Nathan Phillips Square is so last season.
Toronto Fashion Week’s organizers will announce next week that the city’s biannual runway shows are moving from City Hall’s front yard to the corner of King and Shaw this October.
I can already read the panty knotting that will follow the press release. Newspapers will cease the opportunity to dig for skeletons and scandals in the Fashion Designer Council of Canada’s closet. The blogger gallery will let out a collective woe-is-us, wondering how they’ll make it from their day jobs to a five o’clock show at the further flung venue. And we’ll go ra ra ra all the way to our new front row seat.
What’s wrong with a little change? Even New York is switching up its Fashion Week location, adding a secondary hub at Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District this fall and sending the Bryant Park tents uptown next September. Granted, the plaza in front of Lincoln Centre is a bit more glam than a former Chrysler dealership-turned-parking lot-turning condo site on the border of King West and Liberty Village but it appears that this town’s public squares and parks aren’t big enough to hold our runway anymore.
Apparently the Nathan Phillips Square tent was as sprawling as it could get. Any larger operation would have exceeded the space’s weight restriction. Perish the thought of editors, models, photographers and seat stealers tumbling through the concrete into the parking lot below.
Word is sponsors are happy, designers have been told about the switcheroo and, yes, there is a Starbucks across the street.[rssbreak]
