What is Montreal’s Sustainability Factor?

If you haven’t noticed already, the Montreal Fashion Week website has been update and spruced up for it’s Spring Summer 2010 edition. Miraculously, I’ve been given media accreditation as a fashion blogger so I’ll be attending some of the shows.

The Spring edition contains the usual suspects – Marie Saint Pierre, Denis Gagnon, Christian Chenail, etc – and a handful of newcomers to the show: Claude Bouchard, Dimitri Chris, Micalla,  and Annie 50.

The highly successful Le Showroom, a sort of trunk show, will be showcasing other local designers’ collections since many are not choosing to run on the catwalk. Curiously, the CIMM is MIA in this edition, where usually the more commercial designers like Simon Chang would showcase the more wearable collections to the public. I would’ve thought they had finally made some sort of business connection with MFW, but I guess that has dissolved?

One has to wonder though how the recession has affected local Canadian fashion industries. More and more companies are outsourcing their workload to Asia, with a very select few companies who still produce in Canada (to my knowledge Tristan and Le Chateau are still hanging in there). The sole and only press conference that could possibly address this issue will be on Tuesday, Oct 15th, the inaugural opening day of Montreal Fashion Week SS10, but I’m afraid it’s nothing more talking fluff to reassure designers.

I do certainly believe that a fashion conference in Montreal is severely lacking in addressing these important business issues. And perhaps it would be to the local designers’ benefit if the industry would stop trying to brush it off by replacing it with more talks about pushing creativity, which frankly is not necessary. Think of all the past talents that have appeared and disappeared under the radar: Yso, Renata Morales, Rush Couture, Nadya Toto, Marisa Minicucci, Philippe Dubuc, and for a time Denis Gagnon. Top tier talents like Dubuc and Minicucci are struggling to keep afloat, or in Minicucci’s case, have to rethink their business strategy altogether. Montreal also has to contend with Toronto, which often has some of our best talents migrating to show such as Rudsak, Andy, Aqua di Lara, Travis Taddeo, and Morales, and our cream of the crops are showcasing in Paris or New York, like Rad Hourani and Mackage. It seems that Montreal is too small for designers who are aiming higher.

If Montreal is supposed to be so axed on promoting local talent and encouraging to buy local, they will certainly need to rethink their strategies to influence shoppers. Because the fast fashion giants down on Ste-Catherine are eating up the local industry’s sales with cheap “chic” like Forever 21, H&M, and Zara. While the talents of the likes of CIMM is totally capable of wowing us with commercial and sometimes innovative garments, yet they are nowhere to be found this season.

Like I’ve said before, Montreal has great potential as a fashion hub, but lacks the direction and support it needs to establish itself as true player among fashion capitals.

Image credits: Jimmy Hamelin, Montreal Fashion Week