(Photo: Ashley Satchell)
On a recent business trip to Toronto, I had the pleasure of meeting with Danielle Meder, the lovely fashion illustrator who runs one of the most well-known Canadian fashion blogs, Final Fashion. She was great, and answered all types of questions from how she first started her blog, to who her favourite Canadian fashion designers are. Here’s a look into our conversation (after the jump).
Why and when did you start your blog?
It started out when I was in school just as a fashion student blog, back in February 2005. After I graduated from fashion school, I didn’t have people I had things in common with whom I could hang out with on a casual basis, so I used the blog to start Toronto Fashion Bloggers Brunch, which turned into a series of 16 monthly brunches that coalesced the fashion blog community in Toronto. I basically made my post-university friends on the basis of these brunches.
It started getting more and more popular, and more and more people started blogs, and started wanting to come to the brunches—even some PR people would want to come to the brunches and designers would show up with invitations to their shows. By the end it became almost a circus because there were so many people at the brunch that it became impossible to introduce to everyone to everybody else. And that’s when I decided: ‘This is done!” I killed it because it got too popular, and when things get too popular, they’re not fun anymore.
What did you do at the Fashion Bloggers Brunches?
We’d just basically have brunch together—there was no agenda. The cool thing about fashion bloggers is that they’re crazy about fashion, they tend to be incredibly articulate people, very creative people, and they tend to have a lot of opinions, which makes for really lively conversations. The core group of us became hard fast buds and it was sort of like a sit-com where you have your regular people, and then the guest stars who occasionally come on. Part of what the fashion blogger community has that the media community in Toronto captured is that we’re all friends and all work together, but we try to fight the tendency to become cliquish. It’s always about drawing in new bloggers and meeting new people.
When did Final Fashion become what it is now?
In may 2006, I moved it from blogspot to its own dedicated site, finalfashion.ca. May 2006 was the month after I graduated from fashion school, so it was sort of like a transition when I decided, ‘OK, I’m committed to the blog’.
So is that when it really started taking off?
www.dmbootdesign.com
No, it really started taking off around November 2005. Around that time, I was making online friends with fashion bloggers in the States. The biggest blog at that time was Manolo’s Shoe Blog, and I was friends with another girl who was a University of Chicago philosophy major, and she had sort of a thinky, brainy, kind of blog. We started putting on blog carnivals, which are more common now, but back then, we took them from other genres of blogging. We had a blog carnival that we called Black Friday Blogging. Black Friday of course is the Friday after American Thanksgiving and is famous for having lots of sales—it’s the day when everybody tramples over one another at Wal-Mart. So we had a whole week of blogging where we all linked to each others’ posts and talked on a similar subject, which was basically the non-consumerist side of fashion. Just because so many blogs were participating in that particular event and it was such an involved week-long conversation, that’s when I really saw Final Fashion go from having no comments and no readers, to having a readership and having comments.
What are you favourite items of clothing right now?
I am big into boots. I would say that my favourite item of clothing right now would have to be the Doc Marten boots that I designed. I’m also big into jeans, I love them and keep them for a long time, as many years as I possibly can. I’m also a sucker for basic black jackets. I used to call it my urban uniform: boots, jeans, black jacket. And that’s just what I wear every day.
Who are your favourite Canadian fashion designers?
Jeremy Laing: he was the speaker when I graduated from Ryerson fashion school, and he gave a very candid speech that really struck me at the time. He’s very brave with promoting himself. He doesn’t get all hung up about his Canadian-ness. He’s also what I would describe as a designer’s designer: I can see that what really interests him are things like pattern-making, the shapes of garments, you can see the little details in the things that he plays with and uses are really technical, which is something that I find really inspiring.
I also really admire Rad Hourani. He’s just got such an uncompromising look. It’s amazing that all you really need one great idea and you execute it really well, you can go far on that for your whole life. I mean, what does Diane von Furstenberg do, right? You take one really good idea, you execute it really well, and you bring it across with a lot of personality and passion, and Rad does that really well.
I’ll be back again, thanks for the info.