FASHION FORWARD
While Sage Paul’s day starts like many others—a cup of coffee or tea with husband, Cliff Cardinal, and their pets, Frodo Baggins and Tiga Louise—she’s far from ordinary. A cutting-edge designer, Toronto-based
Paul is exceptionally versatile, working in the realm of both high fashion and costume design, among other endeavors. She explains that her practice is conceptual, creating narrative-driven garments, crafts and costumes for art, fashion, film, TV and theatre. She’s also artistic director of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto.
“My art and design practice is the visual memoir of an urban Indigenous woman, centered around family, sovereignty and resistance for balance. I am inspired by materials from the land, a desire to learn traditional and new practices and resistance against mainstream systems that attempt to erase Indigenous existence,” Paul says. “That’s why I would call my work ‘Authentic Appropriation Anti-fashion.’”
Paul recently designed Unentitled Sunshine. Drenched in what feels like pure gold spun into fabric, the fulllength, 12-gored dress has circle-flounces on the collar and hem, with a plunging neckline, brass snaps and French seams. The inner construction is stabilized with organza. She says, “I built the pattern specifically to fit me. It looks like any garment off the rack at Zara or H&M, but it’s not. And that’s the point of ‘unentitled sunshine.’ To show how capitalism and the fast fashion industry have erased the sacredness and specialness of what we choose to put on our bodies...there is only one pattern for Unentitled Sunshine and the fabric I used was the last bit from a collection I made in 2012...However, the dress holds important knowledge and skill, just like every pair of earrings, piece of tanned hide or ribbon skirt. We are not entitled to these items of dress. They are a gift. Everything is a gift.”
“My style is contemporary, strong, feminine and minimal. I appreciate fine craftsmanship, complex patternmaking and craft that holds purpose or history.” – Sage Paul