The first real hot ticket in Toronto this year, in my opinion, was the @Style panel discussion, part of the international event Social Media Week.  You had to get up pretty early to grab a spot on the RSVP list – naturally I’m a lark and signed up on 5:30am on January 29th, third on the list, seconds after Susan Langdon tweeted about it for the first time.

Four speakers, invited by Jyotika of exshoesme, brought four very different perspectives to the effects of social media on fashion.  At first I was a little skeptical – other than Cherie Federau of Shrimpton Couture, none of the speakers are bloggers – and even Cherie is primarily an online retailer, not a blogger.  So what sort of insights could an audience populated mostly by fashion bloggers expect?

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The first speaker was Susan Langdon of the Toronto Fashion Incubator (full disclosure – TFI is a sponsor of Final Fashion).  Susan introduced the new Social Media Guidebook (available here) that the TFI commissioned, and that I had a small part in contributing to.  The guide is made for fashion entrepreneurs who are unfamiliar with the current social media landscape and want to be able to use the tools available to help their brand. I haven’t seen the book in full yet so I can’t comment on it other than the brief overview Susan gave us; while the bullet points seem a bit jargon-y (what the heck does authenticate even mean?) the interviews with many interesting bloggers and entrepreneurs would be well worth the cost of admission.  The questions I answered for the guide were good ones and I gave very candid answers.

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The second speaker was Cherie Federau of Shrimpton Couture.  I was looking forward to hearing Cherie speak the most – the scribbly notes in the moleskine above are from her presentation (I don’t own a mobile, and I don’t live-tweet, ever). Of all of the speakers, I identify most closely with Cherie – not only do I admire her as a tremendously successful online entrepreneur, she is also enthusiastic and genuine with a great sense of humour.  Cherie is self-taught by trial and error (like me) and abides by a similar philosophy of relating to people online – essentially, be open to the world, stay on top of your correspondence, be a decent human being, and be true to yourself. Cherie’s talk offered the most real, applicable advice to living and working online.

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The third speaker was Dr. Alexandra Palmer, costume curator of the Royal Ontario Museum.  She began her presentation discussing buttons on 13th century jackets – and I was wondering what the connection was (because surely it wasn’t to buttons on mobile phones).  Over the course of her talk, her insight became a bit clearer – that the application of technology to fashion is what makes new fashions possible – for instance, the development of stretch fabrics made the innovation of pantyhose possible, and pantyhose in turn made it possible for women to wear miniskirts in the 1960s.

However, when it came to the application of social media technology to fashion, Dr. Palmer seemed dubious of the advantages – she expressed cynicism that the greater speed and dissemination of trends could do anything for the development of modern fashion, that somehow the overwhelming preoccupation with speed represented a sense of loss and “waste” to her. She drew some thoughtful parallels between social media and the development of the Jacquard loom, the first computer, which put many weavers out of work. She also discussed a bit about how technology is affecting the modern retail business – such as how prolific communication makes retail innovations like pop-up shops possible.  Another revelation on retail was about how shopping for clothing is so dependent on tactility – and how now bricks and mortar stores are being used by customers to try on clothing, and online stores are used to find the best price.

During the question and answer session at the end of the talk, I was able to ask Dr. Palmer whether she had any insights on how the invention of the printing press effected the fashion industry, and whether there are any parallels from that period of history now.  Her response was somewhat surprising to me – though she acknowledged that printing sped up the trend cycle, she dismissed that the technology of printing had a significant effect on fashion, which seems unlikely. Now I am more curious about this than before. Dr. Palmer is an esteemed historian and I have enjoyed reading her admirable work on costume history, but on media, she seems uncharacteristically uncurious.

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The fourth and final speaker was Lisa Tant, editor-in-chief of Flare Magazine. Lisa is the only EIC of a fashion magazine in Canada who is a prolific tweeter with a significant following online. She can seem surprisingly unguarded on twitter sometimes – just over a week ago she got some flack for “Sobbing to think that a 13 year old gets a front row seat to cover couture. No justice in this world.” which she obliquely alluded to in her presentation by saying that its best to avoid being “cute or sarcastic” on social media. I couldn’t help but find it a bit ironic that Lisa Tant would be telling a room full of fashion bloggers about social media the very next week – seating assignments really do seem unfair sometimes – and wondered if I could think of a slam-dunk question to ask her, but somehow I couldn’t.

