5 TEST Member Spring Trends

New season?  New wardrobe inspiration!  Spring is on its way and it’s that time of the year when we can indulge in color, break out of the routine dark monochromes and experiment with interesting silhouettes.  Spring 2015 is bringing an array of fabulous possibilities.  Keep your eyes peeled for light yet rich fabrics, new colors and interesting prints.  Here are some great Toronto trends from your TEST Members to inspire you to get playful with your wardrobe this Spring:

Floral Crop Top – $40.00 USD – BetterStayTogether

Flowers 
Flowers have definitely blossomed as a spring essential. This season they adorned catwalks both boldly and subtly. Be on the look out for special embroideries and appliques that will create a rich botanical experience.  No layers or further embellishments are needed when sporting floral prints as flowers add major boost of panache to an outfit and simply make you feel more into the season.  As an ever joyful and spring print, the flower trend might have just turned into a classic that everyone needs.

Upcycled Denim Jacket – $68.00 USD – Jool

Denim
Ahh, the resilient denim!  Denim has made a full force comeback this spring, adding rustic and urban character to ensembles.  It’s all about mixing, matching and revamping your style with new and old denim pieces.  Pick what makes you comfortable, washes that work with your skin-tones and have fun with it!

Gingham Cat Collar – $20.00 USD – TheRoverBoutique

Gingham
These tiny checks, once considered a vintage print, are certainly one of the biggest buzzes for spring 2015. Seen everywhere, (even on cats) gingham is the statement of the season!  Impeccable giant pastel checks can show a soft, preppy look. If you're looking for a daring style, enhance your checks with pops of color.  For a sophisticated look – wear the print on a easy, light dress.

Custom Bohemian Wrap Dress – $649.00 USD – SimonesRoseBoutique

Romantic Bohemian
Romantic prints on an airy maxi dresses are so hot this season.  We love this look from Simones Rose Boutique - a sheer, busy-patterned, deep v-neck, with major bohemian flavor.  Earthy tones, intricate appliques and feminine shaped dresses are super trendy and perfect for this time of year.  If you're looking to steal gazes and inspire deep sighs, bring this trend to your wardrobe.

Leather Fringe Bag – $209.00 USD – karenkalashnik

Fringe
This season’s fringe is all about standing out.  Fringe can powerfully embellish your wardrobe as it adds amazing texture and movement to garments.  Fringe can be small, medium or long strands - whatever you're most comfortable with.  While often thought of as bohemian, fringe shows sophistication and elegance.  We'd love to go dancing with Karen's leather fringe bag pictured above!

Show your fellow TEST Members some love by shopping local this Spring.  By shifting just a portion of your spending, you can help create more jobs, a stronger economy and build a better community here in Toronto.  Happy shopping and happy playful Spring wardrobes!

Fashion Friday at Scadding Court Market 707 vendor call

The next Market 707 event which will be showcasing up and coming Toronto fashion designers. Fashion Friday will give local Toronto talent a chance to promote their products, companies/stores and sell as well. All types of designers are welcome clothing, accessories, jewellery, footwear etc. There will also be a fashion show portion of the event for designers to show their designs if they wish to participate, spots for the fashion show will be limited and will be no longer than 10-15 mins long. We plan on having live performances as well and of course of Market 707 food vendors will be open throughout the night for some delicious international street food. If you are interested in participating in our Fashion Friday event please feel free to email me with any questions you may have.

Event Details:

What: Fashion Friday

Where: Market 707 (707 Dundas St.W.0

Date: August 22^nd 5-9pm (first fashion show starting at 6pm)

Table Fee: $25 (we will provide a table and chairs) all other promotional materials and signage must be provided by the designer
Facebook Event Page

Call for volunteers: The Toronto Clothing Repairathon

The Toronto Clothing Repairathon is looking for volunteers. We are a group of volunteers who love sewing and host free clothing repair events across the city. We need your help! Volunteers of all skills levels are welcome. We do repairs by hand and by machine. 

Our next will be later this summer and we are planning one at the  St. Lawrence Farmer’s Market. 

For more information visit repairathon.com

T.E.S.T. Interview: Bllk Box Clothing

We hope to introduce you to all the great Etsy sellers to be found right here in Toronto. Here at the T.E.S.T. blog, we plan to interview them all. This is the 50^th in our series with Sarah of BllkBox.

