FASHION Magazine

Last October, a breath of fresh air breezed through the grounds at Heritage Court⎯the home to “official” Toronto fashion week⎯in the form of an über hip group of young fashionites called The Fashion Collective. A sort of mélange of hype-making and style setting, PR maven Kate Mullin, stylist Dwayne Kennedy and producer Brian A. Richards brought the likes of Rita Liefhebber, Thomas, Amanda Lew Kee and Chloé Comme Parris to the official schedule. Whereas the edgy designers such as these would have previously stayed as far away from the official schedule as possible, the group bridged the gap between the established and the upstarts making the official week a hub for all. For the fall 2011 season starting on March 28^th, the Collective’s got a whole new bag of tricks up their sleeve, introducing LABEL, Heather Lawton, Sid Neigum, and diepo into the Toronto fashion week womenswear stratosphere. Here’s our sneak peek of what these hot young things have got in store:

Michael Thomas and Drew Thomas (no relation) don’t make it easy for you to like their clothes. Shrill music and dour models don’t inspire blood lust in everyone, which is fine, because Thomas isn’t meant to appeal to the masses. The kind of androgynous, seasonless dressing put forth by the pair finds fairly recent ancestry in Paris-based Canadian designer Rad Hourani. (An aside: Does androgynous and seasonless also have to mean colourless? Can’t both sexes wear blue all year?)

Look closely, though, and you’ll spot clothes that are more wearable than the apocalyptic styling would suggest. Slim pants, articulated at the knee to reveal a slice of skin are a nice update on the cigarette pant and oversized sheer button-ups work as a dress or a shirt. An asymmetrical zipped jacket would slip neatly into many a wardrobe, ditto the vests with trailing zippers or the pouch-like sweaters.

See a gallery of the Thomas show»

Read our full coverage of Toronto Fashion Week»