As I mentioned on @weekofstyle earlier today,
the first draft of the schedule was put together today.

As usually the case,  it was a long, arduous process that took up pretty much
the whole afternoon, it was extremely gratifying as the first pass resulted
in a very strong offering to you all.

We have some extremely fantastic shows that I am very much looking forward to.

As per usual, we are featuring a lot of home-grown talent mixed with some fantastic
global brands.  Bambumoda is back, as is Men In Tuxes.  I also broke
this last week on twitter, the Toronto Week of Style is once again proud showcase and support
Aboriginal designers.  This year, we will also be mounting a show call Unsigned Hype
and of course GreenisBlack is back.

Stay tuned my intrepid Style Icons..

More to come.

Tweet This Post 

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.

Tweet This Post 

So an interesting thing was sent to my email inbox.

Robin Kay of L’Oréal Fashion Week and Jean-Francois Daviau of Montreal’s semaine de la mode were engaging in more tête-à-tête over more red wine in the press room of Bonsecours Market Wednesday.

This time I asked what the discussion was about: “The future of Canadian fashion,’’ came the response, without details. Later, JF shared his vision: it involves Montreal as the country’s major showcase for Canadian fashion. Kay, of course, is on the record as seeing it otherwise. 

Along came P&G Beauté’s, chief in Canada, Danielle Bibas, to join the conversation. P&G is the major sponsor in Montreal and L’Oréal is its mega-conglomerate beauty rival.

Kay, meanwhile, was wearing a newly acquired sweater with the label, Ginger – a Montreal knitwear line – hanging from the back of her neck. Nobody could find scissors to detach it for her. 

I have literally no idea what to say.
(Except that I agree with Jean-Francois..but I already talked about that here).

Tweet This Post 

OK, so the title is a little political and hokey, however this idea has been bugging me ever since I had a conversation with one of our marketing partners.  The question was asked ” Why do criticize Toronto Fashion Week so much?”

Well the quick answer is that I truly believe that the powers that are in charge of this illustrious event are not equipped to be in this position of power. They don’t have long-term vision one needs to guide the growth of such an important event.  More importantly, they don’t have an understanding of the market that one needs when programming an event of this nature.  

To them, it’s about how much sponsorship they raised and how big they want the event to be. Designers and getting buyers to the event are secondary.  The budget for the event has been stated as being under a million bucks, (which they basically get from L’Oreal).  Where the hell do they spend that?  Why aren’t buyers being shipped up here in droves on the events dime? (I mean it’s not like there aren’t any hotel sponsors). Why is the event at the end of October when all the buyers budgets are all gone? Why aren’t certain people in a more prominent role?… I could go on, however you get my point.

The ideal solution is to have Montreal hold the trade show for the fashion industry, because they have support and they actually know what the hell they’re doing, and have the Toronto Week of Style be the showcase of fashion for the consumers.  We have a huge consumer base here in the city and we’re not using it to its fullest capabilities.

So there you go…

Tweet This Post 

or for the purposes of this blog, if a city mounts a fashion week, and no one from outside of that city hears about it, did it really happen?

Tweet This Post 

Was reading my papers online today and came across this..
It seems the little engine that is the Toronto Week of Style is having an effect. 
First Toronto Fashion Week, now Montreal.

That’s great news for designer, great news for consumers.
The more power that Torontonians and in this case, Montrealers give to consumers,
the better the odds for a designer to succeedin the global marketplace, whether you’re Canadian or not….

I think designer Judith Desjardins summed it up best at the end

“It’s another way to get people involved with local creation,” she said.
“We do all these shows and the actual client isn’t able to see it, so it’s
a good opportunity to reach the final customer.”

Tweet This Post 

Ok I didn’t want to say anything…However..what was up with the delay in Bustle you may ask?

It turns out Robin Kay’s son didn’t have a seat…So what did they do? They took two people out of their seats about 4 rows back and right in front of where we were standing…(hey it was Bustle…what you want from me…them and Lucian I am willing to stand for).

I couldn’t stop laughing….I mean I can understand 20 minutes before the show..But 30 secs?

Nice…. 

Tweet This Post 

Glad to see that TFW website now has links to the designers online presences and photos/mini video clips of the shows that they did right at the designers names.

That’s great for them. They’re finally learning how to use the world wide interweb.

I like our execution a little better though.

Tweet This Post 

I would like to that Ashley from Circa for saying that it was impossible to do a KidRobot fashion show up here.  Thanks…

Tweet This Post 

I was thinking this morning about my sojourn to Fashion Week yesterday. 

I am glad that they have decided to pick things up and actually respect the designers enough to put a professional show unlike in the past. There is a lot more excitement to the week because of the tent, but is there excitement to Canadian Fashion? I don’t know…but an interesting point of view here gives the question some food for thought.It’s well known that I have a problem with how they are doing things (or in their case..not doing things).The difference being that I actually am doing something about it.. I guess my question is what would you do?

More than this I hope?

Tweet This Post