The Style Box just put up a great post about Fashion Week etiquette.
Great little blog posting.  For those who are trying to navigate this wonderful world of the Style Industry (of which the Fashion Industry is a part of) should definitely give it a gander.  

A couple of points in the posting I want to illustrate and fully agree with : 

I feel (Toronto Fashion Week) should be strictly a trade event – especially when most people are there to work.. 
 

The majority of public attending the shows respect that, but some public don’t take that into consideration: they steal seats, fill up space in the already crammed tents, complain about the shows being “so short”, and generally just get in the way.

She also posts these great ‘Ten Fashion Commandents”
My favourite :  ’Thou shall dress to impress.’

These commandments are great as they also illustrate the strictness of the Fashion Industry. They have a very specific set of rules and way of doing things that they feel must be adhered to.   The fact is that these rules makes sense in New York or Paris or Milan.  

In Toronto, it’s a bit different.

Most of the afternoon shows are generally empty.  The overcrowding and craziness tend to happen (and rightfully so) in the later evening shows with some of the more established designers (David Dixon, bustle, etc) and these shows tend to be big PR initiatives as opposed to sales exercises as there aren’t any big buyers at the event throughout the week as most budgets are already accounted for and sales are already made from the bigger more relevant Fashion Weeks.

I have walked into the tents (and Liberty Grand) every year without any real trouble and stayed throughout the whole evening catching six maybe seven shows. I can tell you, etiquette is not the issue, relevance is.  

What designers need is a viable sales channel, not a hoped-for one.  I have mentioned this many times before, Canada has one big retailer and a great network of small retailers as well as a few traditional media.  Nothing like the major Fashion Weeks in the world.  What we do have is 2 million of the smartest and most well-informed consumer base in North America, one of the first great network of non-traditional media made up of bloggers and (now) twitterers.

Until the Toronto Week of Style was created, they weren’t being tapped into. Why is that?  

Leadership.

The Toronto Week of Style has been successful on many levels (of which I will post about another day), one of the main points of success is that consumers are now being looked at across this country and slowly in various points across the world.

By relaxing the rules a little bit and looking at things differently, there might just be a way of achieving what we are all looking to do – provide Canadian Designers of the Style Industry their place at the global table.

That’s what we have done at the Toronto Week of Style.

That’s why we don’t need Commandents.

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I am always fascinated by how the Canadian Market eats their own.  We have to literally not mention who the Canadian Designers are during our fashion shows.  People are always pleasantly surprised, and in some cases even shocked, when they realize the pieces they like are Can-con.

It drives me bonkers that designers have to go away and succeed outside of this country before we consider them a success.

Well it seems that we have another crew to look out for. 
I am glad to see that in spite of our own industry, there are designers out there who can succeed.

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Hey all,

we have had a couple of designers interested in being
involved with the Toronto Week of Style.

we have put together a list of people that we are going to
start contacting on Monday..

because there is so much talent in the city, I am
always afraid that we are going to miss someone,

so..for those of you interested in being involved
leave a comment here and someone will get back
to you within a day or so…..

Cheers

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