So you think you can sew pants?

By Sean Kelly Keenan
August 19, 2009
Eye Weekly

Toronto’s groundbreaking and innovative fashion design and entrepreneurship incubator gives you the chance to prove it.

When you think of the Canadian National Exhibition, there are certain things that come to mind. Bright, blinking neon lights. Garishly decorated, rickety old game booths. Heavily tatted-up, cigarette-chewing carnies and the sound of a Wolfman-inspired announcer screaming, “Do you want to go faster!!!!!”

If there’s one thing the CNE does does not conventionally suggest, however, it is fashion. Flashy? Sure. Kitschy, tacky and over-the-top? You bet. But not fashionable. Yet, for the last two years, the CNE grounds have been home to one of the city’s hotbeds of emerging creative fashion talent - the Toronto Fashion Incubator.

Housed in the historic and architecturally inspiring Old Music Building at 285 Manitoba Drive, the TFI (Officially known as the Toronto Centre for the Promotion of Fashion Design) is a non-profit group “dedicated to nurturing, supporting and promoting new and emerging fashion designers.”

In plain English, it’s the place anybody looking for help starting up a fashion or fashion-related business in this town would do well to pay a visit to. The existing space contains a resource centre, meeting rooms, seminar space and 10 design studios (available to rent) where future Versaces can get their businesses up and running in the supportive bosom of the shared environment. More than just space to get your design groove on, though, TFI also offers one-on-one mentoring sessions with seasoned industry professionals as part of its membership package. As resident Paris Li (www.parisli.net) tells me, that connection to people in the industry is gold.

“It’s a great place to start your fashion business,” Li says. “You get to connect with a lot of industry people - retailers, buyers and other experts. And with there being only 10 of us in residence, we learn from and help one another,” she says.

Two other residents, Gail McInnes and Amanda Brugel, show that fashion entrepreneurship doesn’t necessarily mean just designing. McInnes, a graduate of Humber College’s Fashion Arts Promotion and Special Events program, and Brugel, an actress with a BA in Fine Arts Theatre from York, run The Style Box (www.thestylebox.ca), which aims to connect celebrities with, and help outfit them in, hot (or should I said haute?) Canadian fashions to wear on the red carpet at awards shows and gala functions. It’s that sort of creativity that the TFI has been so integral in fostering throughout its 22 year history.

The cost? You can strut your stuff in a chic TFI membership for a mere $130. (For full-time students, the price is even less - only $75. Plus you get seminar tickets for the heavily discounted price of $20.) And thanks to a $150,000 Ontario Trillium Fund grant, that membership will be even more glam this year. Already in the midst of expanding its space to fill the entire 8,000 square feet that the Old Music Building has to offer, the finished revamp will include a P&G Beauty lounge, where members can schmooze and kick it VIP style.