Incubating the Embryos of the Toronto Fashion Scene

Toronto Fashion Week is upon us- Canuck glitz and glamour is sweeping the city and I am right in the thick of it all! Tracking the likes of Govani, Becker, Tant, Verner, Kay and LeCompte from showcase to fête, these names are connecting us to the freshest talent and the triumphs of veteran Canadian designers using the media. One of my favourite fashion writers, Amy Verner writes for The Globe and Mail. She promotes homegrown designers and at the same time, she isn't afraid of pinpointing the reasons many artists may come short of international success like their American and European counterparts. Click here to follow Amy Verner on Twitter!
My roles this week are mostly of the PR nature. I am currently working with Faulhaber PR, a fashion and lifestyle firm at various events around the best of all venues.
Friday saw the 14th annual Toronto Fashion Incubator Brunch. The studios, reference libraries, kitchen and lounge are housed in the Music Building at Exhibition Place. The "pods" were built in 1907 with basillica-like dome ceilings and beautiful wooden rafters, providing exceptional natural light properties to illuminate every detail of the fabric being stitched by the busy designers. The building houses cost-effective studio space and is kind of like a shared office space for designers, who can take advantage of the rows of sewing machines and libraries of trend forecasting publications. They even run a mentoring program which assists in getting to know how to really run a business out in the real world. The brunch offered a chance for 19 up-and-coming designers to show what they are working on to members of the press and perhaps more importantly to the buyers. Previously profiled in the pages of Flare, Susan Langdon is the Executive Director of the incubator and she is widely known as a nurturing, motherly figure to emerging designers. I was able to shake hands with the Mayor, David Miller before he spoke at the event and I learned that since its inception, the collective has creative 10,000 jobs in the city of Toronto since 1986. Now that is creative stimulus.
Photo Credit: Raina Kirn & Wilson Barry, on TFI website.