Photos by Marissa Neave.

Fashion in Toronto (or any fast, young city) is ostensibly about being scene—but for [FAT], we went behind it.

Last night was the first day of Toronto Alternative Fashion Week (so alternative, it's not even a week, but rather three corset-squeezed nights of runway shows, performance art, live beats and more). While other media types milled about the Distillery District's uber-cool Fermenting Cellar, sipping wine and snapping shots of the fashion-as-art exhibits, we spent the entire evening backstage. And for every hour, a firsthand lesson learned: after the jump, get six kinds of skinny on [FAT]'s opening night.

1. Next time you tell a runway-ready friend to "break a leg," you might want to add, "not literally." When we slipped behind the black curtain yesterday, all the buzz was over a girl who'd allegedly busted that unlucky limb. Fortunately, there were more than enough hot bodies present to fill her place in the night's dozen shows.

2. [FAT] may be about showing off raw Canadian talent, but the fashion kids are still buying American—Apparel, that is. It should have been a drinking game: one shot of sponsor-supplied gin for every gold lamé bodysuit or thigh-high gym sock. We'd have been blind by nine p.m.

3. Investing in implants? Save your Gs and buy a roll of duct tape instead. With a few strategic strips, Diepo designers rigged their opening model's already impressive rack to look like "robotits" under her down-to-there tuxedo jacket. The stone-cold (but hardly sober) stunner barely had time to work off her Absolut-ly fabulous buzz before being propositioned by half the male photographers in attendance.

4. Ryerson rules the runway. There was the afore-mentioned Diepo, featuring meringue-light, day-to-night wear by third-year students Justine Diener and Kristin Poon; a Victorian vision in winter white and spring florals by Martha Sharpe (a girl who knows her Gaultier, we're guessing); and Jennifer Allison's collection of fantastically ruffled and shredded dresses, like a whirlwind romance gone awry. If they're this good now, what will they do when they graduate? We can't wait.

5. Models do eat: there were almost as many empty pizza boxes as depleted cans of energy juice on the dressing room tables. Maybe that's because most of the catwalkers weren't professionals, but "real girls" culled from open calls and Facebook friends lists. So when the delightfully bitchy show director barked "Eat your pizza, vomit, get dressed!", there wasn't a Pavlovian gag reflex to be heard.

6. Sometimes, though, the hottest "real girls" turn out to be anything but. As one clever observer pointed out, Toronto fashion has its very own version of the Parisians' Andre J: the star of last night's shows was a hot black tranny with the most perfect pout east of Hollywood. Dare we say fierce? Not to be outdone, performance artist Lena Love opened for Kirsty McKenzie with a dramatic strut befitting the showstopping collection.

[FAT] continues tonight and tomorrow in the Distillery District, 55 Mill Street. Tickets are $15 in advance and can be purchased at Magpie (884 Queen Street West), The Rage (13 Kensington Avenue), Lounge Clothing (155 John Street), Urban Textures (44 Gerrard Street West); $20 at the door.