Helmer – Helmer Joseph is a haute couture designer in Montréal whose creations blend the boundaries between art and fashion, and have been featured in various exhibitions and museums around the world, including the McCord Museum in Montréal and Musée de la civilisation in Québec City.
Montreal Fashion Innovation and Technology – Hexoskin – Pierre-Alexandre Fournier and Jean-François Roy co-founded Hexoskin in 2006, initially conceptualized for the production of personalized medical devices for biometric data. After experimenting with several devices and conducting study designs, they realized that in order to monitor, gather, upload, and store health data of vital signs (such as heart-rate, blood pressure, temperature, blood oxygen, breathing rate and volume, and breathing patterns) to track health patterns and eventually develop online health services, they needed an object that covers the upper body, and designed their first biometric shirt in 2010.
Rad Hourani – Montreal’s Innovator in Paris – Rad Hourani is a Canadian designer, filmmaker, and artist, who launched his first unisex high-end brand in Paris in October 2007 at age 25. In his youth and creativity, he is the fashion world’s equivalent of Quebec-born filmmaker Xavier Dolan. In January 2013, Hourani became the first designer invited by La Chambre Syndicale de La Haute Couturein Paris to design a unisex haute couture collection. In the fall of 2013, Hourani presented his Seamless – 5 Years of Unisex exhibition in Montréal, which elevated him into the pantheon of Canadian and Montréal celebrities.
Montreal Fashion Innovation and Technology – Barbara Layne – Montréal has been widely recognized as a fashion hub, a former fashion-manufacturing centre, and the home of many Canadian fashion retailers. But what is still relatively unknown is its emerging concentration on fashion and technology. Barbara Layne is the director of Studio subTela, part of the Hexagram – Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies at Concordia University, where she leads a creative team of engineers and textile artists who design interactive textile arts that combine traditional materials and digital technologies.
Denis Gagnon – After the discontinuation of Montreal Fashion Week, one of Montreal’s leading designers, Denis Gagnon, presented his new collection in early October 2014, around the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. No longer restricted by the bi-annual production schedule, Gagnon reflects in this interview on the role the city plays in his work, the challenges of being a designer in Montreal, and the advantages of not having a Fashion Week.
Grace Kelly – From Philadelphia to Monaco – Exhibition at Musée McCord – From June to October 2013, Musée McCord in Montréal will house the personal clothes, accessories, letters, and photographs of Grace Kelly. The exhibition, entitled, From Philadelphia to Monaco: Grace Kelly – Beyond the Icon is produced by the Grimaldi Forum Monaco in collaboration with the McCord Museum and based on an exhibition by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Fashion Pop Montréal 2013 – The 7th edition of Fashion Pop, an annual design competition of Montréal’s up-and-coming fashion designers was hosted at the Théâtre Rialto this year, which was a much better suited venue than last year’s Église Little Burgundy. Six young designers presented their first collection to a panel of industry judges. This year’s show featured models from Dulcedo Model Management. Here are the six designers competing this year:
Musée du Costume et du Textile du Québec – As of April 2013, Montréal’s Old Port gained a new fashion museum that exhibits dress, costume, and textile artefacts from a vast collection of over 8000 clothes, from the mid-19th century to today, that have been worn, collected, and donated by Québecers. TheMusée du Costume et du Textile du Québec (MCTQ) was originally established in 1979 in the greater Montréal area as Musée Marcil in Saint Lambert, and relocated into the Marché Bonsecours, which until recently used to host Montréal Fashion Week.
Montréal Fashion Week 2013 – Part 1 and Part 2 – This year marks the 25th anniversary of Montréal Fashion Week. To celebrate this event in gratitude for the talent and contribution of designers to the fashion industry, Groupe Sensation Mode has invited designers to present their runway shows without participation or production fees. From September 3 to 6, over 20 designers will unveil their Spring/Summer 2014 collections.
Who is Who in the Montréal Fashion Scene – Montréal prides itself on its vibrant and diverse fashion scene and fashion production industry. Montréal designers usually get all the spotlight and coverage, but what about the other people who contribute to the creation and vibrancy of this scene? Here are some of the people who have a lot to do with making this city fashionable.
Denis Gagnon – Pushing the Gender Boundaries – This season’s Fashion Week was your most radical, most playful, and perhaps the most spectacular runway show to date. You put male models in high heels, used theatrical make-up and synthetic wigs, you had trans-gendered models, and your show managed to push the gender and race boundaries in a way that was both stunning and entertaining. What were your ideas and motivations for this kind of spectacle?