Watching Lisa Tant speak, she seemed much more lucid and insightful than she appears on Twitter, which I think does reveal a limitation of micro-blogging. The major message I got from Tant’s talk was how magazines are concerned with the broader strokes of culture and celebrity – while what is important for bloggers is a sense of individual personality. Flare can be commended for recognizing the work of Tommy Ton before he became a phenomenon – but for the most part it seems like the publication is concerned with using the existing momentum behind individual brands – such as Lady Gaga and Perez Hilton, to drive the growth of the Flare brand.

This supports my own conclusions when it comes to the new-media vs. old-media discussion – that mastheads are becoming less valuable than individuals. Flare as a brand is not only hampered by its very corporate-ness (unsupportive Rogers policy tries to discourage the use of social media), it is more and more dependent on the brands of individuals to drive its own brand. Online, Tommy Ton is a bigger brand than Flare – and his fans will follow his work whether its under the Flare masthead, or Style.com, or on his own site.  I think that editors and old media say that the holy grail online is speed (Tant says “readers expect immediacy”) but the real prize we’re all after is actually an individual brand (Tommy often posts photos months after they are taken).  I think Tant knows this whether she says it or not – her own personal influence is getting pretty close to equal in numbers to that of Flare’s – I would even argue that it is more valuable in qualitative terms to Flare, and especially to Tant herself.

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All in all it was a terrific, thought-provoking morning, and the various perspectives provided some fascinating contrasts. If you attended, what did you think? I’m up for a discussion.

The first time I saw Joelle Litt was when she was walking the runway, modeling for Ula Zukowska, with a swatch of black lace embellishing her gorgeous jaw.  Joelle is a stunning example of a human being, with long limbs and longer neck – but what makes her stand out as a model to me is a certain quality of awareness and maturity. She is a model that I have an ambition to draw, and if my dreams come true she will be posing in my studio very soon.

Besides being a model, Joelle is a writer – I used to be a regular reader of her old blog, Mad Glam (RIP), and now she writes for Women’s Post and is also building a portfolio as a stylist.  I asked her a few questions about having multiple careers in the fashion industry.

How has your modeling experience helped you as a fashion writer and stylist?

Being a model allowed me to become a part of the industry at a very young age. You get the opportunity to work with people in every single aspect of the fashion industry; working with designers, stylists, photographers, hair & make-up artists, show producers, and the list continues. A smart model will take from that experience and grow…and make contacts. As a fashion writer, I see things from a different perspective…and as a stylist…I have basically been assisting stylists for years (as a model) and was always learning tips and tricks. So there was no need for me to assist anyone when I woke up one day in October and thought, ‘I am going to be a stylist.”

You have visibly and vocally contributed your talents to the fashion community in Toronto. Why does local fashion matter to you?

Local fashion is important, not just in Toronto. Wherever I am I try to get involved in the local fashion scene. I like to be able to meet and talk to people face to face. If I have the opportunity to understand someone’s character on a personal level than I will take it, especially someone who’s work I adore. And the sense that there is a ‘community,’ is a great thing. The more that the fashion community of Toronto comes together in a combined effort, with all of its talents, the greater the fashion community of Toronto is.

Having been both a participant and an observer of the fashion scene in Toronto, what is your sense of how fashion in the city is evolving?

It’s evolving. The fashion scene is much more than just fashion week….but I need to talk about that for just a minute. When I first started doing fashion week in Toronto, back in the days of Matinee, my taxi driver would always ask, “What exactly is going on here?” And now, all I have to say is ‘to the tent!’ and they know exactly where to go…(most of the time).

The fashion scene in Toronto is much more accessible to the public. People know more and more about it, and people are in to it.

