Fantasme and Style

Last night’s Fantasme event was a pretty big success considering the last minute venue change from The Darling Foundry to SAT on St-Laurent. It was perhaps the best congregation of stylish Montrealers that I’ve ever witnessed in my life. A true street style photographer’s wet dream.

The mash up of the 80s trends with strong shoulders, boyfriend jackets teamed with mini dresses, strappy booties galore, and several men dressed in high heels and skinny jeans and rockin’ the casbah. I envied them as even I wouldn’t be able to walk in their fabulous shoes.

Where have you guys been hiding all this time??

I apologize for the lack of photos, I’m not exactly papparazzi skilled.

Fantasme is a collaboration between Andrew Ly and Melissa Matos, both a fashion designer and a jewelry designer respectively. Conceptually, it was a multi sensorial experience they wanted to project to the audience with video and audio projections and of course, a fashion show. It is their first show collaboration but they both have shared the stylist scene working for various local publications.

When asked about Ly’s ideas behind his collection, he had stated about the “complexity of simplicity”, where garments were stripped to their very essentials - such as a jacket only joined at the arms and not the shoulders, or leggings represented by strappy, stretchy bandages around the legs, as well as the geometry of garments such as an architectural caged skirt.

Matos’ collection was created in conjunction to her jewelry designs for PowerHaus, although it was the first time creating a clothing collection, she too made allusions to the semblance of garments as coiled pearls were wrapped around the arms to create a sleeve effect. She described the soft flowy see-through tops as armor that people wear, separating their self with the world.

But what about commercial purposes?

Ly’s response was that any fashion creation has a commercial purpose in the sense that it can be sold to those who are interested in buying. If there is a demand, they’d be more than happy to provide. Imran Amed, chief editor of The Business of Fashion, was in attendance and he had wondered during the presentation as to why would they show a fashion collection outside of season. Matos responds in true Montreal spirit: why not? Why not show a fashion show out of the season, instead of designated fashion weeks? As most natives know, Montreal follows its own creative beat.

We’re not expecting mass production here, this is still a showcasing event of concepts and ideas, and Fantasme fulfilled its purpose that night.

I had contributed with Business of Fashion on a few occasions, and was delighted to meet Imran in person. We chatted for a bit about his “Canadian tour”, as well of an upcoming project concerning BoF. While seated and waiting for the show to start, I had realized I sat next to Rad Hourani, whom I’ve interviewed through email for BoF and had yet to meet him in person. Exciting! Imran caught up with him and chatted about his upcoming show in New York. I had the opportunity to squeeze in a couple of curious questions like how he came to collaborate with Tommy Ton, of Jak and Jil Blog, which apparently they’ve known each other a few years and that they happened to bump into one another at a show. Small world! He also spoke about his admiration for Cathy Horyn of The NY Times and Suzy Menkes of IHT as how these women really knew fashion and know how to write about it. My idols. I felt incredibly lucky that night to have met both of them.

Other guests naturally included Canadian fashion editors from Flare, Loulou, Fashion, and The Gazette, and some local fashion designers like Denis Gagnon and Yso, whom I wasn’t sure if it was really him (was later confirmed on Twitter) and he had this amazing sparkly (sequined?) white jacket and the smoothest skin ever. Amazing.

Image credits: me! and Melissa Matos