Marie Saint Pierre – 25 Years of Montreal Fashion – A native Montrealer (born 1961) and a graduate of LaSalle College (1986), Marie Saint Pierre received two grants from the Montreal Fashion Group upon graduation, and started her label in 1987. She was the first Québec designer invited to show her work at the Fashion Coterie in New York in 1989, and the first Canadian designer to present her collection in Paris in 1995. That year she was also awarded the Designer of the Year Award by Elle Québec.
Montreal Fashion Week – Fall 2012, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 – Montréal Fashion Week kicked off with an exhibition and slide show commemorating Marie Saint Pierre’s 25 years of designs. The designer was present in the audience, along with fellow designers such as Denis Gagnon and Tavan & Mitto.
Anastasia Lomonova – presented her third collection at the Montréal Fashion Week on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012. Born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1984, she moved to Cyprus with her family for several years before coming to Canada. After training as a visual artist at Ryerson University in Toronto, she moved to Montreal in 2007 began working in the fashion industry, and established her own fashion label in 2011. She has won several awards and been named one of Canada’s most promising young designers. Her designs are sold at Denis Gagnon’s boutique in the Old Port and online. The majority of her customers come from both Canada and the US.
Tom Wesselmann and the Art of Colour – In collaboration with the Festival du Mode & Design, the museum hosted a Colour Block Party on Wednesday, August 1, 2012, inviting guests to visit the exhibition and attend a reception. Dress code: colour block! The sea of colours in the rooms complemented Wesselmann’s colour celebrations on the walls.
Monsieur Hubert de Givenchy – by Karim Zeriahem – The upcoming FIFA (International Festival of Films on Art) in Montréal (March 15-25) will be presenting a great selection of art films, including Karim Zeriahem’s fashion documentary “Monsieur Hubert de Givenchy” (2011). The film tells the story of one of France’s leading couturiers who continually epitomized elegance and grace since the 1960s.
Montréal Fashion Week 2012 – Payam Tavan and Mike Mitto have been designing together since 1995. It was in Montreal that each established a solid technical base, before going on to perfect their knowledge in Europe. Earning a Master’s Degree from the Domus Academy in Milan, Payam Tavan also worked with the head stylist at Gianfranco Ferré, while Mike Mitto chose to pursue his studies at the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris, where he went on to work at Chanel for a number of seasons.
Montréal Fashion Week 2012 – Part 2 – Since being crowned “Canada’s Breakthrough Designer” at the 2011 Telio competition of Montreal Fashion Week, Earl Luigi has gone on to design, among others, a capsule collection in collaboration with the Japan Love Project – an art show to raise money and help rebuild Japanese communities affected by last year’s tsunami. He has also ranked among the top 20 finalists in the London-based international Hand and Lock embroidery competition. Now in his final year at Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he is completing a Bachelor of Design, Fashion and Technology.
Jean Paul Gaultier à Montréal – Since the late 1980s, Jean Paul Gaultier enchanted the fashion world’s imagination with his witty and provocative attitude and humour towards fashion and sexuality, earning himself the notorious nickname l’enfant terrible of the fashion world. His visions of women (and men) in exaggerated cone bras and his reinterpretations of traditional corsets, epitomized by the costumes of Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition Would Tour, captured theZeitgeist of the 1990s, with its changing attitudes towards gender roles, fashion, sexuality, and society in general.
Denis Gagnon Interprets Alice in Toronto 2011 – Every age has to reinterpret its own myths anew, to re-infuse the classics with a contemporary flare and life, and to re-imagine its own heroes and heroines as contemporary. Baz Luhrmann did it with Romeo and Juliet (1996), Tim Burton with Alice in Wonderland (2010). Now Montréal’s most celebrated fashion designer Denis Gagnon is back with a tribute to the girl who takes on Wonderland and its classic absurdities, a girl who stands up to the Red Queen, tames Bandersnatch, rescues the Mad Hatter, and slays the Jabberwocky.
Denis Gagnon at Montréal Fashion Week / Semaine de la Mode 2011 – The 2oth anniversary of the Montréal Fashion Week (Feb. 7-10, 2011) brought great shows and organizational improvements. The shows were spaced out in one hour blocks, which allowed more time for setting up the show and less delays, the press access and registration was done more efficiently, and the spaces of the Marché Bonsecours building were utilized even better, by staging some of the shows and events in the cocktail room. Many of the great designers from last year’s show returned, and many more got to present this time, including Montréal’s star, Denis Gagnon.
Denis Gagnon – Fashion in Museum and on the Street – Quebec designer Denis Gagnon managed to take Montréal by storm, not only presenting at the Montréal Fashion Week and designing two lines for the fashion chain stores BEDO and ALDO, but also exhibiting his exquisite works at the Musée des Beaux-Arts. This type of cultural saturation and blurring of fashion boundaries points to a new age in fashion exhibition and consumption.