FASHION Magazine

No need for asterisks or apologetic preambles: my city finally nailed down Fashion Week this season—or at least an abbreviated one—hitting a level of success that’s way off the small-town scale.

When I first held a Jessica Weatherhead bag (they woo themselves right into your arms, I swear), I knew it was something way more than a purse. With its buttery soft leather, its cutout pattern that flowed into a white shell wrapped in a twisted net, its braided rope-like strap and its blue silk lining, this beautiful bag looked like something straight out of an underwater paradise. I knew the story behind this bit of whimsical beauty, and the designer herself, had to be anything but boring.

And I wasn’t wrong.

I tried to avoid it. In an effort to sidestep a tragically fou-for-feathers diagnosis, I pushed aside the urge to tell you all about the stunning bit of plumage I’ve had dangling from my lobe for weeks. I kept my satisfaction silent and brushed off any “Love your earring!” praise with an I’ve-had-it-for-years shrug. But when the compliments passed the half-dozen mark, I turned a feather-grazed cheek to all those who pooh-pooh plumage and reached for my laptop. This, I’ve gotta share.

With its big bay window, sleek racks and clean decor, Sweet Pea (1542 Queen St., 902-423-0975) sure looks like a boutique. With its ever-churning traffic of midday shoppers, big bags elbowed and hanger-sifting fingers poised, it sure feels like one. And with a only a few of each style in a library of dresses, it sure holds its nose like a boutique. But the price tags dangling from those adorable little frocks will make you think otherwise.

The same part of me that aches over the loopy inscriptions found at the front of leather-bound books, or a forgotten button tucked into the corner of a vintage clutch, can’t help but lust for jewellery that comes dripping with a history. Designer Rita Laidlaw’s pieces (seaglassdesigns.etsy.com), made from fragments of glass, china and pottery washed up on Nova Scotia’s shores, come with two.

The seed was planted when a funeral-themed party had me on the phone midday, trading up a lunch break for a fashion quest, locating a black half-cap and veil in one of Halifax’s goldmine vintage shops.  A few bobby pins later, and I’m hooked. Headpieces, with their drama, vintage appeal and immediate elegance, are my foible.

It happened on the floor of my hotel room in Zermatt, Switzerland. After a full day of swoosh, swooshing in the Alps, and a brief promenade through the ski town, I had schlumped my way back up to my fourth-floor room, dropped to my tired bottom and reached for the zipper of my boots. But it didn’t move. The white Aldo kicks that have been stompin’ me through winter since halfway through my undergrad had finally called it quits.

“Are you seeing those?” I whisper to my boyfriend, sitting attentively to my right. “I need those.”

He responds back with a raised brow and quick exhalation that surprisingly equates—in masculine form—my own untamable excitement for the high-waisted tartan trousers parading on the runway at the AFW Emerging Designer Showcase. The stuff my fashion dreams are made of typically fall into the wildly interesting, but perhaps not always sexy, realm and so his reaction confirms it: these will be my Fashion Week indulgence.

Katie Tuttle never went to design school—and she’s proud of it. For this 20-year-old designer—half of Halifax-based fashion label Tuttle & Leonardo (tuttleandleonardo.com)—all the technical training of a classroom would just slow her down.

For a city you can hide in the palm of your hand, it’s mysteriously possible for its citizens to be right in the thick of citywide event and not have a clue. Halifax’s first dance with fashion week was no exception, passing by without stirring up much more than a light breeze. An event needs deafening buzz to catch this city’s attention and it seems this time around, the vibrations were at just the right pitch.

When eight strong-jawed men came lumbering down the runway in body-consuming pieces of pleated and stitched vinyl, bold panels of canary yellows and gunmetal greys, and highlights of clear cut-outs and airy silks—the fruits of designer Akshay Tyagi’s (akshaytyagi.com) labour—I knew this city’s latest go at a fashion week wasn’t in vain.

Block one and the bleached glow from a gallery open long past closing time bleeds into the pedestrian stippled sidewalk. Block two and a set of storefront windows blink and wink with the darting movements of massive projections of the human eye. Around the corner, the local architecture school has opened its doors to a cardboard city with stations for Haligonians to pull out the scissors and add to a mini metropolis.