Top Coats: 5 Canadian outerwear lines that are heating up our winter wardrobes

Sentaler
“They don’t make ’em like that anymore.” Belgrade-born, Toronto-based designer Bojana Sentaler Nikolic could be referring to her own line of luxury coats, which are individually made and hand-finished, but in this case she’s talking about the inimitable Karl Lagerfeld. She crossed the Kaiser’s path five years ago while working in media in Dubai. During a meeting with him about the villas he was designing, she snuck in a few career questions of her own. “I said, ‘Listen, Karl, I went to business school, but my passion is fashion, can I do it?’” she recalls. “He said, ‘What do you mean? I didn’t go to fashion school, look at me.’ He was so blunt and nonchalant. That was 2008, and I launched Sentaler in 2009.”

Karl’s predictably eloquent advice aside, another driver in Sentaler’s decision to pursue a life of design was the dearth of winter outerwear that satisfied both her function and fashion requirements. “Wool coats weren’t warm enough, and puffy down jackets weren’t as elegant,” she says. “I remember not liking winters because of those jackets.” It took a six-month stint researching fabrics in South America to solve her conundrum. While in Peru, she zeroed in on alpaca fibres, which she praises for being warmer, lighter and more durable than wool.

A ’40s wartime feel pervades this season’s wares, with menswear-inspired shapes, notched collars, oversized silhouettes and a reserved colour palette, including a deep navy that Sentaler declares “the new black.”

But navy isn’t all that’s new for Sentaler; she’s about to become a mother (at the time of our interview, she’s seven months pregnant). And while Karl may have inspired her to start her own line, her baby joy was the motivation behind her new kids’ outerwear collection. In September, she quietly launched three styles for girls, which will be expanded to a full line for girls and boys next year, sparing the next generation of Canadians from a long winter of inelegant coats. And should Sentaler’s own child one day dream of breaking into the fashion business, he or she won’t be needing Lagerfeld for motivation—just ask Mom.

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