Vancouver’s Dying Fashion Industry
By Caroline Brown
Illustrations by Ariel Mitchell
Several years ago, I developed a passion for fashion that slowly began to exceed everything else in my life. Like most things that one falls in loves with, I was obsessed, and my desire bled into full-blown fashion idolization. I surrounded myself with fashion as much as I could: I volunteered at fashion weeks throughout the city, attended fashion school, and spent my Sundays on the seventh floor of Vancouver’s Central Library, flipping through designer profiles on Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Dior and Chanel. I started to look around Vancouver to see what my future could entail: the harsh realization is that my dream job simply does not exist in the city that I love.
It is hard to work in Vancouver’s fashion industry. There are a handful of labels and even less events and fashion advocacies. Unless one goes searching for the industry, it merely exists on the sidelines, contributing very little to the overall lifestyle of the average Vancouverite. What happened to Vancouver’s fashion industry? Why isn’t it thriving as well as our east coast siblings, Montreal and Toronto?
Historically, Vancouver has at points had a bubbling fashion industry. Until 1995, there were tailors that produced bespoke clothing and factories that
produced clothes for the masses. However, Canada’s garment manufactures soon began to experience the negative effects of liberated borders. The World Trade Organization, (WTO) comprise of over 150 countries, changed its Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) to the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC). The former arrangement had allowed importing countries to place quantitative restrictions on certain textiles and clothing products to protect local production. However, once the latter was implemented, countries could no longer apply quotas and tariffs on imported textile and clothing products.
As a result, local apparel manufacturing shut down or was relocated to low wage countries. Prior to 1995, Winnipeg was home to Canada’s largest manufacturing sector and was the province’s second largest industry, with 115 companies and employing over 9,000 workers. Since then, over 4,000 jobs have been lost and a major training center for sewing machine operators was closed. The loss of this large sewing training facility — and a massively decreased manufacturing sector — have contributed to Canada’s industry dilemma: a lack of skilled labour.
The problem is an also overarching one in Vancouver specifically: Nicole Bridger, who owns a local company of the same name, and Tom Duguid, creative director of Arc’teryx, are two Vancouver fashion designers and, in our conversations, both concurred that there simply weren’t enough skilled sewers in the city.
The simple problem is that Canadian children are not bred to be tailors and seamstresses. This fact is reflected in The Political Economy of Manitoba: in 1980, which was Manitoba’s manufacturing heyday, 70 per cent of the industry’s workers were immigrants. In Vancouver, Arc’teryx, a local multi-million outdoor apparel company, had to stop producing all of their products locally in 2003.
To keep up with their sales and their competition, Arc’teryx opened plants in China, Vietnam and New Zealand. Today, 30 per cent of their products are made at their factory in Burnaby, while the rest is outsourced. As for Bridger, whose company is worth a million dollars, 90 per cent of her garments are made in Vancouver, while the other 10 per cent are produced in oversea fair trade factories.
So how does this problem affect Vancouver’s small fashion industry? It creates a barrier for new designers by restricting them to producing designs with their own hands. For first-time designers, a small line is beneficial for showcasing a small range that emphasizes a unique skill or direction that will entice buyers; however once a label expands, more hands are needed.
For new designers and small companies, outsourcing is painful: the fabrics, finishings and garments must be ordered in very large quantities and can create oversupply. Furthermore, outsourcing causes environmental degradation through the shipment of textiles and garments, and the ethics surrounding the work environments of overseas factory workers are often brought into question.
Despite the 12 sewers that Nicole Bridger currently employs, she is looking for another five, and acknowledges that when employable labour in Vancouver is low, some local designers find women who work out of their houses. This labour void in Vancouver’s fashion industry reduces its potential to help foster new designers, and further reduces Vancouver’s chances of creating a garment district like that found in New York City. Since reducing skilled labour, Vancouverites mainly dress in American designs, which are made in Asia. All the proof we need is a look at the corporations that are housed up and down Robson Street; better yet, read the labels on your clothes and dwell for a second on the geographical distance your garment travels.
Another issue with the Vancouver fashion industry is the lack of support and funding that it receives. In the 80s, the cigarette company Manatee gave out fashion grants annually to local designers. Between the years of 1989 and 1996, Rozemerie Cueves — founder of local company Jacequline Conoir — was awarded an annual grant between $10,000 and $30,000, to which she has in part attributed her success as a Vancouver designer. This grant no longer exists since the Tobacco Products Control Act was put into place in 1995 by the federal government; tobacco companies didn’t see the need to continue to award local designers when they were no longer allowed to advertise their involvement.
