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Montreal Fashion Week Diary Part II

06 mars | Par Marilis Cardinal

Tags : Mode

Pessimistic after a rough first day at the Marché Bonsecours, I made my way back to the scene of the crime for the launch of the Fall-Winter 2009 collection of La Bourgeoisie. The brand lives up to their tongue-in-cheek motto, Gives Great Head, with their fashionable re-incarnation of the baseball cap.

Kill Magazine, a free fashion magazine featuring the country’s most promising emerging talent celebrated their 1 year anniversary and had us blinded by the usual sea of camera flash that follow the publication in its every location as the magazine keeps getting better and better with age.

I shuffled over to the Telio show, a design contest featuring Canadian Fashion’s successors-in-the-making as students from 20 schools from across the country compete for bursaries of up to $3500 from the fabric suppliers. I’ve attended this show 3 years in a row, every time cheering on some friends, but this year, I got to watch it with complete un-biased detachment and it was pretty painful. Unfortunately the fabrics provided were disappointingly boring and the theme, protecting our resources, was an easy one to render in an obvious and tacky way. After the show, I got to endure the glowing revues of former teachers while I smiled politely, nodded, and lied about how much I missed Lasalle College and the long hours the 15 hours a day I spent on its campus.

At Rudsak the male models looked absolutely terrified to be there and sped-walked clutching their leather backpack straps like a kid afraid to get bullied in the school yard while the female models displayed a mix of confidence and boredom parading along to one of the best runway soundtracks to date. Time after time, Rudsak reinvents the classic winter jacket with a rock and roll edge and this season was no exception. The black wools and leather almost had me wishing we weren’t going to be discarding our coats so soon and wondering how I could possibly make the closing jacket of the show, a black mid-length, cape-like stunner, mine.

I toyed with the idea of reuniting my drowsy body with the comfort of a duvet and warm bed but when the opportunity to catch a ride down to Denis Gagnon’s show arose, I pushed my wool poncho and stack of glossy magazines into the backseat of the car and without the address, we followed the trail of designer perfume all the way to the mysterious location in the Rosemont neighbourhood. Leave it to l’enfant terrible of Montreal Fashion to welcome the city’s smartly dressed people back to where fashion takes shape: on the factory floor.

The lights come on and we all anxiously wait on our school benches for Mr. Gagnon’s teachings. Any doubts I had about the future of fashion disappear within a glance of the first model’s all black getup and my goose bumps and chills have nothing to do with the dampness of the workshop. The collection has us wondering how leather and jersey could ever be apart and the fresh faced models walk up and down the seemingly mile-long runway in a trance. A few dozens of perfect leather jackets and flawless complex dresses later the orchestrator sprints up and down the runway in his fur hood and the monochrome audience lets out an audible sigh of relief and finally crack a smile; the end of the world isn't as close as the all-black collection would have us believe and our faith is good and restored. Amen!

So in the end, a lost fur hat and scarf, a few blisters and lots of furtive kisses later, the four days of Montreal Fashion Week end with the crash of a wine glass and the promise of a dark but blissful fall.