Montreal Fashion Week: Our final dispatch including LYN knitwear and UNTTLD’s “sexy beast”
While London Fashion Week just ended and the shows in Milan started this morning, we’re going back to revisit the fourth and final day of Montreal Fashion Week. This year Groupe Sensation Mode launched a new event, Exhibit 22, that showcased up-and-coming designers. Most of the invitees were from Montreal, including Betina Lou by Marie-Ève Émond. New discoveries included knitwear designer Maude Nibelungen and accessories line Aime by W. by Bertrand W. Delancourt. I’ve also been personally following fellow local ladies Evelyne Fay from White Label and Hayley Gibson from Birds of North America, but I must send out a special shout-out to B.C.-boy Earl Luigi from LLUI—we’re both from the Philippines and I love how he incorporates Filipino textiles into his work.
And then it was time for the final shows of the week: First up was personal coup de coeur Anastasia Lomonova. Building upon her impressive pleats from last season, her Fall collection met with careful piping applied in whimsical patterns on the bodice that branched out into straps. In one beautifully clever style, they spread out over the model’s shoulder blades in an elegant web. Also new to the collection were cupped bustiers in pleated chiffon and leather, accessorized by chokers and bracelets accented with ultra-long fringe that swayed with each fierce strut.
Next in line was the LYN knit collection that dressed models in sweater frocks: with hoodies, open-backs, and a couple cocoon numbers that left models not only sleeveless but armless. Each outfit in thick yarns of black, navy, chocolate, rust, and creamy white crept down the runway, celebrating the painstakingly crocheted artistry by designer Jocelyn Picard’s own two hands.
Finally, where are the words to describe UNTTLD? When I had chatted with the designers Simon Bélanger and José Manuel St-Jacques a couple weeks before the show, Bélanger used the phrase “sexy beast” in reference to the show. Bestowed with a FIFA sponsorship, there were leather vests and jackets fitted with barbarous fur backs, skin-tight shoelace pants with synthetic hair stitched into the seams—an animalistic yet sensually wild fringe. Clearly, if these three closing acts are any indication, the future of Montreal fashion has talent written all over it.
