Last night, Toronto Fashion Incubator (TFI) held its twenty-fifth anniversary gala at the ROM, featuring the annual New Labels fashion show where new designers compete for the Suzanne Rogers Award for Most Promising New Label – a $25,000 cash, a design studio at TFI sponsored by TNT and a feature in Flare magazine.  This year’s winner was Sid Niegum, who many in the Canadian fashion world are familiar with from seeing his collections at Toronto Fashion Week.  In fact, I was surprised that he was event in the show as he seemed much more established than the other designers.  The other three TFI finalists were Jamieson Kane (a gorgeous equestrian-inspired collection), [black]·i and Patrick Larrivée (lots of superhero-like headgear and interesting hats).  One interesting note about all of the collections was the dominance of black and neutrals – a slightly different outlook from what we saw at Fashion Week.  More colour would have been good.

Prior to the runway presentations, attendees were treated to a cocktail party where they mingled over drinks and delicious hors d’oeuvres – one of my favourites has to be garlic chicken in a crispy wonton wrap – it was kind of like a spring roll in a cone shaped wrapper.  As we were not part of the VIP ticket holders (who had, to my understanding, a delicious sit down dinner), the runway presentation was standing room only (which I have jokingly referred to as the Luxe Pleb area).  I was lucky to get a close-up of the outside runway, so there was no need to watch the video feed (and therefore capture weird-looking photos).  Nonetheless, it was a great event.  Can’t wait to see what next year will bring.