Winter 2006
The Look
By: Laura DeCarufel
The reality TV show Project Runway may have glamorized the work table and the sewing machine, but in a converted warehouse in Parkdale, these and the other accoutrements of fashion design - racks of clothing and rolls of fabric - are back-drop to a realer form of reality, the Toronto Fashion Incubator.
Celebrating 20 years in March, and enjoying the new sponsorship of P&G Beauty, TFI Provides designers with a space to work and guidance about practical matters like retail, marketing and trade shows, to ensure that work is see, bought, written about. Alumni of the program include Arthur Mendonca, Crystal Siemens, David Dixon and Joeffer Caoc.
The current crop in-house is made up of five labels. There's Partina, bridal wear designed by Tina Cho; the lean silhouettes of Juma, created by Jamil and Alia, brother and sister; and the romantic retro dresses of Karamea by Michelle Turpin. Nada Shepherd's Nada Designs are ladylike, with tailored wools and pencil skirts. There's also the vintage-inspired Wonderlust, designed by Hannah Melville and sold in Canada, the U.S., Japan and Mexico. Melville's been with TFI for three years. "Starting out, it can be so hard to get your voice heard," she says. "You have no money, no name, you're a nobody, basically. TFI changed everything for me. Everyone helps everyone else. It's like a family."
"If it's a family, I am a baby," says Katya Revenko, with a laugh. The winner of New Labels, the 2006 TFI design competition, Revenko, originally from Kiev, moved to Toronto in 2002. She worked as a wardrobe stylists on music videos, then two years ago launched her Desperately Different line, now sold at Holt Renfrew and local boutiques such as Le Trou and Little Black Dress. Revenko's been with TFI for a year as one of 300 outreach members, which means she drops by for seminars, for advice from the executive director, Susan Langdon, and to network. "It's an incredible thing to be able to talk to people who've been through it before." She cites Helmut Newton and David Lynch as sources for her Gothic-inspired clothing, such as the "yellowish lace like Grandma's curtains" that adorns some of her purple velvet jackets for fall.
It may sound glamorous, but Nada Shepherd eschews mention of the word. "I've read that if you're a designer, you're designing 10 per cent of the time. It's about business. Connections. That's what TFI is so great for.
Who do you know? How well do you know them?"
