In collaboration with TrusstClub and Pop Montreal, “Dark Night of The Soul” is a video installation by Jean Luc Della Montagna and Louis Phillipe Eno. The concept consists of 13 video clips, each is accompanied by a song with special collaboration with well-known musical artists such as The Pixies, Iggy Pop, The Cardigans, and The Flaming Lips. Critically acclaimed filmmaker David Lynch, created these 13 video clips based on the music provided.

At Trusstclub, the installation took place on the second level on a small black bench booth with 13 television sets, most facing a reflective mirror. A switchboard with a single pair of headphones allows you to listen to the music (which is fantastic by the way) and puts the user into a guessing game as to which song belongs to which video. The visual imagery were raw with emotion, each of them looking like they were home made movies filmed with an old videotape recorder. Some were weird, some were violent, the seemingly happy videos seemed to have a grim aura around them, perhaps influenced by the other tv sets, I’m not sure. I’m not really an art critic.

What I can say is that the soundtrack is amazing. I’m also not a music critic, but watch that preview video clip below and you’ll see what I mean.

You can watch the video installation all day til 7pm Sunday with special appearances by DJ Mekele between 5-7pm.

Rad by Rad Hourani Transparencies at Galerie Yves Laroche

I met Trusstclub owner Melissa Matos the same day and she led me through next door to the Yves Laroche Galerie, which specializes in exhibiting artwork from young Canadian artists, and led me to a small lit table. On it were transparent acetates with a printed photo of a model in various stages of undress.

The concept was presenting Rad by Rad Hourani’s looks into a single look, by piling each acetate sheet onto one another, like a science book explaining the different layers of the human body. It was fun because users could freely touch and move the sheets to create different looks, like a paper doll.

You can also see a great exhibition of Pica Magazine, a student led magazine, which had asked Graphic Design students to give their interpretation of what a magazine should be like. I found the Vogue cover to be particularly interesting, which suggested users to draw whatever they wanted within its pages.

In a recent interview with Flare Magazine, Business of Fashion founder Imran Amed gave some advice for emerging Canadian designers who are seeking an international audience. Imran, aCanadian expatriat (and McGill graduate) based in London, has established himself as a leading voice in the global fashion community in a few short years by venturing into blogging, fashion business and social media.

Since the international fashion markets are outside Canada, it makes sense that Canadians would seek out those markets to pursue their careers and dreams, just as they might go to Hollywood to pursue a film career, Wall Street to pursue finance or Silicon Valley to pursue technology. Thinking about fashion within a Canadian geographical context only is a mistake. The best thing Canada can do for budding fashion designers is to provide a platform for them to develop and test out their interest in fashion, educate them on both the business and creative sides of the industry and ensure that they have the confidence and global outlook to work in what is a competitive, global business.

While there may be an occasional article about an expat making it big outside of Montreal in our dailies, I believe the city is a little too focused on the local talent and not looking towards the homegrown designers who are making a name for themselves outside of Canada. Not that the designers aren’t trying. There have been recent efforts in reaching out to a broader audience by collaborating a cheaper line with fast fashion chains like Bedo and Simons with limited success.

L-R: Rad by Rad Hourani, Mackage RTW

The best known expats from Montreal today are stylist-turned-designer Rad Hourani, and outwear company Mackage, both whom regularly show at New York Fashion Week (Hourani also shows his main collection in Paris).

But across the Atlantic, something has been brimming and stirring in the capital of fashion incubators. London is headquarters to world reknown fashion schools such as Central St. Martins and Royal College of Art. Their graduates are often on the must-watch list, the cream of the crop come here to refine their skills from womenswear to accessories. The popularity of these schools have attracted the likes of a new generation of Montreal-native designers such as Thomas Tait, Jean Pierre Braganza and Erdem, all of which have made a significant splash in the London fashion scene with their bold creations in recent seasons.

Eventhough Montreal’s LaSalle College and Cégep Marie Victorin are not on the same level as New York’s Parsons or London’s Central St. Martins, they are sometimes part of a crucial step for these burgeoning designers. These small Canadian fashion schools are limited in resources, so it’s important for locals to support these future expats with their dreams of forging a successful path in fashion.

While it is commending for local designers to show only at local venues, there are times when it feels like our designers deserve a broader platform to showcase their work. Andy The-Anh used to show at Montreal Fashion Week, but with his desire to appeal to the Canadian woman and not just the Quebec woman, he has sauntered off to show at Toronto’s LG Fashion Week for the past couple of years. The same can be said for Renata Morales and Nadya Toto, though on occasions they do come back to their native town to show their work.

