Results tagged “fashion”

As it happens, the fifth post in our Future of Toronto Fashion series will be the final one—mostly because the writer (hi, and bye) is departing, but also because we found a designer who sums up everything about young Toronto that we love and believe in.

Gaze! Gaze upon the titillating young bodies above. Are you not outraged at their thousand-mile stares and disregard for shirts?

We here at Torontoist love pointing out other people's mistakes because we are perfect angels and love to lead by example. So you can only imagine our delight in catching this rare, fabled, double-dipper of an error.

This Saturday night may shock the social system: there's going to be a "gala evening" of a fundraiser, held at a downtown museum, attended by the fashion set. No, that's not the shock. This is: we guarantee the best-dressed babes there really do alter vintage frocks, know what Dior is, and frequent "mom-and-pop shops on Queen West."

It's that time of week again: every seven days or so, we're going live with a new Toronto style-maker in a new series on the future (or lack thereof?) of fashion in our city. This time, we've got Aileen Telesforo, a lifelong local who grew up in Scarborough and dreams of San Francisco. (What, not New York?)

Believe it or not, Willis Ansong was artistically inspired by Law & Order. While watching an episode in his grade eleven journalism class, he came across a character named Peter Franco—and loved the moniker so much that he co-opted it, less as an alias and more as an expression of the life that he wanted to lead. For Ansong, "Peter Franco" became representative of an idea, a lifestyle, and a means of artistic expression. "Initially, it was going to be used for any art discipline that I wanted to put out there," he says, but, "I always knew that I wanted to do something fashion-oriented." Building on this hunch, he tagged the word "sneakers" onto the title (because it "just sounds good") and this past August, he finally launched a line of t-shirts under the Peter Franco Sneakers label.

Brilliant bit of news for a beleaguered biz: the Ontario government's giving young love—for fashion design—a chance with a new Youth Entrepreneurship Partnerships program in cohort with the Toronto Fashion Incubator. The $70,000 grant from the Ministry of Small Business and Consumer Services will fund A Passion for Fashion, YES, and TFI's new project for maybe-someday design stars. The project will target youth and high school students in thirteen priority, underprivileged neighbourhoods in Toronto, said YES prez Nancy Schaefer in this morning's announcement. Of the expected one hundred–plus applicants, twenty-five will be chosen for a Dragon's Den–style competition; the winner gets expert mentorship, a monetary prize, and a year's membership and studio space at TFI. "It's such a nurturing place, and even the competition among designers is positive," said designer David Dixon, who "came from meagre beginnings" himself before launching his fashion career with the Incubator. "This is a great opportunity to network, and to work for yourself."

Welcome back to the future...of fashion. It's our current series on style in our city, in which we corner up-and-comers in the clotheshorse race to talk about our fashion-capital dreams—near, far, or never happening?

If it works for shopping, it works for us: this is a pop-up series on the future (or is there a future?) of fashion in our city. Every Wednesday from now until we get bored, we'll log time with a new face on the local style scene: someone who's fresh, and not Joe, because there's got to be more to Toronto than the Mimrans.

The question too often asked of fashion is this: "But is it art?" If fashion can't be art because it's too obviously commercial—made to sell and mass consumable—then, fine, but most of art isn't art either.

After seeing a post on Ryan Feeley's blog, Torontoist dropped by Livestock sneaker boutique today to see with our own eyes a big, but not insane, number of people camping out for Kanye West's latest sneaker, which goes on sale at the store Saturday at 11 a.m. Nike's Air Yeezys, which retail for $260 at Livestock, are only being sold in major cities.

It's Thursday night at the Fermenting Cellar in the Distillery District for [FAT], the alternative fashion, music, and art week, and there's a hint of familiarity to it—and it's not because it's our third day of covering the event. No, instead, we're sensing the ghost of Buy Design, the fundraiser for Windfall that happened on Saturday in the same space.

Torontoist first encountered Yasmine Louis three years ago at the One of a Kind Show where she was selling her lines of pillows, shirts, and hoodies that have photographs and poignant, slightly melancholy, sayings silkscreened on them. The show is teeming with vendors offering similar items, but Louis's work stands out due to her incredible talent for writing and love of Toronto.

Remember that time when you went to Toronto’s Alternative Arts & Fashion Week [FAT], got distracted by shiny things on the Fermenting Cellar’s floor, cupped a clammy hand over your mouth when a bare-breasted model flapped her way along the catwalk, cracked too many [FAT] jokes to too many people you didn’t know, and ultimately gave up all hope of ever becoming a fashion industry insider? No? Well, there’s no time like the present time for a vicarious trip down memory lane.

