Toronto designer Tanya Taylor’s eponymous brand developed a life of its own in New York City, with the likes of Michelle Obama, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé sporting her hand-painted creations. Now, more than a decade later, she’s bringing the brand back home — and opening up shop in Summerhill.
“Our first store is on Madison Avenue, and though it seems like such a bustling corner, it really is a neighbourhood — it’s where my kids go to school, it’s where you see the same person walking their dog every morning,” Taylor says. “And I’ve seen the neighbourhood of Summerhill really develop this community spirit that is so similar to where we’ve opened other stores.”
She notes that Summerhill reminds her of the West Village in New York City, where she lives: “The stores there make it their job to feel a part of the community.”
Taylor says she’s excited by Toronto’s expanding retail scene, mentioning “a lot of women starting and opening brands in the neighbourhood.”
She highlights Kaelen Haworth of Absolutely Fabrics in particular, who just opened up a massive flagship store down the street in Summerhill.
“My goal with retail is always to open in places where I’m going to learn consistent information, and where I’m going to understand the life of the person walking in,” she says of the neighbourhood.
The new store, which opens Oct. 1, is smaller than the brand’s other two stores, but Taylor says there are still plenty of similarities.
“I love building retail that feels residential. This store has a fireplace, and I’m painting a painting that will go above it. There’s also a pretty marble little kitchen that has a big sink, where we plan on putting fun bottles of palomas and things like that for parties and to make the whole space feel interconnected.”
Taylor may have moved to New York, but she’s clearly never forgotten about Toronto. She started local diaper donation charity Baby Love with her best friend, Julia Miller Black, and they’ve made three million diapers over the past few years to donate to Toronto families. And just last year, she decided to launch an initiative to support the next generation of Toronto designers at her own high school, Havergal College.
“I started so late. I did an undergrad in finance, and I didn’t even know what a fashion degree looked like,” Taylor says. “I wanted to see if I could help kids learn about fashion earlier.”
Tanya Taylor Fashion Lab now teaches Grade 10 and 11 students all the basics of sewing, pattern-making, draping and more.
It’s an education she got much later in life, one that started when she signed up to be a student designer in the student fashion show at McGill University.
“I signed up to be a student model, and then I volunteered to make the clothes. They didn’t really ask to see sketches or anything because they knew me, but they should have,” she laughs. “I really didn’t know how to make anything; I went to Canadian Tire and bought a $49 sewing machine that didn’t even have a backstitch on it, which meant that all my seams were basically open.”
That year, Taylor says, she had just gone through a bad breakup, so she sat in her room and spent the entire year making dresses and figuring it all out. Her mom saw her struggling and convinced her to actually go to school for fashion, and so Taylor made her way to New York to attend Parsons School of Design.
And, in a very New York story, Taylor ended up landing an internship under Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen when The Row, their fashion label, was just beginning.
“They were building two brands, contemporary and designer, and I got to see how you think in two different ways. And I also got to see what a small business looked like in fashion,” she recalls.
“At the time I was 25, and I didn’t see a lot of 25-year-olds designing for 25-year-olds, especially women,” she says. “So that’s where Tanya Taylor started.”
The brand grew from one employee, who helped Taylor take sketches and make garments in the Garment District, to a team of 45. And two years ago, she launched a spinoff brand, funky eveningwear shop Delphine.
“I have a relentless interest in making things; when I have free time, that’s what I do. And you can kind of see that in my job,” Taylor says.
The dual brands have had many a celebrity moment over the years, from Taylor Swift wearing a Delphine dress just this past summer while out in London to Rashida Jones landing on the US Weekly “Worst Dressed” list in a Tanya Taylor design (“I thought she looked so good. I was like, I’ll take it!”). But the standout moment was with Michelle Obama, who really championed the brand, especially during her time as First Lady.
“She wore us 13 times, and when the Trudeaus were going to Washington, her team called me and said, ‘You have 48 hours and we need you to make a daytime look,’” she recalls. “It was such a whirlwind, but it was just fun!”
Looking forward, Taylor says the brand will expanding into bags and shoes for the first time, including a collaboration with Montreal’s Black Suede Studio. And while she notes she doesn’t want to open too many stores, she can see two or three more coming to Toronto in the next decade.
For now, you can browse the new Tanya Taylor Summerhill store at 5 Scrivener Sq.