Who: Ivan Chung, 37, custom fashion designer and owner of Loid Fashion (416-516-1745); Monki, 7, dog.
What: 1,000-square-foot, ground-floor apartment in a converted 50-year-old Annex townhouse with a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom/showroom, workroom/fitting room.
The story: To access Chung’s live/work space, you must first climb a staircase to the second floor — where his upstairs neighbour lives — cross the landing and then descend a second staircase that leads you into Chung’s kitchen, the nerve centre of his home. While this sounds overly complicated, it allows his bedroom (which doubles as his showroom when needed) to be tucked in the back. Once in the kitchen, you’re greeted by a dressmaker’s model that he and his friends dress for fun. Draped in vintage fabric, it currently sports a beaded headdress and a pass for L’Oreal Fashion Week 2008.
Chung’s large workroom is in what may have originally been a dining room, complete with enormous cutting table and a smaller sewing station in the far corner. It is remarkably organized and uncluttered for a workplace, with rolls of vintage fabric stacked neatly beneath the table. An open wardrobe shows slices of colour from hundreds of immaculately folded t-shirts that he has made and collected. (He intends to exhibit them in the future.) A large red tapestry of a pig (Chung’s Chinese astrological sign), picked up at a thrift store in Montreal, hangs on the wall opposite, beside his belts and cutting patterns.
In the bedroom to the left, a bull-fighting scene painted by his roommate, artist Simon Warwick, sits propped against the fireplace in the centre of the room. Two rails running from one end of the room to the other, filled with Chung’s handmade finished items, take up the other free wall. Although eventually he’d like a “proper studio” rather than showcasing his work in his bedroom, he much prefers offering this personal shopping experience to selling wholesale.
“There’s a real pleasure in making something for someone and seeing their reaction to it,” he says. “It’s great to connect with the consumer.”