Both the federal and provincial government were unable to find a replacement for these grants and young designers became sorely unsupported by our government. To this day, our federal government does not consider fashion an art, and therefore, designers are not able to apply for government art grants. However, recently, some provincial governments have acknowledged the need for funds and are starting to reallocate money to the fashion industry.
In 2009, Montreal’s provincial government gave a $1.5 million dollar grant to two fashion companies — Rudsak and Harricana — to expand their exports. BC’s government does not consider fashion an art and has yet to supply government funding to fashion houses for a financial boost. This past winter, however, BC’s government, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and Lululemon’s founder Chip Wilson and his wife Shannon came together to fund a $36 million dollar project for a new School of Design at the university. The website describes the development of the school as a way to “solidify the future of BC’s technical apparel industry.”
While at first glance, this school seems as if it will remobilize Vancouver’s apparel industry, some are skeptical: there is criticism in the industry that Lululemon is building a design school to further develop their company by hand crafting technical designers to their needs. Whether or not this is true, an influx of capital and community moral would do well for Vancouver. The School of Design and its graduates could change the average Vancouverite’s perception of the local fashion industry and help it regain the credibility it needs to survive.
The City of Toronto provides recent graduates with an option to apply for a spot in the fashion incubator, a design space with sewing equipment. Designers pay a low rental fee of $275/month and are also provided with a mentor who helps the designer develop business and professional skills to survive in the industry. The incubator is a non-profit organization that is sponsored by the likes of the City of Toronto, Industry Canada, and FLARE Magazine.
The program boasts a 75 per cent survival rate among its alumni after three years in business, compared to the 37 per cent rate among those that go out on their own; it counts designers such as David Dixon and Wendy Wong/House of Spy as alumni. In recent years, Vancouver fashion advocates have tried to develop a similar opportunity for new fashion graduates in the past. Unfortunately, they could never raise the necessary funding.
In the 1990s, Apparel BC — a non-profit organization — put on local fashion events, supported local designers, and acted as a lobbyist and fashion liaison between the industry and the local government. Its agenda was to create communication within the industry, while providing support outside of it. However, in the early 2000s, local fashion companies could no longer allocate funds to the NGO because of increased competition from WTO’s open borders agreement, and so Apparel BC had to shut its doors.
Since then, the local fashion industry has dispersed, and there is far less community support. For example, BC Fashion Week — a media event for local designers — was dismantled a couple years ago. As for Vancouver Fashion Week, it is highly frowned upon in the industry; no local designers will show at the event, causing the organizer to seek out naive foreign designers to present. Recently, two other new fashion events have come up in Vancouver: Eco-Fashion Week and Vancouver Alternative Fashion Week. However, without one event that can consolidate all designers, community support is mixed and divided, a problem that such a small industry should not be facing.
Another non-profit advocate for the apparel industry is the Canadian Apparel Federation. However, they predominately focus on east coast designers, leaving Vancouver with little support. When you look at their website, the kind of dated clothes that were shown at your mom’s tupperware-style parties in the 90s look back. It makes it seem like the Canadian Apparel Federation is run by a bunch of older women who have a dated eye for fashion and are advocating for the wrong brands — not what Canada’s already waning fashion industry needs.
The last issue contributing to Vancouver’s weak fashion industry is the way designers develop their business. Since the advent of open borders, Vancouver designers should be developing a niche business that will complement the daily lifestyle of the average Vancouverite or Canadian. This niche would hopefully set them apart from their foreign competitors and build them up as a recognizable brand. Successful local brands like Nicole Bridger, Arc’teryx, Lululemon, and Aritiza embody a certain characteristic of a typical Vancouverite and have built their companies around these values and traits.
Vancouverites are individuals who define themselves, as yogis, die-hard skiers, devout recyclers, all the while being conscious of their fashion choices. New designers who understand this complex leisure lifestyle can develop a brand that combines this paragon of function and ethics. Creating a fashion industry that centers on the ideologies of versatility, functionality and strong ethics could grow a local industry and gain the respect of the government and bankers — and Vancouver’s fashion industry could sure use their help.
