LG Fashion Week report #7: St. Lucian

Last Monday — a day that seems a month ago, now — I did a mean-girl thing. Ainsley Kerr paid me a compliment, and I repaid her in sarcasm, calling her out for sitting pretty while the rest of us at least pretend to work. That wasn’t fair. There are lots of well-meaning do-nothings at LGFW. She just happens to have made herself a very easy target this week, what with her blinginess, ubiquity, and mid-day outfit changes. (Seriously? It’s not a concert, and you’re not Béyoncé.)

Anyway. I thought I might feel bad about it. Then, mid-week, Kerr shimmied up with a burgundy-haired battleship in tow and introduced her like so: “Here’s my mom. She’s the one who told me about that article you wrote about me.”

Um. I didn’t write an article about her. (It was one line.) I don’t want to now, either; I’d rather ignore the Kerrs and their ilk entirely. But if this one’s going to put herself out there as the front-and-centre face of the Canadian catwalk, I can’t.

The local fashion establishment doesn’t need another cheerleader — certainly not one with pedigree, shockingly white teeth and a predilection for turquoise satin. Ainsley Kerr is young and she’s pretty, in that expensive, honeyed way, and she’s rich. That’s not enough. Not if our designers want to sell clothes anywhere outside of Rosedale.

She’s also very, very nice. So is nearly everyone in Toronto fashion. Welcome to the problem.
What we need here are not more “supporters,” but standard-bearers. Bold dressers. Not faces. Parading a bunch of C-is-for-Canada-listers down runways, or plunking them in the front row, only hardens a protectionist bubble in which all the most-sponsored, least risky designers are fated to wither.

I don’t want to praise something because it’s Canadian. I want to praise it because it’s deserving, inventive, and beautifully made. The unwritten rule of Toronto fashion show reviewing is this: if you can’t say something positive, sssshh. Well, how about this: if you can’t show something original, don’t show.

Were such a rule enforced, we’d have LG Fashion Day. But at least it would be a good day. (Flare mag’s Lisa Tant tweeted a kinder verdict, allowing for three days in her “short and sweet” ideal Fashion Week. Her thought was immediately RT’d by Anita Clarke, style blogger and champion of those few originals — like the lovely Jeremy Laing.)

More rules to lessen the week’s crapload:

1. Nix the “fashion shows” by retailers. All of them. Example sans excellence: Friday’s GotStyle Menswear Made in Canada group show was 33 million viewers short of a national embarrassment. I don’t know what I expected, having just spent 10 minutes in line at Starbucks listening to one of the designers rave about his crazy night at Cobra, dude, but it was worse. And it wasn’t helped by the poor boys (media personalities, dubious celebs) enlisted to play peacock. Saving grace: Ben Mulroney’s velvet blazer and jokey old-man shuffle, and subsequently, Michael King’s mutter: “Oh god. At least I know who he is. But who are the rest of these guys?”

2. No shows after 10pm. Honestly. Can you believe a designer actually did her catwalk at Ultra at 11pm? On a Wednesday? The arrogance in presuming that we will all skip drinks with our real-life friends to watch a parade of purple lace take place — at a supper club — is appalling.

3. No more pre-show videos to “set the mood.” That goes for: David Dixon, Nada Shepherd, Jason Meyers, all of you. It’s indulgent and tiresome. I didn’t need to see Jessica Biffi (pictured at right) spray-painting a bunch of shingles to make her opening look in Friday afternoon’s show. I knew, when that dress came out, speckled in a handful of toneless neons, that it had been spraypainted. Edgy.

4. No shows in which spraypainting is considered an acceptable way to introduce your colour palette. We are not in my suburban high school, are we?

5. For that matter, a strictly enforced cap on number of Project Runway Canada also-rans permitted to show. Like maybe: one.

And in regards to the last, you know who’d be The One? Lucian Matis. PRC’s first-season silver medalist may have lost out to Evan Biddell, but he won the first-ever FDCC Designer Development Fund — a cash prize, plus waived LGFW runway fee next season. (The catch? In a stringent test of endurance, he’ll weather a “mentorship” with FDCC prez Robin Kay.)

And then, he set out to prove he’d earned it. Matis, a seemingly incurable maximalist, had promised to turn the tent into a big-top. A disco ball glittered. Screeching circus music blared. A dress came out: printed in clown-face, overlaid in chiffon. The model wore bejewelled, cage-like headgear. I braced for an insane clown posse.

But then — tada! The magic of restraint. Those clowns turned out to be sad ones, and beautiful ones. Sick ones, perhaps? Their pasty faces matched the smudged pastel palette. And they were walking, wounded, in hobbling heels all bound with twists of chiffon — tea-stained, dusty rose, or polluted aqua chiffon, to match the draping above. Everything muted, everything soft. There were studs, as there are studs all over now, but these were different—a mix of metals and tiny shapes, smattered in constellations. (How nice: a trend reinterpreted, not aped.) The grey ribbons — or no, not ribbons, but utility-heft straps — were harnessed on gowns. Or breast-plated, or belted, with chains. These were dresses for dirty nymphs — a tribe, perhaps, led by Chiron, the centaur god and wounded healer. I pinched myself. It wasn’t myth or magic, but a real, live, amazing show. Not good for Toronto. Just good.

The final day was far from over, but I had to leave after that. It was too pretty and surprising to ruin. (Next up: Pat McDonagh designs dresses inspired by... ice cream? A bulimic's dream.) I was collecting the week’s best moments — the styling at Pink Tartan, the debut of Rita Liefhebber, one lovely jersey gown at Evan Biddell — into my own personal Fashion Day. And I wanted it to end on that rare, soaring note.