Tell us a little about you and your shop.

I'm a sort-of-artist by training, which doesn't mean much except that I've taken on the life-task of making things and then thinking about them. It's a great way of being in and relating to the world, but it's too easy to float in a pristine and imaginary world of ideas, that will never get measured in the (possibly crass but also live-or-die honest) commercial marketplace. Bllk Box is a way to keep myself grounded in the real world of making and selling useful things. Running a business lets me evaluate my practice in business-terms, which are refreshingly direct compared to subjective aesthetic value judgements.

What is your "day job"?

I'm lucky enough not to have one! Besides my Etsy store, I have a couple Toronto stockists and I do print commissions for local bands, small businesses, teach workshops, etc. Screenprinting has the wonderfully useful quality of being both a creative medium and an industrially-competitive manufacturing process. By diversifying my income-streams, I manage to make a living. Of course, it certainly helps to be a young person with no dependents (except a cat). It's socially acceptable for me to frugal-it-up by eating lots of ramen and baked potatoes and splitting the rent with a couple of (fantastic) roommates.

How did you get started?

When I graduated from art school, I crashed into some difficult truths about politics and privilege. It took some long nights dodging the rubble of my fast-crumbling bullshit-castle and a year in purgatory doing social work and activism before I felt ready to rebuild my aesthetic practice. Bllk Box is an attempt to inhabit the ruins.

What inspires your work?

Tumblr, google image search, tumblr, obsolete technology, cheap plastic, dollarama, my childhood, tumblr, Chinatown, tumblr. The way images float around in the digital soup of the internet and are recycled and recombined is an endless source of inspiration. If I were an academic, I'd call it curation, but I'm not, so why get jargony? Chinatown is like 'the internet: the place'.

How did you decide to focus on hand dyed and printed clothing?

Well, I took a look at the skills I'd amassed at art school, and screenprinting seemed to be one of the only ones that were legitimately marketable. The economics of painting (what I studied) are pretty insane – work on a painting for months and end up with this rarified commodity that has to cost quite a bit if you want to get anything like fair remuneration for your time, which of course restricts your potential customer base significantly. Screenprinting is generous in a way painting isn't – it allows me to make things that people in the same socioeconomic tier as me can afford, things that are for people in a tangible way.

Small batch dyeing is something I've always loved, and for very different reasons – it's got a sort of built-in-uniqueness. No matter how skilled I become, there is always an element of unpredictability that contrasts well with the machine-like repetition of a successful screenprinting run.

What makes your Etsy shop unique?

Besides the one-of-a-kind-ness of small batch dyeing as a practice, my design practice is conceptually rigourous and my production model is entirely handmade/human-scale – but my line is still priced to compete with “fast fashion.”

What goals or plans do you have in store for your business?

Currently I'm stocked on a consignment basis, but I'd like to move into wholesale and focus on production. I'd also like to do more commissioned screenprinting (my prices are very reasonable, especially for small runs, just sayin'). I’ve been dreaming about some equipment upgrades lately – I have a carousel press, but as I'm hired for more multi-colour jobs, I am coveting a more professional model with micro-registration. Or an exposure unit that can handle larger screens (my current max-size is 20x24). Hopefully someday!


Bllk Box items are available for sale at Untitled&Co (717 Queen St. W) and sometimes at Grasshopper Records (1167 Dundas St. W).

Check out the other items available from Sarah in her Etsy shop! You can find more of her work on her tumblr and blog.

Interviewed by Flavia and Dona of BeyondTheJar in March 2013 in Toronto.

Crywolf's First Ever Pop-up Shop

Rose and Stephanie from one of our newest member shops, crywolf are excited to announce that they will be having their first ever pop-up shop!

July 23rd - 29th 2012
at Narwhal Art Projects in the Junction,
2988 Dundas Street West.

Crywolf is a very small company of two, with a strong DIY attitude as their driving force. Rose and Stephanie combine their skill sets to do everything involved with running Crywolf. As young entrepreneurs, this will be their first time showcasing and selling their products in a brick & mortar retail setting - their first official "shop". The most interesting aspect of the event is that we will be having a party on the night of July 26th which celebrates the launch of the pop-up as well as the launch of our in-house line, Crywolf Cuts. They will also have a limited edition t-shirt available for that night only. When purchased, it will be hand silkscreened on the spot by Rose or Stephanie of Crywolf. There will also be a custom nail-art booth set up and unveiling some collaborations with local artists.

