In Montreal, fashion week is built around community and inclusivity | Canada Voices

It’s a Thursday afternoon in late September, and the Complexe du Canal Lachine in Montreal is buzzing.

An open house at the industrial factory turned creative arts hub has invited the city’s culture-lovers to get close to the works of the resident artists, photographers and sculptors. But in a light-filled studio on the third floor, creative pursuits of a different sort are unfolding. Nine members of Lignes de Fuites, an incubator for emerging independent fashion labels, are adding the last-minute touches to On Show, the group’s upcoming Montreal Fashion Week runway presentation.

Since 2021, Montreal Fashion Week has been presented by the Montreal Metropolitan Fashion Cluster, or Mmode, a non-profit organization that aims to unite and support Quebec’s fashion industry. With more than 35 participants, and programming that spans runway shows, workshops and conferences, the week-long event opens up the city’s robust community of fashion designers, artisans and retailers to the public.

“With Montreal Fashion Week, we want to connect with an audience to make everyone aware of what’s based in Quebec and in Montreal,” said Gautier Berlemont, deputy director of Mmode. “Most of these designers are small businesses or solo businesses, so they need to have a voice. Montreal Fashion Week is a way to amplify that voice.”

Against a backdrop of ever-shifting economic uncertainty, that support is more important than ever. In August, the United States began imposing an additional 50-per-cent tariff on some Canadian textile and apparel products. The toll on the province’s roughly 93,500 fashion industry jobs at 6,800 businesses – a sector with an estimated $10.2-billion annual economic impact – is one insiders are watching closely.

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For the 2026 edition of Montreal Fashion Week, Berlemont said his team doubled down on programming that offers a tangible benefit to the city’s designers, launching an open call for applications and curating events around participants’ specialties.

“Through that application process, we wanted to uplift and have events focusing on savoir faire and excellence,” he said. “We built up programming that reflected that, whether it was jewellery, secondhand, circularity, sustainable, community-based events and so on and so forth.”

Unlike the exclusivity that characterizes events in global fashion capitals such as Paris and Milan, Montreal Fashion Week is intentionally accessible, welcoming community members, customers and those who are fashion-curious alike. The goal is to pull back the curtain on all facets of the industry, from the creative process to the after-party.

In Mile End, atelier b co-founders Catherine Métivier and Anne-Marie Laflamme opened the doors of their boutique/workshop for four days to present their collaboration with footwear designer Niki Jessup. The long-time proponents of the slow-fashion movement began working together earlier this year, using offcuts from manufacturing production as their starting point. The designers’ installation presented a snapshot of where they are in that process.

“I feel it’s more interesting to do an exhibition or launch of a new product that is not for sale. It’s really for those objects to be more like sculptures,” Laflamme said. “They’re not created to be worn yet, so they’re more contemplative.”

Jessup added: “We’re working with unusual processes and materials, so it’s hard right now to imagine how it’s going to become commercially viable. But I think there is a way and we’re really working towards that.”

Across town, the Musée des métiers d’art du Québec and École de joaillerie de Montréal teamed up for their first-ever runway show. An extension of the museum’s exhibition Art to Wear: A Story of Freedom of Expression, the evening event featured jewellery created by emerging artists, alongside select pieces from the school’s private collection.

“We always exhibit in white cube galleries, and it’s nice to bring it to a different environment where people are going to be moving around and wearing the jewellery in the space,” the school’s director, Marie-Eve G. Castonguay, said.

For the museum, this type of event allows for a forward-looking approach to curation.

“It’s really important for us to talk about new artists to showcase, not just the history of arts and craft, but to be able to showcase what the new generation is making,” director and head of collections and exhibitions Murielle Gagnon said of sculptural adornments, such as a pair of epaulettes by emerging artist Emmie Caille of Willow Joaillerie.

Back at the Complexe du Canal Lachine, the up-and-coming designers at Lignes de Fuites have plenty to look forward to. Founder Milan Tanedjikov, who won the Fashion Impact Award at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards in April, counts internationally acclaimed designers Matières Fécales among the studio’s alumni.

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For this fall’s showcase, the designers took over a corridor in the building for an evening of three back-to-back runway presentations featuring labels Oncommon, Gio Caci, Labelled 7701, Pearletta Designs, Kendrick Tran, Will Di Perno Studio, OSC, Saintpier and Valmora. The event captured the energy of a warehouse rave.

“I like that there is some kind of a forced proximity to things. It gives it a special feeling, you know?” Tanedjikov said. “It’s kind of hot. People are a bit shoulder to shoulder. If you’re at the edge of discomfort, it can become memorable.”