Montreal Is Getting a New Fashion Week and It Sounds Amazing

Just weeks after Toronto Fashion Week became a thing of the past (at least, for now), there’s a brand new fashion week in the works for Montreal – and it involves a whole new business model.

Montreal’s latest fashion week will take place largely online.

Set to launch in March 2017, Digital Fashion Week Montreal will see organizers “re-writing the fashion week business model,” according to Canadian Press.

The initiative will be two-fold, and will see runway shows streamed live to a global audience in addition to real-world networking events and other educational initiatives to support Canadian designers.

Montreal Fashion Week

With the cancellation of the influential and career-boosting Toronto Fashion Week and the recent backlash against Canadian brand-loving Sophie Trudeau, Canadian designers need all the help they can get.

Digital Fashion Week Montreal was founded by Melanie Trevett, a fashion and retail entrepreneur who recently relocated to Montreal from the United Kingdom.

“Canadian designers will be empowered with a fashion week that truly belongs to them, one that will take their careers into the future and from which the industry can grow internationally,” said Trevett in a press release issued Wednesday.

The event sponsors include Maybelline New York, Redken 5th Avenue New York, and essie. The new, innovative festival comes three years after Montreal Fashion Week merged with the city’s Fashion + Design Festival in 2013.

Montreal Fashion Week

Image: Marta Iwanek / The Canadian Press

Though there’s something uniquely special about getting dressed up and attending a fashion show the old-fashioned way (see: in real-life), the initiative offers a more affordable way to showcase the country’s homegrown design talent to a mass audience.

With the lack of dollars to blame for the cancellation of Toronto Fashion Week, perhaps a similar mixed media approach is worth considering.

[ad_bb2]