Standing out in the mall-fashion crowd
By Kate Hargreaves
Lance Writer
March 12, 2008
 Scraps of fabric, hot pink plaid, leopard print Lycra, and leatherette spill across the hardwood floor. Patterns cut from newspaper crunch underfoot and peek out from the colourful chaos. A record player blasts music from the next room of the student apartment, but it is almost impossible to hear over the industrial sound of a sewing machine. Monica Overton is in design mode.
With her waist-length hair pulled back into an unkempt bun, and a half-finished skirt slung over her jeans, Overton, 19, looks nothing like a Parisian evening gown designer. In fact, she has nothing to do with high fashion, and that is perfectly fine with her.
Overton is not designing for the runways of Europe; instead, she sells her one-off looks to ordinary girls looking to make a fashion statement.
She is one of several talented designers putting Windsor on the runway for its growing independent fashion scene. Sewing original pieces from dresses to jeans and reconstructing garments, their designs cross boundaries.
An underground phenomenon that has been bubbling under the surface for quite some time, Windsor fashion has only recently pushed its way into the spotlight and found surprising popularity.
Even Overton was surprised by the number of young designers working in the area.
“I always felt pretty alienated from the rest of the fashion community,” Overton recalls. “I didn’t realize that the same kind of artists were living in my city.”
She was approached to showcase her Your Little Monster DIY line in the Grandstand II fashion show, where she met a variety of like-minded local talent.
Grandstand, a series of fashion shows now awaiting its fourth installment, is the creation of Windsor designers Robin Angell and Amy Snook. The pair collaborated on the first show in 2006 to get the clothes they made in their spare time into the public eye.
The second show, in July 2007, featured six local fashion lines, including Petey the Troll by Vanessa Hughes. Like Overton, Hughes, 20, had been designing on her own for years when she met Angell while working at Fabricland and signed on for Grandstand.
Hughes sees Grandstand as a major opportunity to get the word out about Windsor’s indie fashion. “Publicity is one thing I can’t stress enough,” she says. “With the right publicity, we might be able to get ourselves on the Canadian fashion map.”
The Grandstand shows are on the right track when it comes to grabbing local attention. The second show forced downtown bar Phog Lounge to turn away dozens at the door, before a single model hit the runway, to avoid breaking fire codes.
“It blew me away, the designs were incredible,” affirms Phog’s co-owner and bartender Tom Lucier. More than 20 people gathered on the street outside the bar hoping to catch a glimpse through the window of the spectacle inside.
Lucier describes Windsor as “primarily a mall town,” citing “people all wearing the same Roxy clothes.”
When asked about the demand for original designs, he offers, “when people produce their own clothes that are actually unique, the folks out there with any taste for non-mall life jump at the chance to enjoy it.”
Dee Dee Shkreli, 28, whose line Dilly Daisy has appeared in Grandstand, also mentions events at the University of Windsor as great opportunities to showcase her line. Many home-sewn creations, including those by Shkreli, Hughes, and Overton, were on display and up for sale at both Harvesting the FAM Festivals.
“Ideally, I would love for [the University of] Windsor to start a Fashion Design program,” she proposes. For now, she would like to see Windsor continue to open its arms to local fashion.
One obstacle that the designers must overcome is a distrust of handmade items, says Overton. She asserts that handmade does not mean bad quality. Instead, she says, “the new wave of independent fashion offers fresh and exciting designs that just can’t be mass-produced.”
All three designers stress the importance of working together within the fashion and arts community to build arts interest in Windsor.
“Designers support musicians, who support visual artists, who support writers,” explains Hughes. “It’s really amazing.”
It is not enough to merely talk about Windsor’s independent fashion as a culture on the rise, but Windsor’s independent cultures of any kind working together.
“[The] pieces are more than just clothes,” says Kayla Blandford, 18, a model in the Grandstand shows and supporter of local fashion. “It’s wearable art.”
While Blandford may seem the typical customer of the out-of-the-ordinary fashion lines, the designers are quick to stress that their customers are anything but typical.
Artists and students may make up a good part of their sales but the demand for high-quality originals is not limited.
Thanks to the Internet, Windsor fashion is accessible to a wide variety of people. “I sell all over the world,” points out Overton. Shkreli has sold to women between the ages of 13 and 48 through her website, and Hughes also sells online.
The only common denominator they see in their customers is the desire to stand out in a crowd, something that transcends age and geography.
Despite the local mall mentality, this wide interest allows the designers to remain positive about what the future will hold for creative design in Windsor.
Shkreli is participating in Toronto Alternative Fashion Week in April, a high profile showcase of independent designers from across Ontario.
Although the local designers don’t see Windsor taking on such a big event just yet, they won’t count it out for the future.
“Grandstand fashion show is definitely a start. I think participating in these larger events in Detroit and Toronto [is] what Windsor artists really need to make it,” speculates Overton.
Back at home, it may be only a matter of exposure before the independent fashion wave breaks into the mainstream.
“Windsor is ready and it has been ready,” maintains Hughes. “It’s up to us now to make sure they see what we can do.”
For more information, check out Dilly Daisy at www.dillydaisy.com, Petey the Troll at www.peteythetroll.com, and Your Little Monster at yourlittlemonster.etsy.com.
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