Sunny Fong loved his job dressing mannequins so much that he stayed for five years, all the while dreaming about starting his own fashion line.Photo illustration The Globe and Mail. Source images Getty Image, Supplied
Toronto-based fashion designer Sunny Fong actually studied to be a filmmaker. But once his passion for fashion infiltrated his REM cycles, the future Project Runway Canada winner’s path was undeniable. In this week’s “How I spent my summer,” the owner of luxury apparel brand Vawk tells us how a summer job at the mall snowballed him toward his fashionable fate.
My most memorable summer job? I actually dreamt it first: I was dressing mannequins at the Eaton Centre in Toronto. I loved it! I remember going shopping there with my mom all the time as a kid. When I was in high school and lived in Scarborough, we’d come downtown and spend an entire day there going floor by floor.
In real life, this was just as the Eaton Centre was renovating and getting ready to relaunch for Christmas – even though it was summer. I had just graduated from university, where I had studied film. My real passion was fashion, so I was always making films about fashion, and doing fashion things on the side, but my sister was into fashion so I didn’t want to do the same thing. But when I found myself walking through the mall touching clothes all the time, imagining my own clothing line, I knew I probably wasn’t going to be a filmmaker. After my dad passed, I decided life was short and there wasn’t time to wait to follow my dreams anymore.
I must have been 23, still hanging around the mall, when I walked past the HR desk. They had a pile of resumés where you could submit yours to apply for a position at the store. That’s probably when I had the dream, because I went back the next day with my resumé in hand and asked, “What job does the window displays?”
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I interviewed with the manager of the visuals department. He liked my portfolio, specifically all the fashion films I’d done, so he gave me a chance. He put me on the women’s floor, which was perfect. I was surrounded by beauty, clothing, watches and jewellery, and everything.
But it wasn’t quite as glamorous as it was in the movie Mannequin. It was a lot of heavy lifting. Mannequins, back then at least, were made of plaster and fibreglass, so they were way heavier than you’d think. It would take two of us to lift and flip the mannequin to put a pair of pants on it. You can’t dress a mannequin like you dress a human body, by the way. You take arms and legs off and put them back through the sleeves afterwards. It’s not as easy as it looks.
Every week, we’d get to re-dress the mannequins. You’d have to choose from whatever collection was adjacent to the mannequins. So we’d go one at a time, going up and down the aisles, pretending to be stylists. We’d pull accessories from the accessory floor; they always hated that because they can’t sell it if the mannequins are already wearing it. We’d come in bright and early before the store opened in order to have it all to ourselves. That was fun. No wonder I was dreaming about it.
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If you were lazy, you could just throw a dress on and that was that. But where’s the fun there? We’d much rather coordinate cool and interesting looks that caught people’s attention. I’d sometimes overdo it just because I was so excited and wanted to throw everything I possibly could onto the mannequin. I’ve since learned less is more.
When the store opened, I got to watch shoppers see our work and react. Finding out what sold was always interesting, as was finding out what people stole. There was a whole lot of shoplifting. I had a better strategy if I wanted something, though: Anything I wanted I would deliberately put on the display and then wait for it to come off with the discount. Everyone who works in visuals knows that trick.
I loved that summer job at Eaton’s so much that I stayed for five years, dreaming the whole time about starting my own fashion line. I was surrounded by clothes and jewellery, immersed in marketing and business too, just taking it all in until the time was right. I went into debt with two or three collections on my own, then to get out of debt I did Project Runway for the prize money, and the rest is history. In fact, when Eaton’s closed down, I splurged and bought a couple of mannequins from them just so I could keep them forever. Maybe I’ll make one into a lamp.