FASHION Magazine

See the street style from Montreal’s Festival of Design and Fashion » The now defunct Semaine de mode Montréal (a.k.a. Montreal Fashion Week) has been replaced by the Montreal Festival of Design and Fashion [http://www.festivalmodedesign.com/en], a week-long festivity celebrating all things fashion and design. The festival’s first edition was met with much fanfare, as the […]

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The absence of Montreal Fashion Week this season has not diminished the energy of our local designers. Au contraire. Within the framework and sartorial hoopla of London Fashion Week, seven of our city’s finest talents have jetted to the U.K. to present their Fall 2014 wares. A stream of press and buyers at the British Fashion Council’s International Fashion Showcase awaits…

Montreal represent! The designers in question are:

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The Montreal Fashion Week party s’est terminé. Edition 24 of this four-day event celebrated its second instalment at the massive Arsenal Gallery in Griffintown. Here, in chronological order, were the ten most Instagram-worthy moments:

View our Montreal Fashion Week Spring 2013 photo gallery! »

It sure wasn’t easy getting into the groove of fashion week the day after Labour Day weekend, but this season’s Semaine de la mode was a success on many levels. A brand new venue, the return of practically all of Montreal’s cult fave designers and the city’s first ever participation in the global event of Fashion’s Night Out made for four fabulous days that will be hard to forget—and difficult to outdo next year. Here’s our round up of the top moments from Montreal Fashion Week Spring 2013:

With TIFF kicking off the same week as Fashion’s Night Out, it would seem there’s no rest for the wicked. Cocktail parties, movies and red carpets aside, there are plenty of ways to amuse yourself this weekend, ranging from bevvies and jazz in a Montreal gallery to hobnobbing with a knighted Rocket Man at Holts. Be sure to follow FASHION’s comings and goings on Instagram: @FASHIONCANADA



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While London Fashion Week just ended and the shows in Milan started this morning, we’re going back to revisit the fourth and final day of Montreal Fashion Week. This year Groupe Sensation Mode launched a new event, Exhibit 22, that showcased up-and-coming designers. Most of the invitees were from Montreal, including Betina Lou by Marie-Ève Émond. New discoveries included knitwear designer Maude Nibelungen and accessories line Aime by W. by Bertrand W. Delancourt. I’ve also been personally following fellow local ladies Evelyne Fay from White Label and Hayley Gibson from Birds of North America, but I must send out a special shout-out to B.C.-boy Earl Luigi from LLUI—we’re both from the Philippines and I love how he incorporates Filipino textiles into his work.

Day three was a lull in the Montreal Fashion Week storm. Fashion mavens, it appeared, were saving their most spectacular looks for day four’s finale. Today was a time for investment shopping.

Since I met Cinthya Chalifoux, the scissor whiz behind CIN Tailleur, I’ve enjoyed her feminine approach to made-to-measure. Having learned her trade from an old-school Montreal master tailor Roger Paquin, she’s been carving out a nice little niche for herself, crafting quality, fitted clothing. The short-but-sweet collection she presented in the cocktail lounge totalled about a dozen looks (for both men and women), all of them showcasing a suave English-countryside sophistication in tweed and cashmere, but amped up with black over-the-knee platform boots—for the women, that is.

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How to survive Montreal Fashion Week? A roll of Mentos; it’s like breath-freshening gum that you can swallow. And breathe! I don’t mean simply inhale, but breathe in the moment. Season after season as I watch the evolution of designers maturing with each collection, I feel like I’m learning and growing too.

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I started Montreal Fashion Week with a major misstep; I missed the Tavãn & Mitto show. But Dressed to Kill’s EIC, Stéphane Le Duc, raved about T&M’s expert cuts and the luxurious repositioning of the brand—also how they’re going to sell exclusively from their boutique. It’s an interesting move that seems in line with the city’s growing niche market of quality and made-to-measure garments. As for the clothes, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Hours before, I had received an early-bird Tweet from stylist Cary Tauben that he’d be styling DUY’s runway. “Get ready for a couture show,” he wrote, dropping a few crumbs about a “surprise.” Indeed, Duy Nguyen delivered a very haute-lifting experience. The Parisienne Madame focus was clear; the rich urban palette was solid. The “surprise” was Tauben himself, who—in an obvious Andrej Pejic–inspired move—strut his bare, model-esque legs beneath a fur-collared coat down the stage to rippling applause.

The anticipation for Denis Gagnon was palpable and sneaking early into the show’s venue, the Birks store in downtown Montreal, was my breaking point. High Versaille-esque ceilings and rows of glass-encased jewels persisted knowledge that Monsieur Gagnon’s show was the one to see. The Birks staff kitchen upstairs doubled as the show’s hair and makeup studio but, moments after I stepped off the freight elevator, stylist Denis Binet said to me, “Hair is natural, it’s nothing”. His idea of nothing really meant perfectly placed hair-ties and carefree fly-aways that looked more careful to me. Final touches of rich merlot-red lips were applied to a dozen or so youthful models, who all wore clean dewy faces and a nonappearance of mascara and blush. By blending an orange-red and a blue-red together, Amelie Ducharme improvised deeply seductive lips against otherwise virginal features and rivalled the aristocracy of the adornments downstairs.

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I really can’t think of a better way to start Day 2 of Montreal Fashion Week than at a cocktail. This year, instead of a traditional runway show, design sisters Claudia and Sabrina Barilà showcased their Spring 2012 collection by inviting media peeps to watch their look book photo shoot, styled by Cary Tauben. Models posed at each side of a triangular backdrop, flipping their crimped bouffantes from time to time. Each year, Sabrina, the design half of the duo, seems to venture into new territory, and this time around the look was sultry-preppy princess. The shirt dress was key, with the same cut appearing in different fabrics and patterns such as silk, chambray, Laura Ashley-like floral, and multi-hued pinstripes; as well as variations including a bare-shoulder cut-out style and a loose tunic version with a Mao collar.

Just shy of a traditional wingtip and meant to hover somewhere between European- and Asian-inspired looks, makeup artist Sebastien Tardif’s eye for the Martin Lim Spring 2012 is so fresh, so clean, so… spring! “The liner has a clean edge instead of coming to a point,” Tardiff told me backstage before the show. It’s a lift rather than an eye extension, with a bit of the graphic liner we loved at Marc Jacobs and Dolce & Gabbana for fall.