Taking place at Nuit Blanche in Toronto, the Art of Fashion competition is a chance for Canadian fashion designers to raise the bar when it comes to being audaciously creative.  From the press release:

TORONTO, ON, August 17, 2010 – Designers across Canada are invited to enter the 12th annual Art of Fashion design competition and trunk show in Toronto, where the winner will be awarded a minimum cash prize of $1000, a complimentary professional photo shoot with model, hair and makeup, street-level exposure in the window display of one of Toronto’s top fashion outlets, and more.  Entry deadline for this career-launching opportunity is Tuesday, August 31^st, 2010.

The design competition and trunk show will take place at King West Fitness in Liberty Village during Nuit Blanche on Saturday, October 2^nd, 2010.  To apply, designers should visit www.artoffashion.org/labelleepoque and fill out the submission form before Tuesday, August 31^st, 2010.

I discovered the Prada Swing Manga contest via I want – I got.

“Swing” in jazz jargon, means the passage from one chord to another. If this sound could be designed, it would have the flowing and lithe lines of the new Prada eyewear collection. This desire to make sound visual has led to the idea of beginning a new collaboration with comic book illustrators from around the world. Prada, which is famous for its multiple collaborations with international architects, designers, directors and photographers, will this time launch a “Manga Contest”. Participants will include the best-known comic book-design schools along with independent illustrators. This will be an actual contest in which participants will be asked to design a fantasy heroine. The only constraint is that the woman must wear Prada Swing sunglasses in the comic strip. The objective is to animate Prada Swing sunglasses whilst, above all, exploring the possibilities of how different creative worlds can intermingle without any set rules (such as those of fashion and comic book design). The contest will be open to submissions from the evening of July 14 to August 31. The winner’s heroines will become the protagonists of a Prada publication. All the information will be available on Prada.com

The terms and conditions state that the winner will forfeit full copyright to the artwork and character design, and there is an award of 5000 euros. Entries consist of a storyboard for the comic (I can’t find any further instruction regarding size or number of pages) and are due by August 31, 2010.

I’m considering entering this if I can find the time.

I am so thrilled to be participating in the second year of the YES/TFI Passion for Fashion program.

This is a FREE program for entrepreneurial young people, ages 16 – 29, offering seminars on business skills and fashion skills – not only useful for designers, but also for up and coming stylists, writers, illustrators, event planners… anyone interested in building a career or a business in the fashion world.  I teach one of the seminars, on visual presentation for fashion.

There’s more – those who complete the program are eligible to take part in a business plan competition with the chance to win a cash prize of $1000 and 50 hours of free business and fashion industry mentoring from the Toronto Fashion Incubator.

Interested?  You should be!  There are just two orientation sessions left — click here for all the details.

This past weekend that I took my latest sewing project, the paillette dress for the Trash Fusion show in Barrie (as seen here, here, etc) to be judged.  I also got my brother, Jake, to take some photos.  Thanks so much Jake for the hospitality and the great photos!  My family was all there, including my Oma and Opa, and I am so glad that they were.

All of the entries were so lovingly crafted.  There were a lot of talented designers in the tent (it was raining), all with very different takes on the contest brief.  You can click any of the photos in this post to see them a bit bigger.  I especially liked the coffee-filter dress (second from left, above), I thought that this designer showed a great use of “trash”.  Some of the designers were teenagers, most were fashion students, and all of them exhibited a tremendous level of work.

Here is a little video of the final procession.

The winner was the big showboat float white dress made of (apparently unused?) paper towel.  Second prize went to the colourful doily mini-dress made out of shoelaces (with a jaunty matching beret) and third went to a previous winner of Trash Fusion Milton, a truly incredible post-apocalyptic tribal dress made out of busted inner tubes and scrap wire.

I’m not going to lie – I get competitive and I would have loved to get a prize, and I am very proud of my dress and I still think it was the best one.  I think it looks incredible on the body and in movement from far away, and close up viewers are delighted to see all the printed ephemera, consumer brands and logos, it is almost Warholian.  I received a lot of positive feedback, and the best was from my 2 year old niece who said my dress was “gorgeous” – so priceless.

You can see the winning entries for yourself from all three Trash Fusion events at The Rage in Kensington from June 15 to July 15.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed and supported this little project, and thanks to Jane Haselgrove for all her hard work putting the Trash Fusion contest together.

