Shine OnCanadian designer Mikhael Kale shows us how he designs a collection
If you don’t work in fashion, you probably don’t realize how much work goes into a single image in a magazine or a dress you see on the runway.
But that’s the point. For audiences, a runway show comes and goes in the blink of an eye, leaving you with images of beautifully-coiffed models in a designer’s latest collection and no inkling of how it came to be. It really only shows one side of the fashion story.
We wanted to get the nitty-gritty details of how it all comes together on the catwalk. How exactly does a designer bring a new collection to life, from start to finish?
We find Canadian womenswear designer Mikhael Kale in his Toronto studio. He’s putting the finishing touches on his spring/summer 2015 collection, which will be premiering at World MasterCard Fashion Week (WMCFW) on Friday, Oct. 24.
There are shreds of fabric, tape measures, spools of thread and Judy dolls strewn around his studio, and paper with design-related scribbles we can’t begin to discern on his drafting tables. He also has an impressive collection of cake stands, which is a whole other story. All of this is evidence that designing a new collection is not for dummies.
It’s not glamorous until show day. In fact, Kale has been working so hard leading up to WMCFW, he only managed to squeeze us in before heading to New York the same evening. So we got right into it and asked him the all-encompassing question of how he puts together a collection from beginning to end.
"It’s important to understand what your angle is and also understand what your concept is for that season,” says Kale of his design process.
This season, his collection was loosely inspired by an unexpected character: his dad.
“My dad actually worked in garden landscaping,” he says. “When it came to this collection, I think I really wanted to go back to that and play with blocks coming together — so it’s very geometric, it’s very clean, it’s got a lot of architectural detail.”
Even though the designer is firmly planted in Canada, the beginnings of his new collections typically start in New York City.
“Sometimes I’ll really start with fabric and just lose myself in fabric research,” he says. “I’ll be in New York. That’s usually where I do my fabric research and I’ll just buy anything I like. I’ll bring it back and I have a limited budget but you can buy a metre or two metres of something, even though it’s incredibly expensive. Bring it back and start playing with it and how you manipulate that fabric can lead to a collection.”
He explains that what we see on the runway during WMCFW is the product of many months of work for hundreds of people who play a role in his collections.
“There are so many people who are involved in creating a collection,” he says. “There are pattern drafters, there are drafters, there are graters. You hire consultants, there are your PR teams, there are your showroom reps. All these people are really, really involved in the process of building a collection because you hear feedback.”
All of this leads up to the glitzy glamorous runway show — but when all is said and done, Kale remembers the real reason he continues to create new collections year after year.
“The process is magic, the interactions are magical and the end product is magical,” says Kale. It really transports and you and nobody knows that more than a woman or client who puts on the dress….To be able to participate in a woman feeling magical, is just beyond.”
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