Contestant Leeland Mitchell's all-denim look for the first design challenge of Project Runway Canada.Courtesy of Crave
In some ways, the timing of Project Runway Canada’s return to television this month feels perfect. The reality series’ two-season run in the late 2000s, which crowned winners Evan Biddell and Sunny Fong, has since largely been forgotten. But given the current political climate and “elbows up” mentality around championing homegrown business, what better moment to spotlight a new generation of Canadian designers?
In other ways, the timing is more complicated. Despite major international successes like Canada Goose and Aritzia, the Canadian fashion industry is in rough shape, with the recent closing of Hudson’s Bay, the intermittent disappearance of Toronto Fashion Week, sparse representation of local designers in Canadian stores and an overall drop in luxury shopping. It’s no secret that much of the country’s fashion talent flocks elsewhere if they want to make it. Will this series, with its prize of $100,000 and a spread in ELLE Canada, help move the needle?
The show's host Coco Rocha enters with the designers' mentor Aurora James.Courtesy of Crave
“We need to think about how to keep our winners and top talent in Canada, otherwise what’s the point?” Fashion Television pioneer and series judge Jeanne Beker told me this summer. “It’s possible to have an international career from here, though it’s challenging,” she continued. “This country, its spirit and its authenticity are worth staying for.”
Enter the show’s first episode, which premiered on Crave on Nov. 14. (Be warned, spoilers follow.) The scene opens in an airport hangar as 12 contestants await the arrival of glammed-up host Coco Rocha. Looking red carpet-ready in a cobalt blue one-shouldered gown, Rocha saunters out of a private plane and introduces Aurora James, the Toronto-born, Brooklyn-based founder of accessories line Brother Vellies and the Fifteen Percent Pledge, who will act as the designers’ mentor.
The contestants, an eclectic mix of talent from across the country, are hyped up. That is, until Rocha and James announce the episode’s challenge: They have two days to create a high-fashion, runway-ready all-denim look, made using denim they’ve just dropped at the designers’ feet. “Den-umm?” Toronto designer Curtis Matysek exclaims, perplexed. Winnipeg’s Naomi Shindak, on the other hand, is ecstatic about the idea of recreating the denim-on-denim Canadian tuxedo.
From there it’s off to Toronto Metropolitan University’s fashion school, which has gotten a facelift for the cameras and is now known as Fashion at the Creative School. We’re given some quick contestant bios: Taalrumiq is an Inuvialuk and Gwich’in designer from Tuktoyaktuk, Nunavut, who hopes her entry in the competition teaches her five children that it’s “never too late to chase your dream.” Charles Lu is the most established of the bunch, with 100,000 Instagram followers to prove it (he previously competed on Next in Fashion in the U.S.).
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James visits the designers as they sketch and prep, doing her best impression of Tim Gunn (the charismatic mentor who originated the role in the American version of the series). She reiterates that their work must be “high fashion” more than a few times. Naimo Awale, a Somalian designer based in Spruce Grove, Alta., who has dressed singer Mýa, is struggling. So is Shindak, who has changed her mind so many times that she won’t be able to execute a complete vision. Not Leeland Mitchell, though, who says that the Chinese side of his family has ingrained in him a work ethic that allows him to push through and succeed. He produces several heavily detailed garments: a moulded corset top, baggy ruched pants and a floor-length coat made from denim scraps. He even had time to cover the model’s boots in denim fabric.
Charles Lu, who previously competed on Next in Fashion in the U.S., is the most established of this season's contestants.Courtesy of Crave
Then it’s runway time, and we meet the panel: Rocha, Beker and Spencer Badu, a Toronto-based streetwear designer known for incredibly cool basics. Designer Jason Wu, a favourite of Michelle Obama, joins as a guest judge. The standouts are Mitchell; Maya Ginzburg, a self-taught designer with a science degree whose frontier-meets-night-out look delights the judges; and Matysek, whose panniered skirt and boned corset belies his earlier soundbite. The skirt’s precise historical construction is a complete wow for me (who is making panniers these days?).
The flops are Awale, whose basic black dress is too simple; Shindak, whose patchworked look is mostly a mess; and Foster Siyawareva, a contestant who I think has a lot more up his sleeve but is too conservative this go-around.
Shindak, unsurprisingly, is out. Mitchell is crowned this week’s winner, but not before Rocha says his look gives her “Britney Spears Mad Max.” The moment takes me a back to a YouTube super-cut of designer Michael Kors’s legendary critiques on the U.S. show’s judging panel: “Rigatoni Max Max,” “Comme des Garçons goes to the Amish country,” “Barefoot Appalachian Li’l Abner Barbie,” and so on.
To me, the show’s success will lie in what it’s able to do for the local design scene. But along the way, a little Kors-esque entertainment won’t hurt (currently, stylist Law Roach’s reads are a main draw on the U.S. show). Canada’s most famous export might be kindness, but let’s show the world we’ve got a little grit, too.
Project Runway Canada streams on Crave with new episodes every Friday.