This is a heads up for all the fresh, up and coming fashion entrepreneurs in Toronto – TFI and YES are once again combining forces to offer up a FREE program of seminars and a business plan competition where you could win $1000 cash and a priceless mentorship opportunity.

Here’s the info:

JUNE 15 & 17, 2010
PASSION FOR FASHION ORIENTATION SESSIONS

Are you…
Interested in fashion design?
Looking to be your own boss?
Between the ages of 16 and 29?

THEN YOU BELONG IN A PASSION FOR FASHION!

Youth Employment Services (YES) has teamed up with Toronto Fashion Incubator (TFI) to create this amazing opportunity for youth to learn about entrepreneurship and fashion design. Sign up for one of these FREE information sessions to learn more. Targeted to youth aged 16 – 29 living in the Province of Ontario, who are not professional fashion designers, A Passion For Fashion participants will receive workshops on starting a business, fashion design and marketing, one-on-one mentorship and a chance to enter the Fashionista’s Den Competition where one lucky youth will win $1,000 cash, a one-year TFI Outreach membership and 50 hours of business advisory and fashion mentorship.

Now in its second year, this exciting program gives young fashion designers and entrepreneurs the opportunity to explore the world of entrepreneurship in the fashion industry, for free!

Interested? Visit www.yes.on.ca for eligibility, program information and additional orientation dates and locations in the GTA. To register for the June 15th and 17th sessions, contact Toronto Fashion Incubator at tfi@fashionincubator.com or call 416-971-7117 ext. 21.

Want to learn more?  One of last year’s participants, Kevin Naulls, wrote a post about his experience with the program.

So, in between many other things (Where is this week going? Ack!), I have been diligently diving into recycling boxes and picking up trash on the street, plus picking up donations from generous readers. And… washing each item, cutting them into hundreds of paillettes, punching holes in each paillette, and stitching each paillette one by one on to my entry for the Trash Fusion design contest. Curious?  You can see some previous updates here and here.

The main event, a fashion show, is happening in Barrie, a town on a lake north of Toronto.  My brother lives there, so I think it is a neat opportunity to show my family (and my 2 year old niece) some fashion.  I’ve decided to model my own dress to keep the logistics simple. I am getting a hair cut from Greg May Hair just for the occasion, my first haircut since I resolved to grow my hair long. I plan on enjoying the modeling experience, it might be the last time I ever do it.

If you are in Barrie on June 12, you can come and see me walk the runway – a rare event. Check out the Ecofest Barrie site for more info.

When it comes to fashion design projects, like this one for the Trash Fusion contest in Barrie, I tend to resist beginning them.  The usual ennui – fear of how long it will take, fear that my idea which looks so great in my head will end up looking ridiculous once executed.  Then, once I get started, and I get into it, the project becomes more about delight – delight with discovery, excitement to see how it will turn out.  Until the end of the project, when usually it begins to feel like an obligation, a job I must see through to the end if only to make all of the hours I’ve already put in worthwhile.

The little a-line dress, sewn from some leftover, slightly stained muslin, a cheap acetate lining, and of course an invisible zipper and one of the 1000 “Final Fashion” labels I had woven up for my grad collection in 2006 (of which I have used about 20 so far).  I didn’t have to go shopping for any of these things, everything was in my stash, so hopefully they won’t disqualify my entry as being composed of “trash”.  I drafted the pattern from scratch, cut and sewed it in just a few hours.  It is just a canvas for the really tricky bit…

Applying, one by one, by hand, small plastic paillettes.  The paillettes are made from a variety of objects that my scissors and hole punch can snip and punch, again, one by one.  Above you can see food containers, old library cards, student cards, and metrocards, pieces of red plastic beer cups, and so on.  I’m not applying these in any particular order or colour palette, letting the pattern create itself of its own accord  – however to realize my vision, I have to cover the entire dress, front and back, with these little bits of things.  So, I am on a mission.

If you would like to donate your pieces of useless plastic, please get in touch!  I am truly excited with how this project is turning out – the pictures don’t do the texture of the paillettes justice – in person they move and make noise, and from far away look dynamic and pixelated, completely unlike trash, and up close they display little pictures and brand names, small treasures of found objects.

