Letter from the Editor

This month, we dedicated the latest FAJO issue to Toronto Fashion Week and Canadian fashion designers.

While attending TFW a few weeks ago, I had conversations with many other Canadian fashion editors. They were lovely people, but their comments made no sense to me. This included: “We are way too busy to cover this,” “If we do run something on TFW, we just get wire images,” “This event is too local.” In my mind, this is exactly why Canadian fashion suffers: no international fashion magazine is too busy to give coverage to local talent; can you imagine Vogue saying it’s too busy to cover NYFW?

Toronto Fashion Week is the largest fashion week in Canada, and the second largest in North America. It features some of the best talent in our country, and even Canadian designers who are now based abroad (such as Christopher Bates) travel back home to showcase their latest work on the runway here.

Over the last decade, FAJO has helped many designers launch their careers by being among the first—and in some cases, the first—magazine to feature their work. This includes Sid Neigum, Christopher Bates and Rachel Sin. Supporting Canadian fashion has been and remains at the core of our mandate: it’s something we think is essential, important and needed. And it’s something that we will continue to do in the years to come.

So, on that note, I encourage you to read about Canadian fashion designers (check out our cover story), support their work, attend their events and purchase their clothing. It’s better to have 1 piece by a local designer that is handmade than 10 pieces from a fast-fashion brand. We need to take Canadian fashion further, and we need you to help us do it. Even the smallest step you take today will mean so much to this industry. And I thank you in advance for your consideration to do so.