Fashion weeks are supposed to be about the who's who, but the unintended brilliance of FAT—Toronto's annual Alternative Arts and Fashion Week—is that you really can't tell. Designers, models, artists, hairdressers, musicians, bloggers? They all mix and commingle, sharing everything from taste in tattoos to pieces of pizza ("Don't forget to throw it up after!" says the flamboyant showrunner, relishing his made-for-reality-television role).

These (recessionary) days, with “shop” and “excuse to” so rarely separable in a breath, what’s as perfect as the pop-up? Nothing. Sale signs, in their bright, pleading ubiquity, have lost their ubiquity. This winter’s long, and garages haven’t turned out their doors yet; neither have the farmers’ or Kensington street markets.

Of LG Fashion Week, the last day is already a distant memory; not, however, so distant that we can get out of writing about it. But, come on. You can tell us. You're as tired of the faintly judgemental daily recaps as we are of writing them. And you know what's more fun than being judgey? Actually judging. So here we are: Torontoist's First and Last Annual LGFW Awards. The best, the—no, that's lame. Air kisses and misses? Something like. Read on, we implore you.

"Paris" is not an inspiration: this is our first thought of LGFW's fourth day. We're late to Aime Luxury's runway debut but catch word the collection's called "Paris, Je T'Aime." Merde. When will designers unsubscribe to such glossy, meaningless cliches?

Smaller is better? Believe it: this fashion season, everything's been downsized, from L'Oreal gift bags containing a single, travel-sized hair spray (minimalism?) to the teeny-tiny LG laptops in the Media Lounge—wait, make that "Filing Room." For journos surviving on Kit Kat Singles and huddling around mini-screens, it all feels a bit like a visual gag.

If you've been looking for Canada's own Alexander Wang, you can rest your eyes now. Travis Taddeo has arrived. Let's do a little point-by-point, shall we?

At five minutes to 10 p.m. tonight, we'll hear the following words: "Ladies and gentlemen. Please clear the runway and take your seats. The show is about to begin." And sure, those words might be in our heads, burned there by so many megaphone announcements in the tents. But we'll hear them and be a tiny bit more excited, even if none of it is real—just reality.

Yesterday, sleepy Fairview Mall was transformed into the site of the Canada's Next Top Model casting (and to answer your first question, no, Jay Manuel wasn't there). Hundreds of high-heeled and short-skirted girls (allegedly) aged eighteen to twenty-three nervously awaited their fate before a crush of onlookers and several skeevy guys vying for the best vantage points.

When we think of “fashion” and “reality”—well, of late, we’d rather not. It’s one thing on television, but on the shopping streets, the reality is something grimmer.

It’s not every day that you get to fondle Jeremy Irons’s signed shoe. Or sniff one of the sneakers that Michael Cera wore when he recorded some of the songs for Juno. But Thursday was Torontoist’s lucky day, and we got to gawk at the footwear of the rich and Torontofamous.

You'd be forgiven for seeing nothing but charcoal skies on the holiday shopping horizon, but you also wouldn't be looking quite industriously enough. But, don't fear; that's why we're here! The past week has brought joy to our spendthrift hearts, with creative retail outlets, more like niche markets than stores, popping up all over the place. Looking to spend like it's 2007? Scope out the trio of cool new addresses atop our shopping list.

Image by Kasandra Bracken/Torontoist with photos from Jay McCarroll's and Jay McCarrol's MySpaces.

The tents in Nathan Phillips Square are like Estonian models at a Paris Vogue shoot: stripped down, skeletal, self-conscious. Passing by on the streetcar, we suddenly remember that we were too tired to write about Day Five. Let's take five instead, ok?

Spring 2009 is in the air kisses at L’Oreal Fashion Week, but it’s very much fall in real life. While candy cottons and shoulder-baring frocks dominate the runways, the rows are filled with ideas to steal right now. (And anyway, in many ways, Toronto’s trend set is far ahead of our all-too-conservative designers.)

At the end of Day Three, when we thought we couldn't walk another step, we didn't have to. An old-timey service elevator whisked us up to the sixth floor of the recently party-ready Burroughs Building for Evan Biddell's afterparty. Co-hosted by the Helders (who, appropriately, sipped RockStar energy drinks) and attended by everyone from laced- and tarted-up vintage shopgirls to cocktail-dressed execs, the cool downtown jam was a fitting celebration of Biddell's strong sophomore show.

When media tent chatter turns to irony in Fashion Week, we're not talking t-shirts. We're talking about how the biggest buzz is more about international "it" models (like Amanda Laine, Elmer Olsen's latest star) than local designers. Or about the funny-strange feeling it gives you to write about buying clothes while reading headlines about bank collapses and home foreclosures. Or about shivering through a show comprised of nothing but hot-as-white-sand swimwear.