Montreal Fashion Week

I have never been anywhere where the city’s name is uttered as often and as lovingly by the locals as it is in Montreal. And their enthusiasm is contagious. The 18th edition of Montreal Fashion Week earlier this month represented the aspirations, limitations, appropriate humility and genuine strengths of the city’s fashion community, while the climatic Denis Gagnon show fulfilled the promise of Montreal’s Parisian heritage.

Retaining a diaspora’s idealised nostalgia for France – and for Paris as its artistic Shangri-La – Montreal’s creative communities strive for aesthetic expression as they wrestle with the pragmatic concerns of living in what Diane Duhamel of Le Bureau de la mode de Montréal describes as a sporty and friendly city “built at human scale.”

”We are not Paris and we know that,” says Philippe Dubuc, the city’s leading menswear designer whose presentation aboard the Gordon C. Leitch freighter was the only off-site event and by far the most compelling showcase of the week. “Our competitors are other emerging fashion weeks and for Montreal, we do well,” he maintains while weighing the challenges of limited financial support for upcoming designers against the week’s realistic goal of promoting local talent to the outward looking elite community capable but often unwilling to support homegrown talent.

“Toronto is the main counter-point but it is very urban and commercial because there is more pressure to sell,” Lara Ceroni of Elle Canada adds. “Montreal however can be more challenging. The designers will say that they care less about selling and more about expressing themselves.”

The evidence on the catwalk in the stately Marché Bonsecours demonstrated a different image of designers carefully catering to their market. At that venue, the prettiest models were handing out Scope and deodorant in the reception area (as part of the Procter & Gamble sponsorship), while the more Mumsy models on the catwalks failed to carry off the weaker collections. Craft-fair, post-hippie and sportswear motifs ran through most local collections and many were weighed down with provincial design flourishes, poor production and lack of editing. Yet local revelers were obviously enjoying themselves and for the foreign press, Denis Gagnon’s breathtaking show of fringed dresses and leather jumpsuits gracefully crafted with his signature gold zippers immediately erased any awkward impressions.

Away from the commercial catwalk schedule, emerging Montreal designers offer comparably compelling validation for the city’s artistic aspirations. Mireille Boucher’s memento mori metal jewellery made from cast animal bones for her Harakiri Design line are poignant and elegant while Arielle de Pinto´s woven metal necklaces provide a subtle erotic frisson. And Ying Gao’s kinetic minimalist conceptual designs, which undulate and morph with the help of electronic sensors, poetically blur the boundaries between art, fashion’s function and an inspiringly optimistic vision of the future.

Ana Finel Honigman is a Berlin-based critic, curator, PhD candidate at Oxford University and lecturer at NYU. She writes regularly on contemporary art and fashion for Artforum.com, ashadedviewonfashion.com, Interview.com, the New YorkTimes, Style.com, V, British Vogue and many other publications