BY: Jason Parker Quinton

With the cancellation of Fashion Television, we can no longer marvel at the radical garb and willowy beauties of a fashion show from the comfort of our own couches. We have to take our lazy butts to the fashion. The good news is: For a week in Toronto, fashion has a clear ground zero.  

The ground and all its permutations were in play as the opening night theme at FAT (Formerly Toronto Alternative Fashion Week) was LAND, and it drilled beneath the surface to the boiling core of sartorial lava. At the risk of using a derisive term for a woman when describing a night dominated by womenswear: land ho.

Karey Shinn’s Cosmetic Green sprouted a collection of clothing and dance that featured skirts that looked like bell peppers. The pepper as crucial fruit of the land came back later in the night, during the Mitra collection in which the Asian and Indian influenced outfits were accentuated with pouches for gathering. The runway was transformed into a trade route, forget sexy, as they were bringing spicy back. Models stormed the runway in tweeds with plaid linings and cuffs.

The gear had a clear rural eminence to fit the LAND theme, yet was hung upon disinterested models looking less ready to ride horses and more like they’d spent the morning sniffing glue. The laissez faire faces in contemporary threads were the prancing prey of the urban fox hunt. Let’s call it Downtown Abbey. Then there were bored babes rocking royal blues and wonderland hues, hugging the incongruous curves of models breathing them down the runway. It looked like The Little Mermaid had decided to stay under the sea, take her evil aunt’s throne, and get Versaille decadent in the ocean floor sediment, dubbing herself Marine Antoinette.

In menswear, The Jade Sullivan Valentine collection was highlighted by a simple melding: Leather jackets with exotic prints, even going far enough to include suspenders embroidered with hieroglyphics. The useful and radical garb included a male model in a high pea coat, WEARING SWEAT PANTS.   

Let’s pause to appreciate how this is exactly what we need from an alternative fashion week. A hot coat for the cold that silences all haters with utilitarian function, paired with pocketed, flowing, comfy as a hug from Grandma, sweat pants. This is Brunch Chic, and we need more than one outfit like that. On behalf of the tasteful gentlemen of hungover stoicism and constant leisure, give us a line of it. The rest of the menswear in the collection was full of flips on the leather jacket and everyone wore boots like they were expecting trouble. Imagine a hip alterna-verse where Spank Rock usurped Sir Anthony Hopkins to star in The World’s Fastest Indian.

FAT is nice because it shows a wide range of work and models all wearing garments extending from deconstructed leather S&M to threads which could easily appear on the rack at H&M.

Photo Courtesy of Vasko Photography