Made in Canada: Breakfast with a Whole New Generation of Designers

By now you will all know Jeremy Laing, but there are other designers north of Niagara Falls too. Bright and early this past Monday at Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street in Toronto, the store invited a coterie of young talents to show three of their fall 2010 looks at a breakfast for a select group of Canadian press—and gave one New York-based British interloper, i.e. me, the opportunity to get a glimpse of what’s going on in the other North America.

Those designers would be: Torontonians Mikhael Kale, Greta Constantine (actually a duo of Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong), and the aforementioned Laing. Denis Gagnon, he of the heavy black eyeglasses and the Patrick Demarchelier-like French accent, had flown in from his native Montreal, where he is based. The final designer, Lida Baday, showed but didn’t show: She was ill, so couldn’t sit in on the forum where the designers chewed the fat with Barbara Atkin, Holt Renfrew’s vice president of fashion direction, and Fashion Television Channel’s Jeanne Beker. Read full article here