The industry is a little bit more accessible now too for people starting out…which is why alot more talent is developing, from what I can see.

What are your favourite blogs and fashion publications?

Should I lie or be honest? I don’t have any regulars that I follow…I pick up what catches my eye, and I am constantly looking for what is out there that I haven’t yet come across.

But I must say, Final Fashion just keeps getting better and better

What fashion professionals do you admire, and how have they inspired you?

I think I meet new people everyday that inspire me. This industry allows me to meet so many new people all the time – -and I love that.

But there are a few people that I have admired from the very beginning; like Pat McDonagh. I find her so inspiring because she has been a part of the industry for so long and shows no signs of stopping. She lives fashion. I hope that my career will be as long-lived. I can’t really see myself ever retiring a career as a writer.

I find the way fashion illustrator, Frederick Watson, sees the world to be so very inspiring. The world is so pretty through his eyes.

Photo credit: Richard Dubois

Such a surprise to see my painting for the Heartbeats fundraiser featured in NOW Magazine, Toronto’s free alt-weekly. Andrew Sardone, the style editor at NOW gives me a shoutout in print every so often and jokes that it is no big deal – but I always love it.  The first time he did it, exactly three years ago, will forever be one of the most significant moments in the history of my site.  Thank you, Andrew.

Also, if you’re in Toronto, you should totally go to Heartbeats on February 13 and bid generously on my painting or some other red-hot work of art, all to support the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

Welcome to Click Click, the fairly regular roundup of what I find worth clicking on the internet.

• Auntie Fashion announces the winner of the Fashion Journalist Superhunk popularity contest, proving… that Andrew Sardone’s friends like to tease him about his smokin’ hotness, and that together, we make up the majority of Auntie’s readers.
• There’s been a lot of talk about hating or not hating fashion lately in the wake of this Guardian post. I like this rebuttal from Tavi which more closely aligns with my own point of view, and I found two links in this article to be great archival examples of this genre of rant – Why I Hate Beauty from Psychology Today, and I Hate Fashion from Vice Magazine.
• Rea reminded me of Nathalie Atkinson’s tour of Toronto’s remaining factories in the wake of a somewhat confused discussion of the discontinuity of industrial knowledge that fashion is suffering presently. The comments are worth a read and a ponder, just don’t allow the distracting intensity to raise your pulse. Rea and I are trying to reset the tone to get at what we find really interesting.
• The Canadian School focuses on news about a close-knit group of Canadian fashion professionals who work abroad – sort of in the spirit of the Antwerp Six.
• Luxirare challenges the notion that intriguing, high quality original fashion imagery online can’t match magazine editorial. What is even more impressive is that it is a one-woman show. My latest favourite is an ambitious DIY – making Black Suede Ankle Boots.
• Some gorgeous fashion illustrator finds – Looks Good To Me and Steffi Schutze.

+++ click karma for commenters and linkers. Handshakes all around.

• turn the record over… – “music snob, film critic, screenwriter, music supervisor, actor, and honest advice giver with a love of fashion”
• tres lola – “committed to promoting ethics, positivity & fabulousness every day”
• Olive Life – “for people who love to olive”
• Construct Fashion was kind enough to give me a shoutout – do I really come off as timid and NOT IN YOUR FACE? =)

Sponsor of the site, Bijouxbead, is having a Valentine’s day themed trunk party at Magnolia in Toronto on February 11.  This event will be filled with some of the sweetest fashion friends I know, so if you’re in Toronto, go and see some lovely things with some lovely company.

From the press release:

Embrace Valentine Cocktail will take place on Thursday, February 11, 2010 from 7pm till 10pm at Magnolia, 333 Eglinton Avenue West. Guests can shop while enjoying a glass of wine and delectable cupcakes, and mingle with an eclectic group of Toronto’s fashion industry insiders, media and artisan lovers.

Bijouxbead designer, Darlene Martin will be in-store to greet customers and help them find the perfect piece of wearable art as a Valentine gift for a loved one, or a special treat for themselves.

