Toronto’s 7th Annual Alternative Arts and Fashion week starts today.

You’ll find 200 national and international fashion designers, visual artists, bands and performers hosted in a 15,000 square foot warehouse on Sterling Road, where Dundas and College meet.

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Here’s the article from the National Post:

“Any time you want to make a change it’s not going to be easy,” says Vanja Vasic, whose take on fashion is outside the box. “It’s going to be a struggle. I think that Canada is very young still and we do have an issue sometimes supporting our own and I think we’ve always been like that.”

Vasic would know. The 30-year-old is the executive director of Fashion Art Toronto and brains behind FAT Arts and Fashion Week. From its humble beginnings in 2005 as a two-day runway event known as Alternative Fashion Week held in a now-defunct bar on King West, FAT Fashion Week has expanded with more than 200 national and international designers, photographers, musicians, and video and fashion installations exhibiting over four days.

As Vasic sips on her latte in the lounge of the Drake Hotel, it’s obvious that she and FAT Arts and Fashion Week have come a long way from their rebel beginnings, managing to survive Toronto’s predictable fashion sensibilities since FAT’s inception into the Toronto fashion scene.

Inspired by London, England’s alternative fashion scene, Vasic saw FAT as the answer to Toronto’s mainstream, commercially oriented fashion weeks. The goal was to bring in designers who embody alternative concepts, from House of Etiquette, which combines latex in places you would never imagine, to the minimalist designs of Pedram Karimi.

Click here for the full article