Fashion designers are making manufacturing in Canada cool again

13 Sep Fashion designers are making manufacturing in Canada cool again

Factory head Gagin Singh, left, and director Marilyn McNeil-Morin inside the spacious George Brown Fashion Exchange factory in Regent Park. (NICK KOZAK / TORONTO STAR)

You don’t use the words gorgeous and factory often in the same sentence, but the gleaming white, glassed-in cube of the George Brown Fashion Exchange, tucked into the lobby of a condo building in buzzy new Regent Park, is indeed slick.

Now a year old, the enormous 5,600 sq.-ft. open space features artfully exposed ductwork, reconfigurable work stations and punchy yellow powerbars raised overhead, courtesy the George Brown school of design.

The building is called the Fashion Exchange and has several purposes, which feed each other. First, it is the site of Industrial Power Sewing training programs, offered free to at-risk youth working towards a career in the garment industry; thus-far seven full classes of students have graduated to placement positions in the industry.

There are also classrooms on site for two brand-new George Brown graduate programs: the apparel technical design program, and sustainable fashion production.

And not least, the space supports itself as a small-scale working factory. From CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and manufacturing) to 3-D modelling to full, lean-manufacturing production centre, the Fashion Exchange has some 30 paying clients from labels around the city.

Fashion Exchange sewer Chitambi Mbewe works on T-shirts for one of the clients. (NICK KOZAK / TORONTO STAR)

Buzzing from 9 to 5 daily, the equipment is state-of-the-art, and operated by an experienced team of garment production workers: the furthest thing from the cramped, dusty and hot overseas fashion factories we see in tragedy reels on the news.

The director of FX, Marilyn McNeil-Morin, fought for five years to get the project into place. With the overlapping goals of training both designers and production teams and its connection to both the Regent Park community and the city’s working designers, it has become a focus for the future. Right now, most of our manufacturing glory is in the past.

Spadina Avenue’s now-historical “fashion district” was once a national hubbub of garment-making: today it’s all trendy boutiques, restaurants, bars and boutique condos. In the globalization-happy, fast-fashion-forward 1990s, urban fashion production zones in the western world emptied all at once as production moved en masse overseas, to factories that were cheap — and sometimes dangerous and dubious in terms of environmental and social justice concerns.

Now digital disruption has upended the landscape, including the way fashion designers scale, produce, present and sell their wares. One of the solutions is to make fewer, higher-quality clothes, with a strong backstory. Which means Made in Canada is cool once again.

A view of sewing stations and other equipment at the George Brown Fashion Exchange factory in Regent Park. (NICK KOZAK / TORONTO STAR)

This summer Kimberley Newport-Mimran, the founder and designer of 15-year-old Pink Tartan, pledged to not only build new collaborations with local styling and arts talents (a parka with stylist Susie Sheffman, a trench with fashion director George Antonopoulos), but also to move “as much as 80 per cent” of her production, formerly overseas, back to this country this year. “We were looking at our carbon footprint and overall sustainability with fresh eyes,” says Mimran of this anniversary year for her label. “It is also about my own lifestyle. I’ve been spending my life in the air, visiting factories. And I want to be more hands on, to refocus on building resources here, being a part of rebuilding skills, crafts and an industry, in our own backyard.”

She currently produces items in the Toronto area, Winnipeg and the provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia. She is redefining her design legacy by doubling down on her favourite pieces (her classic Pink Tartan shirts, coats and blazers and dresses), garments with a clean, crisp story that is authentic to her and her brand. “What products you make, and where you produce them, defines who you areas a designer. I love working with passionate collaborators on all parts of my work.”

Pink Tartan has been moving its manufacturing to Canada. Tweed jacket, $495. (SUPPLIED)

There is movement back to Canada from chains as big as Le Château Inc., and simultaneously from small startup brands.

Le Château has a Made In Canada collection where approximately 35 per cent of the stock is made near Montreal, depending on the season.

Next weekend, more than 70 emerging labels are participating at INLAND, a two-day pop-up show and sale at 134 Peter St., where some 90 to 95 per cent of the products are made in this country. Top names (and flag wavers) include Pedram Karimi, Hilary MacMillan and Jennifer Torosian.

David Dixon, one of this country’s longtime design stars, has been making his clothes here for all the 22 years he has designed under his own name, save for a few experiments with department store partners manufacturing overseas.

“I have always embraced transparency,” says Dixon. “I have gotten to know the people personally who assemble our collection for production. Not only does it bring a certain value to the pieces, it also brings a sense of pride that many hands are really engaged in making quality clothing that will last.

INLAND show and sale last season. (SUPPLIED)

Canadian academic Taylor Brydges likens the slower fashion movement to the farm-to-table revolution in the world of food. The PhD student at Uppsala University in Sweden is working on a thesis on manufacturing in Canada.

In a research paper in the academic journal the Canadian Geographer, Brydges argues that to survive in a global fashion economy based on fast fashion and cheap overseas manufacturing, Canadian fashion designers need to “provide high-quality, niche product,” produced locally. This is similar to the slow food movement,” which is characterized by an emphasis on supporting local, small-scale farmers and cooking with seasonal ingredients, she says. Slow fashion is based on principles of sustainability, social responsibility, and transparency.