It is not enough to simply look into our own city for talent, we must expand our horizons, cheer on our homegrown talents when they are abroad, and spread their presence through the local media and social networks.

London Fashion Week has kicked off just Friday, and you can see the latest collection from Jean Pierre Braganza already up on their website. Be also on the lookout for other Canadian designers such as Mark Fast and Todd Lynn in the upcoming days.

Rad by Rad Hourani’s show was broadcasted live on the internet on Sept 13th, allowing users to purchase pieces straight from the runway from his website. But the show itself was surprisingly very brief, around 4 mins. A mix of couples walked down the runway in step with one another, often wearing the same outfit, a showcase to display the unisex quality of the collection. Because so many of the models were in pairs, it probably shortened the show quite significantly. My initial reaction was “That’s it?” But after giving it some though, Rad’s approach this season was very much intertwined with the digital age and the instant gratification that consumers are currently seeking. A 4 minute show is actually quite perfect for online video broadcasting, about the same length of a music video on YouTube. This is a reflection of the attention span of internet users. I’m not sure people would care to watch a 20 minute fashion show online unless they were really into fashion. A bite size video of this length is digestable enough to even want to share it on Facebook.

The key accessory to this collection were the Mykita sunglasses, crafted especially for this collection, they were sharply squared and robotic, giving off a futuristic feeling. I found it went hand in hand with the whole concept of the show. While reading the press kit, I also discovered that Rad had collaborated with Canadian shoe retailer, Aldo, to create a limited edition of shoes for the collection by using better graded materials, as opposed of their usual cheap garb they sell in their regular stores.

I’m starting to see that Rad Hourani isn’t really just about the clothes but that he also consciously adapts to the demands of immediate gratification and embraces the social media phenomenon. A commentary on the digital age in the concept of a fashion show is interesting indeed.

The show wasn’t without my share of bumps with familiar faces in the industry including Montrealers. Melissa Matos, who organized Fantasme last year with Andrew Ly, was part of Rad’s backstage crew, she informed me of a new boutique she opened with him called Trusst Club. This St-Laurent boutique/agency carries lines of up and coming designers like Thomas Tait and Jeremy Laing. I had also met Denis Gagnon’s stylist, Yso (pictured above), while waiting in line and chatted him up a bit about his involvement in this upcoming Montreal Fashion Week’s final show. I really loved his Martin Margiela’s tabi shoes (really cute). In the elevator, I saw Imran Amed, from Business of Fashion, whom I also met last year at Fantasme, and said our hellos. I spotted Reborn‘s store owner and said hi to Susie Lau from Style Bubble on the way out, in short, there were a lot of people I recognized and knew at this show.

It was completely unexpected but a welcome experienced, truly, my first New York fashion show wouldn’ t have been as meaningful without seeing a few familiar faces.

Image credits: Rad Hourani

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

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

The photos focus mostly on the details, or taken in a way that your eyes are zooming on the glaring obvious item that’s making the entire outfit pop out. You might be familiar with the photo of the fake Chanel paper bag, or a photo of another fashion photographer strolling the street, that’s Tommy Ton, and I believe he’s a rising star.

Reading up on Tommy Ton, it’s to my own surprise that yet another Canadian fashion star is born. Having started his blog only last year in Sept 2008, after being online for only 3 months, China’s luxury retail giant Lane Crawford had contacted him to shoot their 2009 campaign, according to the Toronto Star. I mean, the guy is still living with his parents and busing his way like any normal Canadian citizen to New York for street photos.

It’s also great to know that just a couple of days ago, another fellow Canadian, Rad Hourani had shown his new bridge collection called Rad by Rad Hourani in New York’s Soho Grand Hotel. You can find the photos of his collection shot by Tommy on JakandJil.com. He’s now on the run making shoots for another Montreal-based company, Complexe Geometries (who by the way are gaining quite a lot of exposure, seen them in Clear Magazine as well), and recently gushed about seeing Balenciaga’s Nicholas Ghesquiere in his hotel lobby on Twitter.

I must admit that it’s been difficult to blog about Canadians in the fashion industry, but it’s so refreshing to see new talent gaining the attention they deserve. Not only are they discovered, but discovered ONLINE. I mean Lane Crawford is huge in China, how did they get the memo about Tommy Ton? I’m totally perplexed. By the way, Lane Crawford’s current success is owed to former CEO, Bonnie Brooks who is now CEO of The Bay, so expect The Bay to change in the near future.

The fashion industry definitely has its eyes set to conquer the online world.

