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Vanja Vasic Owns 80+ Unique Canadian Designer Pieces
The director of Fashion Art Toronto’s love of supporting local has led to her immense collection of Canadian clothes.
Date August 1, 2024
Is it cliché to blame your parents for your problems? Maybe. But in Vanja Vasic’s case, owning 80+ Canadian designer pieces is a very fun problem to have. “I feel proud to wear Canadian,” the founder of Fashion Art Toronto (FAT) exclaims. “I look forward to the moment when someone asks me what I’m wearing and I can tell them about the designer.”
You see, Vasic caught the independent-designer bug from her parents. Her dad is a filmmaker, and her mom is a visual artist (her work covers the walls of the collector’s eclectic Toronto apartment), but both have flirted with fashion at different times and in different countries, selling their tie-dyed creations in Serbia (where Vasic was born) and leather jewellery in Canada.
“Serbia was very poor at that time, so most people wanted to wear fancy logos and labels,” she explains. “Because of my parents, I was never like that. I rebelled. I wanted to support local.”
When it came time to select a major in university, Vasic was tasked with an impossible choice: art or fashion. “I’ve always loved both,” she says. In the end, she chose fashion design at Toronto Metropolitan University—and it’s a good thing, too, because it was during her exchange in London, England, that she got the idea for Fashion Art Toronto (FAT). “I loved how experimental and provocative the fashion was there,” she shares. So when Vasic returned to Toronto, she was inspired to bring those same stylistic sensibilities back with her. The result was FAT, Canada’s largest fashion week, which merges the art and fashion worlds into something uniquely its own.
Almost 20 years later, Vasic’s closet reads more like a FAT scrapbook or an encyclopedia of Canadian fashion history than a regular wardrobe. Tried-and-true brand John Fluevog mixes with up-and-coming label DeathWorks, and chunky Vitaly chains mingle with sculptural Lo’bat earrings. Vasic describes the rest of the offering as “artistic, bold and seductive” with nods to her fashion icons Kurt Cobain, Alexander McQueen and Madonna peppered throughout.
Surprisingly, she considers most of her items basics of sorts. “I can wear my pieces over and over again,” she begins.
“Something like my House of Etiquette corset can be worn over a skirt, pants, a dress—really anything. It’s a cool accent that adds an edge to any outfit.”
As such, she scours FAT, Inland and The One of a Kind show to find the perfect accoutrements for her collection. The criteria, besides being Canadian, of course? “I think you can recognize yourself in a garment,” she muses. “Something speaks to me, and then I just have to have it—that’s that.” That’s not to say she doesn’t have a few staples. Vasic loves a cropped jacket, corset and body-con skirt, explaining that if a garment shows off her figure, it makes her feel more confident.
The exception to this rule, however, is her love of big shoulders, which is evident throughout her collection and especially in her very first piece. She estimates that her stockpile began in 2007 with a cropped shoulder-padded sweater by Jasper Garvida, which she (sadly) no longer has.
“The shoulders were so big that I couldn’t wear a jacket with it,” she laughs. “But I loved it because it was so different and nobody else had a piece like it.”
It’s that feeling that keeps Vasic coming back for more. “I like going to a party and knowing I’m the only one who has a particular piece,” she shares.
“I feel proud discovering a really cool brand that no one knows. There’s so much talent in Canada. We have so many incredible designers and so much diversity. I’m excited about what people are creating here.
This article first appeared in FASHION’s Summer 2024 issue. Find out more here.
HAIR, DYLAN CRUICKSHANK. MAKEUP, BRITTANY SINCLAIR FOR P1M.CA/NARS AND DEALBODIES. PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAWRENCE CORTEZ. PHOTO ASSISTANT, NATHAN COOK.
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In The Pink
Death certainly becomes this collector. Vasic commissioned DeathWorks to create an outfit that was “dramatic enough for special events yet versatile enough to be worn casually as separates.” The end result was this set, which was made from pre-loved denim and then dyed fuchsia.
Annika Lautens is the former fashion news and features director of FASHION Magazine. With a resumé that would rival Kirk from "Gilmore Girls", she’s had a wide variety of jobs within the publishing industry, but her favourite topics to explore are fashion sociology and psychology. Annika currently lives in Toronto, and when she’s not interviewing celebrities, you can find her travelling.
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