Surfer girl central at the CALLA Spring '14 show. This pic by me, the rest by Michael Ho.
It's a super busy week in Toronto as the fashion crowd gears up for the start of World Mastercard Fashion Week. To kick it off for the past several seasons, Paola Fullerton and her team have hosted the shOws, a pre-Fashion Week mash-up of some of the world's top designers, from Tanya Taylor and Steven Tai to Jeremy Laing (more on that later). On Wed night, I hit up the shOws to catch Bellavance and one of my absolute fav Canadian designers, Calla Haynes who showed us her chic surfer girl line-up for Spring '14. This girl is so dope.
Calla is a young Toronto-born designer living in Paris (lucky) and though her textiles, colours and silhouettes look super fun and playful on the surface, they're incredibly complex underneath. To give you an idea, the black floral print in the first slide below is meant to recreate the floral print on a Shonan surfboard - complete with fiberglass scratches and blue surf wax. A fringed neon skirt is made of strips of paper. Meanwhile, her modern custom tweeds are created by the very same French fabric mill that produces the famed jackets at Chanel.
Loved the clothes, love Calla, and though it's really hard to recreate the vibe of a live show, take a listen to the track below for a sense of how it all went down. I thought they were saying 'bubblebath'. Like I said, she's dope.
Thanks for inviting me, Brill! I'll have loads more pics from Fashion Week in the coming weeks so keep checking back. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!
Gobble, gobble.
