TIP OF THE COUTURE CAP
Industry veteran Atkin receives Fashion Visionary award at Toronto’s Fashion Week,
Barbara Atkin lives with her husband at the top of a thin, dark flight of stairs that opens up into an exquisitely appointed apartment over a linen store on Bloor St. West.
Naturally, Atkin decorated it herself. As an arbiter of fashion’s next big thing for 28 years, Atkin, the former vice-president of fashion direction at Holt Renfrew, has exquisite taste and, as it turns out, formidable energy.
One question dislodges a Niagara Falls of discourse, tumbling out and curling back on itself as Atkin traces her unique life. There was young mother (Act 1), Holt Renfrew tastemaker (Act 2) and something that is not retirement, but Act 3, which finds her hard at work on a mysterious project she’s not ready to discuss.
Atkin was the recipient Monday — at the start of Toronto Fashion Week — of this year’s Fashion Visionary award from the Toronto chapter of Fashion Group International (FGI) and will serve as an FGI mentor.
Atkin’s most important advice for young adults looking for career direction? Get a pen and paper.
“Sit down and think about the things that make you happy. Don’t think about a job, don’t think about money. What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
The writing it down on paper part is key — there is something about having that list in front of you and spending time with it that brings clarity.
“You will end up writing your own life’s job description,” says Atkin, who did it herself.
Atkin is a culture junkie, devouring magazines, television shows, movies, runway shows and books on art, fashion and street style. She people-watches with intent, reflexively not- ing what everyone is wearing: jeans, running shoes, colour, length, cut.
At Holt Renfrew, it was Atkin’s job to influence seasonal buys and nurture new designers and help direct store merchandising, said Steven Cook, senior vice-president of buying and merchandising at Holt Renfrew.
Atkin said she used to book hotel rooms with twin beds when she travelled to fashion capitals. One bed was for her, the other was for the hundreds of pictures she had to go through each night, of runway shows and street fashions and sometimes store windows. She spent hours sorting pictures into different categories: pants, skirts, colours, and from that she would begin to pull trends.
“I worked in the future. I was predicting how I saw the business going in the next 12 months,” said Atkin.
Atkin was working as a vendor with her first husband, selling Wayne Clarke designs to Holt Renfrew, when Bonnie Brooks, now vice-chair at Hudson’s Bay Co., hired her in 1987.
Brooks was then executive vicepresident of merchandising and marketing for the privately-owned luxury retailer.
“In those days we had some pretty lofty buyers,” said Brooks. “In fact, we had one who lived in Montreal and wore white gloves — a hat and white gloves — when she came to work.
“We needed the fashion office to be grounded in reality and we were, at the time, really developing a whole new market for Holt Renfrew, which was really the workingwoman customer. Up until that time it had been pretty much a carriage-trade business.”
Atkin, who had been a Toronto elementary school teacher before leaving the workforce to look after her young family, threw herself into the role.
It was a dream job for the fashionista, who had embraced the wild styles of the ’60s and ’70s, and who from the age of 2 had been deciding what she would wear.
“When I was 9, my mother said: Barbara, you pick out the wallpaper for my kitchen. She didn’t want an interior decorator to do it. I was 9 and she trusted my taste,” said Atkin.
She wrote a monthly newsletter for Holt Renfrew buyers, on one occasion telling them miniskirts were about to trend. Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune was wearing a miniskirt, and all of North America was watching Vanna White.
She predicted lowrise jeans for women and sneakers for men.
“It’s like playing the stock market. When do you get in? When do you sell,” said Atkin.
She tracked big hair, shift dresses and designer Nicolas Ghesquière before he was snatched up by Balenciaga. “I watched fashion unfold in such an exciting way. We were buying because we felt beauty in the clothes,” said Atkin.
In 2001, she launched the designer lab at Holt Renfrew, featuring exclusive fashions by up-and-coming designers.
Atkin continues to live life ahead of the curve.
Her second husband, an artist, has a studio at the back of the building that houses the linen store, which he has owned for decades.
On the roof of the building is a patio where they spend summer nights, blaring music because no one else lives on the commercial strip they occupy.
“It’s European and very New York, but I don’t know anybody who understands that.”