For more information visit their Facebook event page

T.E.S.T. Interview: Good Yarns

We hope to introduce you to all the great etsy sellers to be found right here in Toronto. Here at the T.E.S.T. blog, we plan to interview them all. This is the nineth in our series, an interview with Lisa-Dawn of GoodYarns.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get started with GoodYarns?

I'm a mother of 3 teens and a little extra blessing who is 5. I have an MA in journalism. I have been busy over the last several years home teaching my kids (the older ones until about 4 years ago). Needless to say it is an exuberant, creative household.

How and why Good Yarns?

As far as knitting goes, mainly I have made things for my kids. I have always liked that DIY allows you to pick from a broader palate of colours, richer fibres and your own choice of styles than can be found at the average local department store. After all isn't personalization what DIY is all about?!

For classic patterns - over the years I have hunted for classic items for family members that you just can't find in stores - for example the basic kitty ears balaclava for toddlers and sailor's watch cap for men. My Etsy shop allows me to help others resource these classics too.

Satisfying a creative need - I've always liked the portability of knitting - you can take it along to doctor's visits, baseball tournaments or whatever. It's been a sanity saving creative outlet for me. Someone said in conversation a few years ago that she wasn't "a maker." This dumbfounded me. I didn't know there was any other way to be!

When choosing a name for my shop, I asked my older daughter for an idea for a name that combined knitting and writing, and she immediately blurted out, "Good Yarns." There you have it!

Apart from creating knitted items, what do you do? What is your day job?

My day job is still teaching my youngest son, who after a year of walking on eggshells through Junior Kindergarten (JK), boycotted Senior Kindergarten (SK) this year. No biggie - we just carry on with reading & math games, etc. He loves making things, anything to do with letters, markers, paints. And digging. He can hardly wait for snow so he can get his snow shovel back out (me, not so much)! We go on what he calls 'adventure walks' on trails in local conservation areas whenever we can. He loves every hat and toy that pops off my needles, believing they are all his. This has led to some heart breaking sobbing and wailing when someone has bought something from a craft table that he didn't think was mine to give away.

What goals or plans do you have in store for your business?

I actually have no plans whatsoever to go back to a day job. Why would I when I can make things, go on adventure walk whenever the sun shines, and enjoy these precious moments with my little boy (and my big kids too). I guess the future holds more knitting, more writing - more joy! Oh and here's an alien notion - more time with my best friend, my beloved spouse, who has supported me in my mothering, teaching and creative imperatives over the years.


How do you promote yourself? and what is your best marketing tip?

The marketing strategy that works best for me is - my kids as walking billboards! Not that I force them to wear stuff just so people buy it - but so many times I have had inquiries and/or commissions out of the blue based on something the kids have been wearing. After that, Etsy is a great and simple way to get your stuff out there and enable people to obtain it easily if desired.

What advice would you give to new etsy sellers?

I always cringe a bit at the site interviews that give top priority to great pictures. Sure, bad pictures don't do your product justice. But I find I have more personal tolerance for photos that aren't just the bland studio white. Better I think is the advice that you should make or sell what rings your bell. It's that passion that is contagious to others.

Intereviewed November, 2010 by JAnnsBoutique

Vender Call: the Clothing Show

THE CLOTHING SHOW is looking for vendors to exhibit in the Fall 2010 Edition, happening this September 24-26 at the Better Living Center, Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto.

The Clothing Show is a bi-annual shopping event that began in Toronto in 1977, specializing in vintage and collectible items. Over the years, it has evolved to become a launching pad for new designers and artisans; and today promotes over 300 booths of unforgettably unique, locally-produced goods.

In keeping with our mandate to showcase new and upcoming local talent, The Clothing Show is inviting emerging fashion designers to exhibit their designs in the show and on the runway.

We are also looking for local vendors of vintage and recycled items; as well as purveyors of earth-friendly products to be featured in our new Eco section.

Additionally, we provide over 1,000 ft of commission-free gallery space for local artists to display their work.

