Category Archives: Canadian dress

Canadian Fashion Connection – Five Believers’ Batiks Ltd.

Posted on 2018-04-12 by Jonathan

At first glance, this looks like a brown and yellow batik-print button-front maxi dress from the 1970s, but its much more than that… In 1966 middleweight boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter and his friend John Artis were driving in a car … Continue reading →

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More Master John

Posted on 2018-03-06 by Jonathan

Last year I wrote about legendary Toronto bootmaker Master John. Fashion journalist Nathalie Atkinson also wrote about him as part of her ‘Clearly Canadian’ series on Canadian fashion design for the Globe and Mail. We were both working on shoestrings … Continue reading →

Posted in Canadian dress, Shoes | 1 Comment

Canadian Fashion Connection – Pierre Paris

Posted on 2018-02-14 by Jonathan

Pierre Paris was originally from the Basque region of southern France. After immigrating to Canada, he located in Vancouver and opened a boot-making business in 1907 where he specialized in making logging boots for the booming lumber trade. The company … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection – Greb Industries

Posted on 2018-02-04 by Jonathan

In 1910, the Berlin Shoe Manufacturing Co. was incorporated. Two years later, Charles E. Greb and his son Erwin acquired the company. In 1916, when the city of Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener, the factory was renamed the Greb Shoe … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection – M I K A E L D

Posted on 2018-02-01 by Jonathan

Mikael Derderian was born in Beirut, the son of a Canadian-Armenian father and Lebanese mother who worked designing and manufacturing children’s clothing. The Derderian family immigrated to Montreal when war broke out in Lebanon in the 1990s. Graduating with a … Continue reading →

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Canadian Beauty – Mary Pickford

Posted on 2018-01-29 by Jonathan

‘America’s Sweetheart’ – the Canadian born actress, Mary Pickford  (born Gladys Smith in Toronto, Ontario in 1892) was also one of Hollywood’s film pioneers, along with fellow Canadians Mack Sennett, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Marie Dressler, and others. In … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection -Trans Canada Airline Stewardess Uniform

Posted on 2018-01-19 by Jonathan

In 1938 Lucile Garner became Trans Canada Airline’s (renamed Air Canada in 1965) first female employee. Like their American counterparts, Canadian stewardesses had to be  trained as nurses, but also single, meet strict height and weight requirements, and be between the … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection – The Golden Lion, 1847 – 1898

Posted on 2018-01-15 by Jonathan

English-born Robert Walker moved to York (Toronto) in 1829 and by 1836 was operating a dry goods store on King street. By 1847 he had built a stone-fronted store and two years later adopted a golden lion as its symbol. … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection – Donald Campbell

Posted on 2018-01-08 by Jonathan

Born in Cobourg Ontario in c. 1934, Campbell trained in fashion at Ryerson Polytechnic before apprenticing with John Cavanagh in London from 1954-1956. Campbell opened his own dressmaking workshop in Bayswater Road in November 1957, but by the fall of … Continue reading →

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Canadian Fashion Connection – Bojana Sentaler

Posted on 2018-01-07 by Jonathan

Born in Belgrade, Bojana Sentaler came to Canada at the age of eight and grew up in Toronto. She earned a business degree from the Schulich School of Business at York University but credits a chance encounter with Karl Lagerfeld … Continue reading →

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