THE path TO SUCCESS STARTS WITH investment

BRIGITTE CHARTRAND

“Investing in education will create stronger designers, photographers and creatives and build a community here that can lead to more homegrown opportunities; it will encourage talent to stay in Canada.” BEN BARRY “The fact that fashion is not recognized as ‘culture’ by the federal government is a major challenge. That has done a big disservice to the industry. Fashion is how we express who we are as Canadians; fashion is culture.” SAGE PAUL “We’re really lucky that Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto receives funding from the [Ontario] Arts Council, because it recognizes fashion as an art form that carries on important Indigenous traditions and cultural practices. But on the larger scale of fashion, we need to support our designers by creating the resources for them in the same way that we do for musicians. Musicians are able to apply for funding to produce their albums, and then they go on to a label or other infrastructure to massproduce their albums.”