By Nadine Thornhill

It excites me. Delights me. Occasionally confuses, but always seduces me. This isn’t bodice-ripping passion; it’s passion for the bodice, the dress, the shoes – the whole damn ensemble.

For some,  fashion is a dirty word, evoking self-important couturiers, spinning wears that cost more than our cars.  There are those who regard Vogue with the same distain as Hustler. I once hurled an InStyle magazine into the trash when a guy I liked happened to walk by, lest he think I was a clothes whore.

With age comes self-acceptance.

Truth be told, I am a bit of a clothes whore. While space in my closet may be sparse, fashion isn’t defined by the size of my wardrobe. Style is the personal interpretation of fashion, using one’s imagination and resources to create expression through dress.

Toni Frissell photo. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Culture.  Subculture.  Imagination. Expression.  Sounds a lot like art, yet fashion is rarely included in our consideration of the arts.  A designer can be as skilled and creative as a painter.

Needles, thread and scissors are analogous to brushes.  Where the experienced painter understands the medium she will use to achieve colour and texture, a smart designer knows his fabrics, how they will drape and move in relation to the body. Success in both disciplines requires extensive knowledge of colour, proportion and light – an affinity for aesthetics.

Style embodies, quite literally, the aspect of art that is all about telling stories.  The sight of a woman in a red dress evokes the same sultry feelings of sensuality as a smoldering torch song. My mother lives her life swathed in vivid colour and massive pattern. Her fuchsia scarves and lemon-yellow slacks create their own sartorial drama. A friend has a pair of jeans that are more than pants; they are an epic in denim.  Salvaged from a past relationship, they belonged to the first person he ever truly loved. The story, if you ask him, is as riveting as a work of literature.

Style is as politically provocative as art.  Clothes and the way we wear them are catalysts for discussions around issues from sexual assault to gender identity, from economics to the environment.  If that’s not art, I don’t know what is, even if fashion suffers from the erroneous belief that its existence can only be in the realm of the rich and privileged: Toronto, New York, Paris.

It can be more accessible than some may realize.  Much like the rest of our local arts scene, Ottawa’s fashion style is battling a reputation that has been doggedly vanilla.  Nonetheless, there are those who realize something racy underneath this conservative exterior, and they are committed to showing it.

“It’s about time.”

Hussein Rashid is the founder and organizer of Ottawa Fashion Week. In a recent interview, he discussed his reasons for introducing a marquis style event.

“It’s about time. For having as many fashion schools as we have here and as many art schools as we have available. It’s about time we have something to keep all of these great artists and all this great talent here….focusing on the community, we’ve definitely got a current fashion identity. We get all the time compared to Montreal, Toronto and New York. We’re not. We have our own identity.”

Part of Ottawa’s fashion identity is inclusion.  High-profile events are typically accessible only to designers whose last names have become global brands, to celebrities, socialites and senior style editors from renowned fashion publications. Ottawa style-makers are the free-love type, more and more committed to making it an open experience.

Ottawa Fashion Weel. Courtesy of 613style.com

Ottawa Fashion Week operates in this vein, welcoming both industry hoi polloi and the likes of yours truly.  Tickets to a 10-minute runway show at New York Fashion Week run upwards of a mortgage payment; admission in Ottawa is well within the double-digit range.

The attitude among Ottawa’s clothing artists is that a relationship with the larger community is the key to their sector’s long-term growth.  If a local audience is engaged in local art, it will support it.  And in order to engage an audience, the product must be accessible.

Retail is equally welcoming.  Pop into one of the boutiques along the lower half of Dalhousie Street, and salespeople are unlikely to give you the cold shoulder – though you may get some warm cookies, as I did the last time I stopped to paw the merchandise at Workshop’s semi-annual trunk sale.

They can be an ethical bunch too: Adorit in the Byward Market stocks fair-trade clothing, while Green Tree in Westboro is on trend with duds made from sustainable fabrics.  Myriad thrift stores and consignment shops satisfy the dressing demands of customers who want high style without the hefty price tag and environmental impact.

Ottawa isn’t the button-down town it once was. The Capital today has its own flirtation with fashion, one that in years to come will blossom into a full-blown love affair.