I am making a paillette dress out of re-used objects, and I’ll need a lot more plastic for this before I finish.  Which is why I thought I would put a call out there for anyone who wants to donate their useless plastic objects for a fashion design project.  These objects will be cut up into small rectangular paillettes, so the plastic needs to be that fairly flexible, easy-to-snip with scissors kind.  I am particularly looking for coloured plastics, and not clear plastic unless it is coloured.  Laminated paper doesn’t work.  Here’s what works:

• larger plastic containers (especially coloured ones), for instance, ginger ale bottles, yoghurt containers, old shampoo bottles, etc. etc.
• flat plastic cards and objects – i.e. old library cards, event passes, those stupid plastic gift cards for plastic surgeons, those flexible rulers that Telus gives away, scraps of acetate from old art projects, bits of old film, stuff with holograms on it !! etc. etc.

Got old plastic you can part with – especially downtown Toronto people? Or stuff that could easily be sent by mail?  Send me an email and we can figure out a way to get it to the studio.  Thank you!

Every year, Toronto Fashion Incubator runs a competition for the most promising young designers in Canada.  The contestants are run through a series of judging panels over the course of six months, culminating in a runway show at the ELLE show.  This year, sponsor Mattel heated up the competition by putting real money on it, a cash prize – $10,000 – amazing!

Anastasia Lomonova brought the drama with some really lavish dresses.  Anastasia was a classmate of mine for a couple years at Ryerson before taking off to Montreal and launching her label. Lots of texture and style – sometimes piled on, sometimes a lighter touch.  Its so neat to see someone’s style developed so far beyond fashion school.

House of Groves was leather, studs and riding crops, but the crowd really applauded when the full-skirted silhouette (lower right) came out – it seems like after so much tight and short, a great full skirt falling below the knee just feels like a breath of fresh air.

Diepo is lingerie transitioning towards cocktail – sort of night-to-later-that-night.  The runway was white and slick and all of the designers sent their models out in treacherous heels – so that all came to a head with the model on the lower-right – as she walked out her shoes seemed to literally fly off her feet and skid off both sides of the runway – you can see a gentleman picking it up in the background.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

Birds of North America brought the closest thing to colour that we saw that night – dusky navy blue, brown and burgundy.  The style of the dresses was more of the twee stuff that usually comes down New Labels runway in years past as opposed to the dominant theme of tough-sexy stuff we see this year. Maybe this shift in style is reflecting changes in the judging panel this year.  I often wonder, watching New Labels, whether the lengthy, involved judging process is a good thing – it seems to result in a certain homogenization among the contestants – or are our most promising Canadian designers really so alike?  The lack of statement colour on the runway was a bit disappointing – are we afraid of colour?

Paris Li‘s collection showed some sharp tailoring and some pretty sophisticated looks that suggest dressing for success.  Over all, all of the designers showed really chic, wearable designs – and perhaps the similarities make it a bit fairer to judge each designer against the other – but then again, at the end of the show, I couldn’t really think of which designer had really raised the bar. It reminded me a bit of the Press Breakfast at Holt Renfrew recently which was similar in the monotony of hues. When so much about fashion is personality, I wonder why designers don’t try more aggressively to differentiate themselves from one another.  Or are the designer really just catering their wares to the tastes of their curators? Either way, it leaves me with a taste for something more.

Lastly, each designer showed a few LBD looks made especially for their sponsor, Barbie.  These were all fun looks and here at least, all the blackness was part of the brief.

Anastasia Lomonova, House of Groves, Diepo, Birds of North America, Paris Li.

This year’s New Labels winner is Anastasia Lomonova – congratulations!  Thanks so much to Faulhaber and the TFI for inviting me to cover the event.

Joi let me know about this cute little competition sponsored by specialty sock company Little Miss Matched.

The Fan Favorite (this is the popularity contest angle) wins $1000 + socks, and there are five awards for Company Favorites who win $250 + socks.

Joi suggested I should enter, however I was disappointed when I read the OFFICIAL RULES and found it is only open to residents of the United States.  The other disappointment in the rules is that Little Miss Matched is grabby – just by entering (even if you don’t win), you forfeit the copyright to your work without compensation, “in perpetuity, anywhere in the world”. Not cute, I would hesitate to enter even if I was eligible under those terms.  Designers in the states – if you choose to enter, make sure you read and understand the terms and conditions.