If you're interested in participating in The Clothing Show, please visit here and download one of our Exhibitor's Kits for information and application forms.

You can also email us at info@theclothingshow.com or call: 416-516-9859

Where:
Better Living Center, Exhibition Place
195 Princes' Blvd., Toronto, ON, M6K3C3

When:
Friday, Sept 24: 3pm-9pm
Saturday, Sept. 25: 11am-8pm
Sunday, Sept. 26: 11am-6pm

via the TCA Forums

T.E.S.T. interview: foundlingsvintage

We hope to introduce you to all the great etsy sellers to be found right here in Toronto. Here at the T.E.S.T. blog, we plan to interview them all. This is the eighth in our series, an interview with foundlingsvintage.

Why vintage? What would you say to someone who has never shopped vintage before?

I've always been a scrounger and lover of things of olde. There's something about the discarded that I find intriguing; the mystery, I suppose. I can't pass a junk shop without poking my head in and rifling through a few boxes. The hunt is as rewarding as the find! I'm a collector, but my obsessive neatness prevents me from hoarding! Etsy is the perfect place to share my treasures. To the new vintage shopper, I would say don't be afraid to mix decades. A true time traveler shouldn't be afraid to wear a wacky wardrobe or fill their home with a mish-mash of kitschy goodness!

When were you first introduced to vintage? What is it about vintage that you love? How do you qualify an item as vintage?

I come from a family of collectors. Growing up, my mom loved all things fifties, and my dad was a bibliophile and anthologist - a book collector and assembler of short story collections. The collector gene was passed down to me, I guess. I also have really great memories of rooting through the garbage as a kid! A discarded piece of furniture or clothing has a history. I've always loved imagining the story behind a particular vintage piece. I get the same feeling when I look at old photographs. It's not just a material object, it's a chunk of the past.

Technically speaking, the cutoff that marks the distinction between contemporary and vintage is twenty years. That would make anything dating back to 1990 vintage, and everything after that contemporary.

What is your criteria for choosing a piece? Are there particular things you look for? Where or when do you find your best pieces?

Aesthetically, I am more attracted to certain decades, particularly within the fashion realm. The seventies were pretty ugly - enormous lapels and brown polyester. Few can pull off this look without looking a little silly! The sixties, on the other hand, were fantastic! An eye-popping psychedelic print can be a real statement. An outfit should be a work of art! I look for pieces that are original and eye-catching, often the fabric is key here, though construction does come into play as well.

I saw in your etsy shop that you create your own original pieces using vintage materials and supplies. What is your creative process for repurposing materials

I source and up-cycle old old drapes, sheets, and tablecloths, transforming and giving them new life. Eco-friendly options are appealing to me, and I am attracted to vintage prints. Combining the old with the new is really what Foundlings is all about - whether it's a new take on an old look or simply re-introducing the old to contemporary life.

Can you tell me more about your designing background? How long have you been designing? Have you always been attracted to vintage styles? How important is recycling and sustainability to your designs?

I studied Creative Fashion Design and got my start ten years ago in the costume design world, as a sewer for "Mamma Mia". I discovered that ABBA was a vintage rock better left unturned! Eco-conscientious design is tremendously important to me. Repurposing is an excellent way to create something stylish and unique, while at the same time squeezing a few more years out of a scrap of fabric that would otherwise be discarded.

How do you strike a balance between designing vintage pieces and sourcing them? What brings you the most joy?

I enjoy both! It all depends on where my feet lead me on a particular day, and what treasures I stumble upon.

Can you share your top five tips for choosing vintage? What should I look for and how do I care for my vintage purchases?

1. Don't be afraid of a little dust.
2. Do mix and match decades.
3. Fill your home and wardrobe with prints and colours that make you smile.
4. Use your imagination.
5. Don't think about what Stacy and Clinton would say!

When it comes to fabric care, polyester is pretty much indestructible! Generally, I suggest hand-washing and laying garments flat to dry. Watch for sun-damage when re-purposing vintage curtains (I learned the hard way).

What's next for foundlingsvintage?

In addition to my Etsy site, Foundlings is also available at Fresh Collective in Toronto. Look for Foundlings at The Clothing Show Spring 2010 Show and Sale May 14-16.



Interviewed March, 2010 by Melanie Hillier