Image credits to Tommy Ton

Here are three stores that that I found to have a large selection with photos so bareboned that they remind me of sexless Terrie Richardson photos (is that even possible?). I’m planning on visiting Oak this fall on my Labor Day trip, I’m setting my expectations high.

Reborn – Montreal

Though this store has probably been covered to death in local Canadian magazines and newspaper, it’s only with good reason. This tiny Old Port boutique has an eclectic and very black selection, selling equally black and gunmetal gray accessories such as laptop cases, handcrocheted bracelets, and leather bags. Among the brands are a couple of homegrown designers like Rad Hourani and Complex Geometries, and man-of-the-moment Alexander Wang. Expect to pay an ultra shiny penny for these pieces though.

Oak- New York

I found this store online while perusing for Alexander Wang outside my usual Net-a-porter playground, and discovered some pretty rockin’ accessories with equally amazing shoes (too bad they’re all sizes 6 and up). Even better was their impressive list of 50+ designers in the same genre. And what about those amazing editorial shoots? Très chic mes amis.

Dover Street Market – London

Ok, so their best arsenal isn’t quite available online, but it’s worth a mention since Helene from TheLuxeChronicles had told me about it a couple of months ago on my trip to London. It is perhaps the mother of all avant-garde stores, curated by none other than the Queen of Avant-garde fashion, Rei Kawakubo from Comme Des Garçons. Here you’ll find coveted pieces you probably won’t find anywhere else and find bewitching pieces by the likes of Azzadine Alaïa, Hussein Chalayan, and Gareth Pugh. Spread across 5 floors, you’ll be swimming in heaven from top to bottom. A must-see for anyone traveling to London.

Image credits: Oaknyc, Reborn, Dover street market

Which puts into question as to where Montreal fashion is going business wise. Montreal Fashion Week is coming next month, I really wonder who the buyers are and where they come from. Last fall I attended Fashion Week on behalf of GLOSS, and was surprised that that there were only about a dozen notable designers showing for a total of a mere 3 days. Even our most coveted designer, Andy The-Anh, showcased his collection in Toronto’s L’Oreal Fashion Week in hopes to catch a larger audience. It would appear that the Montreal market hasn’t attracted enough buyers (international and local) to come to our fashion week despite a recent multimillion dollar investment from the Quebec Government.

Ralph Lauren Fall 2008. Simple and could definitely sell.

Muse by Christian Chenail Fall 2007. Could also sell, but are they selling?

 

I made a round yesterday to Ogilvy‘s and only saw Marie Saint Pierre’s name as the only local designer on the store’s 2nd floor. Holt Renfrew did have Rad Hourani’s collection, but where are the M Siamo’s, Philippe Dubuc’s and Andy The-Anh’s in these stores? More over, there are so many specialized boutiques that it’s hard to pinpoint which stores carry which lines, making shopping even harder especially for smaller brands. Not to mention that local designers have to compete with many European imports like Mango, Zara, H&M, and Mexx to big brand designer names like Chanel, Dior and Gucci in the high end sector. Let’s not forget that even our own proud canadian sports label Roots has been shoved aside to make way to American Eagle Outfitters downtown.

Having a good business model is essential to survive in the industry, so far it’s hard to think of one Canadian label in particular which has successfully incorporated themselves into international waters on a grand scale. But unlike Europeans and Americans, Montreal fashion designers currently aren’t attractive enough for financial honchos to invest into their brands. Though $82 million is a generous amount from the Quebec Government, it’s peanuts when the likes of other designers get the same amount for a SINGLE brand in a SINGLE year. It’s not enough to be a designer, it’s now essential to have a working business model. If Canada, even more so Montreal, wants to compete with the big guns they will have to find a way to boost their visibility on a grand scale and be aggressive. We’re being much too docile to newcomers, praising and coddling them through magazines isn’t enough, they need to be able to sell their clothes to buyers and establish some loyalty amongst their shoppers.

Image credits: Style.com, Muse Christian Chenail

He’s only 25 and has already garnered praised and comparisons to high profiled designers. Rad Hourani has made heads turn this past Spring/Summer 2008 during Paris Fashion Week with his unisex collection, and has been nominated as one of Style.com‘s Top Ten New Designers. He’s a self-taught Montreal stylist and has had his first collection bought by chain fashion giant Holt Renfrew (to which now I have to check out). He’s also been featured in the Montreal Gazette and most recently interviewed by The Business of Fashion about his vision and his upcoming show for New York Fashion Week Fall 2008. A look at his website and you can see that he is no ordinary stylist turned designer, as he is just as much into his little short artsy films and black and white photographs.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this man!

For my own little 2 cents though, it seems Montreal designers have been caught with some sort of obsession with black and white…why is that??