The 2019 CAFAs: 25 Photos from Canadian Fashion’s Big Night Out

by Isabel Slone May 31, 2019

Though the CAFAs may have been eclipsed by the Toronto Raptors’ blowout win against the Golden State Warriors in game 1 of the NBA finals last night, the biggest annual gathering of Canada’s fashion crowd still managed to sparkle.

Top designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren of Viktor & Rolf mingled alongside emerging talent like Marie-Ève Lecavelier (who dropped and broke her Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent when she came onstage to collect it!); philanthropists like Suzanne Rogers rubbed shoulders with top models like Tasha Tilberg and best-selling poet Rupi Kaur, all united under the common goal of drawing attention to the fashion talent that exists within Canadian borders – with an excuse to get glam while they were at it.

The overarching theme of the night seemed to be about the importance of building a community. CAFA president Vicky Milner delivered a rousing speech highlighting the importance of supporting one another; winner of the Vanguard award, curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot, urged the crowd to “help each other, give connections,” and Harry Josh, winner of the Hair Artist of the Year Award, proposed the crowd reevaluate their notions of success and “learn to connect with our consciousness and feel more as a community.”

And then, there were the clothes. Suzanne Rogers, dubbed “the Fairy Godmother of Canadian Fashion” by designer Sid Neigum, was clad in a floor-length floral dress with am oversize candy pink bow, Cary Tauben dazzled in head-to-toe metallic and Montreal duo Fecal Matter wore their signature uncanny vally “skin-heel” platforms. Stylist Christian Dare made the boldest statement of the evening, wearing a clutch that bore the message, “Fashion Still Has a Huge Diversity Problem.” He told FASHION, that the industry has a longstanding issue with diversity that it has ignored for many years. “Yes, we have seen ‘wins’ in the past year or so, like more models of colour on the runways, and transgendered actors and models appearing on the covers of magazines. Yet we still have major fashion houses using racist iconography in their designs… We need more diversity in the boardrooms, the offices, the design studios, the runways… We’ve got a long way to go still.”

Click through the gallery to view some of the most dazzling looks of the evening as documented by photographer George Pimentel in the CAFA portrait studio.