On Wednesday morning, the Toronto Fashion Incubator — a pioneering facility that supports emerging fashion designers — hosted their Press and Buyers Breakfast. The annual event showcased the Spring ’09 collections of up and coming Canadian talent that ran between the gamut of hipster-approval seeking streetwear to zoomer-friendly golf apparel. Carefully styled models stood next to designers’ racks, which industry folk riffled through for future fashion spreads and store window displays.
I went to the event with EYE WEEKLY's resident City Style photographer, Alyssa K Faoro. We were fashionably late, and thankfully so, because we bumped into Mayor David Miller and his entourage (see above photo, next to the model in Jewellery by Karen) before the slated 10am press conference (we approved of the rustic fall-tinged tie he wore with that single-breasted charcoal grey suit).
The press conference offered news that deserved the rounds of polite applause: a $150, 000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, allowing TFI to fully take over that octagonal heritage Music Building at Exhibition Place. Starting in January 2009, the design will be spearheaded by designer/Take This House and Sell It! host Glenn Dixon (wonder if it’ll be featured in a future episode?). We also learned from Miller and outgoing Toronto Economic Development President Jeff Steiner that TFI generated $33 million in 2007 for the city’s GDP (the press release however asserts that it’s $33.15 million). Make sure to repeat that to anyone who tells you that Toronto fashion is provincial.
Afterwards, we continued our round through the participating designers’ works. The high fashion organic cocktail attire of Montreal-based Eugenia Designs breaks the eco-fashion stereotype of shapeless clothing with structural silhouettes (strapless shifts, clingy bamboo knit dresses) in cool shades like cream and mint. Final Fashion’s Danielle Meder (who was just announced as the panel winner for the Dr Marten Boot Design challenge) loved sketching the model and designer Eugenia Leavitt told us she’d be showing at Toronto Fashion Week in October.
There were two standout handbag labels that could have been brought to you by the letter J: Jenny Bird’s luxe clutches with a vintage spin (like using a watch’s cast-off gold chain as an accent) and Jessica Jensen’s architectural handbags (like the origami barrel clutch that Jensen told us was inspired by the ROM’s Crystal).
Fancy Girls Market lead singer/Blindfive t-shirt model Keith Burkett couldn’t really tell us much about their tees — don’t worry, co-designer Matt Smith-Johnson filled us in on the “consistent theme of heavy metal culture” — but spoke of his appreciation for the fashionable ladies present and the band’s upcoming appearance on MuchMusic this Sunday.
And rounding it up was Elke Hechler’s beautiful crochet statement jewellery with glass beads and antique buttons (at $1600, we can only really admire), Desperately Different’s soft drapery (our eye is on the mesh vest) and the loose recycled fleece post-partum dressing of go-go mama that’s available at Baby on the Hip.
