Brian A. Richards
The marketing guru who’s pumping new life into Toronto’s fashion scene
Richards has a knack for spotting emerging talent. As a co-founder of fashion marketing agency The Collections, he discovered Ellie Mae, who went supernova after Sophie Grégoire Trudeau wore her “Yazmin” jacket to Washington last year. He also hand-picked a roster of edgy young designers to populate Re/Set, the new Canadian designer showcase he launched in February to fill the void left by Fashion Week. “I think you can determine someone’s personality by their outfit choices,” he says. And what does his signature look— gleaned from his Jamaican uncles—say about him? “I get a lot of, ‘Only you could pull that off.’ ”