After my first attempt at mentally assembling the Sevin-Doering pattern last week, and seeing Kathleen’s take on it and the commenters, I wanted to try again, only this time I went as far as cutting a tiny pattern out of muslin and whipstitching it together.  I started by connecting the seams that Kathleen marked.

Except that once I got to figuring out the CF and the part that Kathleen thinks is twisted I got all confused. And how to deal with that curved seam at the back of the skirt?  So I flipped it front to back, turning it into a jacket rather than a dress. Then I fiddled around with the pieces at the bottom of the pattern, which seemed to want to become a cape, with an interlocking detail.

Kathleen says she doesn’t have a picture of the actual garment that this pattern makes.  I hope someone finds one – I am really curious about how close I am.

Final Fashion can be very serendipitous sometimes.  I never know who is reading, and I never know who is touched by my words and pictures until they reach out and touch back.

Gwendolyne of Gwendolyne Hats was a silent reader who wanted to meet me, and she offered her support as a sponsor – but more than that she has a lot to say to me in person that couldn’t be communicated online.  Gwendolyne doesn’t match the usual profile of my site’s visitors – she’s older and not very interested in fashion – and rather than asking me questions she is compelled to pass on her own knowledge.  It was apparent when she reached out that it was a cue for me to listen and learn.

Gwendolyne makes hats that reveal a passion for materials and objects with substance and provenance.  She is attracted to richly textured, warm materials with a sense of history and combines them in an intuitive, careful way.  In particular she is fascinated with the products of the industrial age in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and patronizes the dwindling number of modern manufacturers who have preserved the same equipment and techniques.

Besides collecting textiles, Gwendolyne is an avid collector of buttons, and after she showed me her button collection briefly the first time we met, my mind would return to it whenever I thought of her, with a persistent curiousity.  So I asked to come visit again and talk buttons.

Buttons are tiny objects which I’ve never examined so closely before, though I touch them every day.  As someone trained as a designer, I’ve thought about buttons in terms of size and colour, how they might complement a garment, and the technicalities of creating a closure, but I’ve never really appreciated buttons as objects in their own right before.

The first button Gwendolyne showed me was this unusual button with a motif of what looks like a dog jumping through a tire – in fact the button is made of vulcanized rubber, and on the back there is the name Goodyear and a patent number.  (You can right-click any of these photos to see them larger.)  As you can see Gwendolyne has a lot of these rubber buttons, many by Goodyear and some by other manufacturers.  She says that they smell when they get wet.

The story of these buttons is fascinating.  Mr. Goodyear was the inventor of the vulcanization process, an innovation in manufacturing that made him very rich.  In time, his process, though patented, was taken by other manufacturers.  Mr. Goodyear spent his fortune trying to protect his patents, a fight which left him poor by the time he died.

“This button is about remembering to let go,” Gwendolyne says.

Gwendolyne sometimes chooses buttons to use as embellishments on her hats, and she puts them on tiny scraps of leather as talismans, zipper pulls or key chains.  I asked her if the buttons suggest the hat design or the other way around?  She told me that she doesn’t buy materials with a particular design in mind, and that the embellishments and fabrics come together in an intuitive way rather than a particular order.

These buttons made from another example of another industrial-age innovation based on new materials found in the colonies – vegetable ivory.  The South American nut above would be carved and coloured into buttons with a hard, light quality.  At the top of the picture are two picture buttons with a design which was pressed into them.  These buttons are another example of imitation.  Motifs are often copied, as they have always been, and often simplified or changed in small ways.

These colourful buttons are from the 1950s, made with plastic.  Besides figurative designs, they show an exploration of the possibilities of techniques like extrusion.  The motifs and colours are brash and outrageous – bowls of fruit like Carmen Miranda hats, heavy-handed Orientalism.

These are glass buttons.  The ones on the bottom left are from Victorian times, extravagant in embellishment yet subdued in black jet.  You can see some different types of shanks on these buttons – Gwendolyne has as much fascination with the backs of the buttons as she does with the fronts – the attention paid to the hidden part of the button reveals the amount of care that was given to the manufacturing of these buttons, which were assembled by hand, sometimes from many tiny pieces.

