Fashion & Trend

In the seven years I’ve lived in Toronto, I’ve managed to stuff 74 pairs of shoes into my tiny shoebox apartment. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I’ve only worn two: comfy grey Allbirds sneakers and a scuffed pair of No. 6 clogs that I kick on and off every time I need to pop downstairs and take out the trash. As the world settled into varying stages of mandatory quarantine, everything in my carefully curated wardrobe – including my beloved collection of Victorian witch boots – began to feel all wrong. My closetful of monastic, architectural black dresses suddenly felt stifling and constrictive instead of stately and majestic, so they remained untouched while I rotated through three pairs of Lululemon leggings, laundering them only when they had accumulated enough cat hair to be considered repulsive. Despite skimming through a number of well-intentioned articles offering advice on “how to stay sane during quarantine” that suggested “getting dressed up” might add a shred of normalc...

“Sequins are great to wear for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” announces Mickey Boardman while sitting cross-legged in his Lower Manhattan apartment. It’s a cozy boîte that explodes with colour and kitsch from every available space, thanks to his predilection for anything rainbow-hued and charmingly retro. As the editorial director of Paper magazine, where he interned in the early 1990s while still a fashion student at Parsons The New School, Boardman has been a fixture on the international style scene for over two decades. When he was younger, he was the only person he knew who had a Members Only jacket, and he splurged on a pair of Saint Laurent pants. As he acclimatized to New York’s vivacious nightlife scene, his signature style morphed into “a shell top or ladies’ blouse with some kind of hand-painted print” along with a chandelier necklace and pants that he had cut into clam diggers. The finishing touches were Pearl River Mart flip-flops “and a weird bag,” he says. Mickey Boar...

While the sweatsuit was admittedly not something we predicted would be the It item of 2020, it’s undeniable that was the case. If you had the ability to work from home where Zoom meetings only required you to look presentable from the waist up, jeans and skirts were immediately swapped for sweatpants. Athleisure has been a trend for years now, but it wasn’t leggings we were drawn to during lockdowns, particularly in the winter months. As Anne Donahue wrote in a 2006 essay defending sweatpants, yoga pants may be comfortable, but they offer neither coziness nor warmth – things we were all in desperate need of in 2020. “I don’t see sloppiness or the abandonment of one’s stylistic brand – instead, I see liberation,” wrote Donahue of choosing to wear sweatsuits. “Liberation of fitted pieces that we all need a break from, and liberation from the self-imposed fashion police who condemn simultaneously looking and feeling comfortable.” Looking to 2021, we’re not done with the desire for co...

The year I started wearing the hijab – the head scarf some Muslim women wear — was also the year I got braces and glasses. It was the mid-2000s, I was about to enter high school and it was the heyday of melodramatic teenage insecurities, fuelled by cinema classics such as Mean Girls and High School Musical . Unbeknownst to me at 13, I had teetered dramatically away from conventional beauty standards in a time when they were far more nar­rowly defined than they are today. Soon, however, the hijab would seamlessly fit into my fashion and beauty regimen. In a quest to stand out in the suburbs of Western Canada, in a city where many people were South Asian like me, I found hijabs to match my clothes: in neon hues, bedazzled with sequins and in prints from cheetah to floral. My makeup matched these colours, and I swapped a hair routine for a hijab routine. (Yes, there were bad hijab days.) About a decade later, at age 22 and in my last semester of university, I decided to stop wearing t...

As consumers move away from purchasing mass-made goods – because of their toll on the earth and its inhabitants – brands that showcase handcrafted artisanal techniques are poised to win admiration the world over. From intricately beaded works of art to elevated wardrobe basics, there’s no scarcity of wonders offering the irreplaceable value of the deeply unique. AAKS AAKS Tia Ruffle Akosua Afriyie-Kumi launched her line of vibrant hand-woven accessories after moving from Ghana to the United Kingdom and studying fashion design. “It was difficult to find a job after,” she says. The industry was saturated with hopefuls, and fast fashion still dominated. “I always wanted to start my own brand, but I didn’t know which direction to go in,” says Afriyie-Kumi. “I remembered that when I was a child in Ghana, we had lots of baskets. You would see a lot of weavers selling their handicrafts on the roadside. I started thinking ‘Why hasn’t anybody done something new with this?’ That was my ligh...

Halifax-born actor Eli Goree has appeared in hit shows like The 100 , GLOW , Ballers and Riverdale but his latest project is undeniably his big breakout moment. Starring as Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) in Regina King’s feature directorial debut, One Night in Miami , Goree delivers a knockout performance, bringing both a swagger and a vulnerability to his portrayal of the boxing champion. The film, which premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, takes place largely over the course of one night in 1964, following Clay’s famous defeat of Sonny Liston to take home the title of World Heavyweight Champion in Miami. Based on a play, the film depicts the reunion that night of Clay with three other American icons: activist Malcolm X, athlete Jim Brown and singer Sam Cooke, all of whom were close friends in real life. Larger-than-life public figures though they might be, the film humanizes them by imagining the private conversations about racial justice, duty a...

Buoyant, shoulder-grazing tresses are a prominent feature of Crown Lands , the genre- bending psych-blues rock band comprising Cody Bowles and Kevin Comeau. “They’ve definitely become part of our identity, for sure,” comments Comeau. “Our hair is important to the band and what it represents.” The pair, who hail from Oshawa, Ont., began their joint hair journeys six years ago, back when Bowles (vocals, drums) and Comeau (guitar, bass, keys) first met and quickly bonded over their shared obsession with Canadian progressive rock band Rush. Their look developed out of necessity rather than an active decision, shares Comeau. “It was more about the fact that I had spent all of my money on guitars, so I didn’t have any left for haircuts.” Their lengthy locks have become a trademark that creates an impact onstage and are as unforgettable as their “heavy, loud” music. “It’s a presence thing,” expresses Bowles, who identifies with the non-binary pronouns they/them and isn’t shy to enhance thei...