LG Fashion Week Launch Spring Summer 2010

Toronto Fashion Week Debuts in New King Street Space

Oct 19, 2009 Sarah B. Hood

The 100th anniversary of L'Oréal Paris, Stratford Shakespeare Festival costumes and a well deserved prize for designer Lucian Matis kick off LG Fashion Week in Toronto.

The 21st edition of Toronto Fashion Week launched in theatrical style on Monday, October 19, 2009 at a new venue, a stylishly converted auto showroom at 1030 King Street West (slated to become a condo site in the near future).

Earlier in the afternoon, fashionphiles had already converged on the Art Gallery of Ontario to admire 12 outfits by Project Runway Canada's Sunny Fong under his VAWK label. They then flocked to the media cocktail that traditionally opens the week. There, high-end retailer Holt Renfrew hosted and toasted guests and some of the Canadian designers they carry (such as Denis Gagnon, Jeremy Laing and Pink Tartan).

An unassuming duo of PETA protesters and their seal mascot followed the crowd down to King Street for the main event of the evening, starting with a product launch by sponsor LG (who unveiled a very large, very glossy HDTV called the SL80). After a modest delay, the brand-new stadium-style runway room was opened to the throng, and Fashion Week organizer Robin Kay welcomed the crowd.

"You are Wear Love," she proclaimed, referring to this season's slogan. "You are taking our designers from the runway here to the runway of the world. ... It is wonderful to be here tonight, mending my ways and all," she added: a self-deprecating wink at her own foibles of the past, particularly an incoherent and rambling speech of two seasons ago.

100 Years of L'Oréal Paris

Longtime sponsor L'Oréal Paris then took the stage with a multimedia montage opened by operatic soprano Ambur Braid, decked out in full 18th-century regalia (courtesy of Opera Atelier) to sing a French Baroque piece. A decade-by-decade fashion show paralleling the 100-year history of L'Oréal followed, with models in satiny dove-grey ensembles wittily and winningly created by Farley Chatto.

The 1920s girl echoed Poiret; the '40s girl had hand-drawn charcoal grey stocking seams up the back of her leg; the '90s girl subtly referenced Gaultier's famous bustier for Madonna. The biggest cheers, however, were for the buoyantly Afro-topped '70s girl. (The '40s, '70s and '80s models are shown below.)

Lucian Matis Wins Inaugural FDCC Designer Development Award

Flare magazine editor Lisa Tant was given the pleasure of awarding the first-ever Fashion Design Council of Canada Designer Development Award to Lucian Matis. This prize gives him free entry to Toronto Fashion Week's Fall Winter 2010 show, along with such other perqs as an LG Notebook, shoot assistance, editorial coverage in Flare and a considerable cash infusion.

The young, charming and talented Matis is a local favourite whose most recent show, the closing act for Toronto Fashion Week's Fall 2009 edition, was a luminous Art Nouveau fantasy featuring headdresses and jewellery fashioned from antlers.

Stratford Festival on the Runway

The final stage of the celebration was a dramatic procession of costumes from plays at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival matched with clothes by designers Nada, David Dixon, Ross Meyer and Gotstyle. The famous festival fanfare composed by Louis Applebaum, which opens every performance at Stratford, preceded a mouthwatering array of lavish looks, with feathers, spangles, handwork and opulent hooded capes in abundance (one of David Dixon's ensembles is shown above and below).

Afterwards, the thousand or so spectators filed out to nibble on an odd assortment of sweet hors d'oeuvres (toasted marshmallows stuffed with nougat, Cracker Jack lollipops), admire one another's outfits and reconnect with Fashion Week friends before heading out, to rest, one imagines, for the coming onslaught of some 35 runway shows and numerous after-parties – but united in their passion to Wear Love for Canadian designers.

The copyright of the article LG Fashion Week Launch Spring Summer 2010 in Women’s Fashion is owned by Sarah B. Hood. Permission to republish LG Fashion Week Launch Spring Summer 2010 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.