The final set of buttons shown here share human figures in common – and on the left in particular, hands.  The beauty of these buttons, filled with tiny details and often multiple parts for a single button, is exquisite.

The last button Gwendolyne pointed out to me is the small button in the middle left with a fist on it.  She says that she believes this may be a symbol of the suffragette movement – who are known to have used such small subtle embellishments as quiet indicators of their unconventional beliefs.  There is no way to know for sure, but all of the determination and protest contained in such a small object does give it this palpable sense of power. It stands apart from the other pretty, decorative buttons in a way that is remarkable.

Thank you Gwendolyne for showing me your work and your buttons, and for teaching me to be open, to look more closely, and listen carefully.

My face is not a major feature on this blog.  I am more used to being the artist than the subject, and only recently started posting outfit photos occasionally. Imagine my surprise this morning when I discovered that I was drawn by west coast illustrator Corey Lee.

He’s captured me pretty well in this illustration wearing the jacket in this post. I like how his style has an animated quality.  Thanks so much Corey for an unexpected portrait.

How do you break into the fashion industry from the outside?  Ask almost anyone – including me sometimes – and the suggestion will be to intern.  I feel a bit mixed as I give this advice because it is advice I never took.

While other fashion students were volunteering their time at acclaimed designers and national magazines, I hit the pavement with my meager portfolio and held out for a fashion job of any description – but for financial reasons, only if it paid.  I managed to find a few jobs, the two major ones were working as a cutting and alterations assistant in the basement workshop for a boutique designer and counting threads-per-inch on fabric samples for the private label department of a national retailer.  In many ways my experiences were the same as many fashion interns – with two major differences. One, I got paid a modest wage and two, I rarely had the opportunity to network on the job.

When trading shop talk with my friends and colleagues now I wonder sometimes if I sold myself short for minimum wage.  There are some amazing internship opportunities out there for the ambitious young go-getters.  I asked a couple fashion blog friends to comment on their own experiences.  Ophelia of The Eternal Intern tells me,

In my opinion, internships are the only way (other than personal contacts) to get into the fashion industry.  I have found that the best jobs/internships are never posted online, but spread by word of mouth through what I call “the Old Girls Club”.  I got wind of an internship at FASHION via twitter and since then my former boss has put me in touch with people hiring for jobs that a “contact-less” job seeker would probably never see.  The fashion industry is very incestuous, but once you know the right people all kinds of doors open!  The best way to get in is by interning (and doing a stellar!) job so people take notice and want to call in favors for you.

Ophelia has interned at magazines both in Toronto and Paris and has seen many facets of fashion intern existence – I asked her what she looks for when applying for an internship.

When looking for an internship, I always consider the following:
The company:  Is it well-respected and globally recognized?  If I am going to work for free, I want to make sure I at least have something amazing to put on my resume!

The internship description:  I have done internships where I am treated like an employee and have gained so much experience and then others where I photocopy alllllll day!  The only thing an intern gains from an internship is the experience, so I always look for a chance to learn something new.

The benefits:  A paid internship is a dream come true!  Even if they pay for lunch and a metropass, it’s better than nothing.  For me, the company and the job description definitely outweigh the other criteria.   Working for Vanity Fair for example, would be such an incredible learning opportunity that I would overlook just about everything else!

Length, days/week:  I it is an unpaid internship, being able to intern 3 days/week and then work the others is key.  It gets a little frustrating giving all your time away for free, so having a few days off really helps.

If you’re really interested in intern dish, you must check out Ophelia’s blog – The Eternal Intern – where she and two friends document the dreams and dramas of scoring a job in the glamour industry.

Another fashion blog friend who entered the fashion industry through some prestigious internships is my friend Truc of Deeply Superficial who spent time as a design intern at Marc Jacobs and as an editorial intern at Teen Vogue.  Truc and I are opposite sides of the coin when it comes to our approach to entering the fashion industry so our conversations on the subject can get feisty.  The gist is that Truc believes in working inside the system and I tend to work outside the system.  Truc says,

I have done almost a dozen internships over the years, ranging from museums to fashion designers to small business retailers to national mass market chains. I think I gained a great deal from these internships, and the body of knowledge really build up my understanding of various facets of the fashion industry, and complemented my education in fashion design and later on for my MA research. Most of my internships were unpaid, at least at the beginning. Some I hated and others I stayed on for years at.

