lace that unfortunately won’t take her to the final round.

Last Sunday’s challenge in Halifax’s Off the Cuff, a fashion competition and runway show presented by Argyle Fine Art gallery, couldn’t have been any more inappropriate. The designers were assigned the task of making a garment that was inspired by Halifax’s tempestuous weather and that could be transformed in some way. And so, on one of the scarce sunrise-to-set sunny days in the ‘fax, five designers wrapped their already-sweltering models in practical, toasty outwear.

Down the open back of one dress, a waterfall of hard drive platters and spindles spill along the model’s spine. On another, vinyl records make up a dramatic, bell-shaped skirt. Anti-slip fabric folded into box pleats puffs out below a bodice of cassette tape on a third cocktail dress, and a fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh pull together even more shiny bits, from silver-sprayed Christmas tree light bulbs to strips of film and strings of CDs. These are the ingenious creations hatched from week one of Off the Cuff, a fashion competition and runway show that has taken its inspiration from Project Runway and found its home in Halifax’s Argyle Fine Art gallery (1869 Upper Water St., 902-425-9456).

Fashion bloggers are notorious for getting style crushes on certain starlets and singers to the point of almost obsession. Heather and Jessica of Go Fug Yourself fame are shamelessly impressed (and dare I say in love) with the style prowess that is Anne Hathaway and there are whole sites devoted to the fanatical fan worship of the sometimes stylish and sometimes questionable Olsen twins. As a blogger based on Canada’s East Coast, my style crushes tend to be a little more homegrown. My current favourite is the always-impeccable singer/songwriter Jenn Grant.

When NSCAD University’s fashion students return to their Seeds Building studio in the fall, the art college will have become a little bit greener: the latest muslin cotton available in the fashion department will be certified organic.

The decision reflects the department’s desire to put into practice its long-standing eco-conscious mindset, one that is shared by many members of its student body, its only full-time faculty member, Parsons alumnus Gary Markle, and Anne Pickard, the department’s technician and an instructor within the university’s School of Extended Studies.

But the department’s green approach, urges Pickard, is more than just in vogue.

“We’re not focusing on this because it’s a hot thing,” says Pickard. “This is not for any other reason than that it should just be part of every consciousness.”

This is a bikini you can’t help but feel good in—and it has nothing to do with how much time you may or may not have spent at the gym this spring. Made right here in Nova Scotia, the Deux Fm Mystique ($82, at Love, Me Boutique, 1539 Birmingham St., 902-444-3668 and at select boutiques across Canada, deuxfm.com) string bikini is about as homegrown as you can get, and wearing something saturated in sustainability feels so damn good.

Eating up the East Coast love is all well and good for our Atlantic Canadian designers, but who can say no to a little national exposure? Not Kim Munson, Anna Gilkerson and the Sunsets on the Eastside trio, who will have their designs walked down the runway at Montreal’s Festival Mode & Design (June 17 to 20, festivalmodedesign.com) as part of the event’s inaugural cross-Canada showcase on Thursday, June 18.

The TransCanada Runway will bring together designers from Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Nunavut, Toronto, Montreal and our beloved Maritimes and marks the first time Atlantic Canada has been represented at the festival, a four-day event produced by Sensation Mode, who also put together Montreal Fashion Week.

I carry around a little bit of Moncton-born designer Céline Vautour on a near daily basis. It’s a quarter-sized fabric strawberry, as plump and adorable as its muse, that sits on my ring finger. It’s a touch gaudy, a bit unexpected and borderline ridiculous. But I love it. And hey, that’s exactly how I feel about Vautour’s entire collection: the funky and funny Wa’Ou. I love it, too.

I’ve got five words to say about NSCAD University’s 19^th annual Wearable Art Show: thank god it was good. Taking a turn from the bar venues WAS has occupied as of late, organizers Sarah Roy and Bree Mackin brought the AIDS Coalition of NS fundraiser to the streets, piling the event’s hundreds of guests under a tented portion of the city’s Granville Mall.

A novel idea, really, except that it was raining, gusty and bloody cold. Within minutes, my coifed bob was flattened, my notebook pages were rippling and the jots of ink on my program were running. The evening’s hosts—Brian MacQuarrie and Bill Wood of Halifax-based sketch comedy group, Picnicface—even distributed shammies to audience members on either side of the runway’s potentially troublesome wet spot.

But all those grisly details got swept away with the frigid wind when the 2009 WAS unveiled some truly spectacular pièces d’arts.

Gallery Page and Strange (1869 Granville St., 902-422-8995, pageandstrange.com), located in Halifax’s historic Granville Mall, houses the best walls in the city. Encompassed by the sleek columns, stunning molding and sky-kissing ceilings of a bygone era, the building’s old brick walls have been slathered in a fresh, modern white that would make any artist salivate. These gallery walls, and the contemporary art that hangs from them, created the perfect setting for last Thursday’s unveiling of Katrina Tuttle’s (katrinatuttle.com) Fall 2009 designs—a collection that has painted classic ideas in a coat of modernity.

Ever run into a friend’s younger sibling, after years, and spend the whole time grinning at how much they’ve grown and who they’ve become? That was the second Atlantic Fashion Week designer showcase for me—an evening of cheek pinches and head pats, or at least the seated, acceptable equivalent: much-deserved applause.