Slow fashion (as defined by K. Fletcher in TheEcologist.org in 2007) is “about designing, producing, consuming and living better. Slow fashion is not time-based but quality-based (which has some time components). Slow is not the opposite of fast — there is no dualism — but a different approach in which designers, buyers, retailers and consumers are more aware of the impacts of products on workers, communities and ecosystems.”

Factory head Gagin Singh, left, and Director Marilyn McNeil-Morin at the George Brown Fashion Exchange factory in Regent Park. (NICK KOZAK / TORONTO STAR)

There is no one in this town with more insight into the number of stakeholders involved in this return to local manufacturing than McNeil-Morin, who was also the chair of the school of fashion at George Brown for 10 years. After all, when the factories closed, we lost skilled workers, equipment and an entire industry. As factories reopen, they need trained garment-sector workers. And in Regent Park, that is a community affair.

“We have talent right here in our backyard,” she says. “New Canadians with specialty finishing and embroidery techniques they learned abroad live right here in Regent Park. It has been exciting that students and emerging designers have found a way to keep those by-hand traditions alive as well.”

Gagan Singh is production manager of the Fashion Exchange and he works for its designer clients. He came to FX after extensive experience with local apparel manufacturers. Today he and his team of experienced workers produce runs ranging from single samples to between 20 and 40 pieces; the scope of the work covers CAD and 3-D design through to finished product. Turnaround is two to four weeks.

It is a professional business, but as befits its location in a school, there is a nurturing element. “We can help out young designers,” Singh says, by finding and correcting errors early on, so they don’t have to waste a large run to find out something doesn’t work. They also help make it as efficient as possible, working to minimize fabric waste, for instance.

Singh says currently about 30 labels are producing at FX, including Teeny Weeny Bikini, Fred & Bean, Narces and Heather Campbell Design, a roster built by word of mouth, from beyond the George Brown family.

“If the designer requires additional help with pattern making, digitizing, grading, marker-making or other pre-production consultation, we are able to provide this service,” says Singh.

“Emerging designers start here,” says McNeil-Morin. But the goal is to move on, and get their business scaled up to work with larger factories.

Of course, like vintage clothing sources and fabric mills, information about these local factories is closely guarded in the business. No designers wanted to talk specifics, or to name names or even suburbs sometimes, for fear of losing their space on the schedule to the competition.

Now that finally sounds more like the cutthroat fashion industry of yore.

Canadian fashion pop-up adapts to the changing fashion landscape

INLAND founder, fashion designer Sarah Power. (SUPPLIED)

More than a decade ago Sarah Power was working at the defunct Old Clothing Show and Sale, a must-troll vintage source for a generation of designers and fashion fanatics. “Every year we’d see a bunch of new Canadian designers showing there, because there was nowhere else.”

After pursuing a fashion degree at George Brown, and with those new designers in mind, Power launched INLAND (madeinland.ca) in the fall of 2014. Power calls her start up an “agile retail concept,” designed to adapt to the changing fashion landscape. This year more than 70 Canadian emerging and established indie designers, whose work is “90 to 95 per cent” manufactured in Canada, will be part of the event. The idea is to bring these chiefly online businesses to life and provide shoppers an opportunity to meet the designers and experience the brands in context.

Left, a Hilary MacMillan dress, $135, and, right, a work from House of Suri fashion, both to be available at the INLAND pop-up Sept 29 and 30.

This year, there are designers from right across the country, from Vancouver to Halifax. And for the first time, there is no entry fee. When doors open Sept. 29 (3 p.m. to 10 p.m.) and Sept. 30 (11 a.m. to 7 p.m.) at Queen Richmond Centre (QRC) West in the Peter St. Atrium, some 4,000 customers are expected, up from 3,000 last season. Designer items start at $35 and run up to about $500. Power anticipates the event will generate around $100,000 in sales.

“Made in Canada is an exciting narrative for customers,” Power says. “Our consumers care about supporting local talent, and buying from designers who share their social and environmental concerns. This generation is more discerning when it comes to where they spend their money. They see fashion as an art form we wear everyday,” she says.

Jennifer Torosian will participate in INLAND designer show and sale (madeinland.ca). (SUPPLIED)

The pop-up group event show and sale model reflects the innovative ways smaller-scale independent designers have adapted to digital disruption in retail. “They have to pursue their own business models, without the traditional wholesale model or department store,” Power says. “So they are making wiser business choices, and utilizing lean manufacturing, to be more efficient and functional in production and sales.”

That means limited edition collections, seasonless collections to “see now and buy now,” modular design and capsule collections, instead of the large runs mills and factories once demanded. “Local manufacturing also gives them greater control over costs, quality, timing of production.”

Power points to standout names such as cruelty-free Toronto designer Hilary MacMillan, who has dressed Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, editorial favourite Jennifer Torosian and vegan success story Wully Outerwear.

Left, a Camille Cote hat. Right, A look from Odeyalo, which is manufactured in Canada. Both will be available at the INLAND designer show this weekend. (SUPPLIED)

The out-of-towners include Odeyalo, by a Montreal duo of designers combining luxury with local, and Amanda Moss, also producing out of Montreal, who puts her ethical concerns up front.

They all flesh out the vision Power has for the two-day shopping party.

“INLAND is an event aimed at deeper connections,” says Power, “building loyalty and even friendships, between consumer and designer.”