It is 10 days before VAWK‘s Fall 2011 show and there are just four finished pieces hanging on the rack in Sunny Fong’s white-washed Church and Wellesley studio. The designer doesn’t seem worried.
“I just started,” he says with a chuckle. Fong’s main focus this month was delivering spring pieces to The Room including the season’s blockbuster dress, a fuchsia fringe mini that upstages every other designer frock in the The Bay’s swanky style department. But he’s on the autumn collection track now, translating his Himalayan mountain climber-meets-Saville Row concept into pieces that simultaneously explore texture and tailoring.
Fong pulls out an ivory coat, its chunky knit shawl collar neatly felted into a precisely shaped cashmere body.
“It takes two hours to felt it together,” he says, confident that the customer he’s after appreciates (and pays for) that kind of craftsmanship.
The customer is why Fong is bringing VAWK to the LG Fashion Week runway tonight. He hasn’t shown on site since winning Project Runway Canada in 2009, opting instead for smaller-but-grander presentations at the Art Gallery of Ontario for the past three seasons.
“We have a fan base that always wants to come to the show but we’ve never been able to let them come,” says Fong whose lingering reality TV notoriety pretty much guarantees a crush of public ticket holders outside the runway room. “I was a bit worried about loosing a sense of intimacy but then I remembered that we were able to create it on site for our Project Runway show.”
While the venue may be changing, Fong will continue to show the line using a runway cast with a wider range of body types than most. He says catwalk diversity has actually translated into sales to curvier consumers who have an easier time identifying with a collection worn by models with some meat on their bones.