What I gained:
1) The internships exposed me to all the different parts of the “fashion” industry, and I was able to really learn what it means on a day to day basis to be, for example, a “fashion designer” in Toronto or a museum curator at the ROM. I discovered my strengths and weaknesses, and what I definitely didn’t want to pursue.

2) I think you have to start somewhere, and being an intern is great because the level of commitment is lower – if you don’t like something, you can walk away easily after the term is over! For me, I’ve always been fortunate that several of my internships (four) lead directly to paying freelance and assistant positions with the same company, which I wouldn’t have necessarily been hired for otherwise.

3) I made valuable industry contacts in Toronto and New York through my internships, and having all that work experience was incredibly helpful when I was looking for my first job (now, 3 years after graduation, I only have 2 publishing internships out of all of them listed on my resume). Even now, I keep in touch with some of my internship coordinators from companies such as Joeffer Caoc and Marc Jacobs, and these women have become my mentors and friends.

4) Thinking back, I was an awful and amazing intern at various points, sometimes during the same internship! But I don’t regret a single experience or lament the loss of potential wages (ie if I had been working retail and getting paid instead for those hours), because I can pinpoint so many things that I’ve learned about businesses and being an assistant and managing others through these work experiences.

Truc is one of my favourite fashion friends – all the more so because we’re so different – and a truly thoughtful fashion writer.  Her take on fashion at Deeply Superficial is highly recommended.

Considering others experiences, it is clear to me that given the right opportunities an internship can be a valuable, wonderful, and even life-changing experience.  I certainly missed out on a world of opportunity by not being inside.  Yet I am skeptical that internships are the only way – or necessarily the best way – to get into the fashion industry. And via Final Fashion, I am essentially betting my own career on this.

Without diminishing the considerable talents of my peers and friends, I think it is fair to state that internships are the most conventional way of entering the fashion industry.  As a system, the fashion intern industrial complex has some issues which are a whole other post – exacerbating financial and social inequalities – which sometimes turn bridges into barriers for the talented and underprivileged. Except, talent can fly.

Two examples. One, the bohemian ideal is exemplified by Viktor & Rolf who created couture in the bubble of a one-room flat in Paris, showed how ambition can manifest success outside the system. Two, the magic of the internet allows a teenager in suburban America to share her passion for style and offers her the opportunities of a lifetime.

My own bid for an unconventional entry is not as meteoric (yet) but takes inspiration from these kinds of stories. The essence is that if you fiercely want to live a certain kind of life and you manifest it even with meager resources – whether it is a blog or in V&R’s case, a miniature collection in 1996 that galvanized their desires – it is possible to enter the world of fashion on your own terms.

Hard work, talent and persistence is a potent combination whether it is inside or outside the system. It is probably not good advice for most people to subvert established channels – unconventional success is rare for a reason.  But I would say that if circumstances determine that you can’t get your dream internship, to not give up, and to consider alternatives that would allow you do what you desire, now. Even if it is just in a small, symbolic way.

Once again Kathleen at Fashion-Incubator provides an irresistible puzzle for a fashion illustrator who also fancies herself pretty keen on patternmaking.  As before, the challenge is to guess what the garment looks like based on the flat pattern alone.  This time, the designer is Geneviève Sevin-Doering.  Here are the flat patterns:

The red one on the left seems pretty straightforward in a slightly crooked way.  The blue one on the right baffles me.  This guess at the garment is really just a wild stab in the dark. My theory is that it is a two-in-one garment, either double-layered (as drawn here) or with two separate sets of armholes to allow the wearer to don the garment in two different ways.

I haven’t tried to peek at the answers yet – I’ll wait until Kathleen does the reveal next week.