Fashion Art Toronto, S/S 2026: the coats know where they are, the photographers behave themselves, and the prosecco is — fine, the prosecco is fine.
TORONTO — My lawyer's name is Geoffrey. He wears fleece. Not ironic fleece, not heritage fleece, not the Loro Piana cashmere fleece the Milanese aperitivo crowd has recently and ill-advisedly reclaimed — Geoffrey wears a navy Patagonia zip-up to professional consultations, which tells you everything you need to know about Geoffrey, about Geoffrey's quality of life, and about the particular circumstances that found me in the customs hall at Pearson International at seven in the morning, in last season's Valentino opera coat, drinking duty-free Veuve from the bottle in a manner one agent described as "not customary" and I maintain was the only sane response available to a reasonable woman.
I cannot discuss what transpired. Geoffrey has been very clear on this. What I can tell you is that it involved a photographer, a venue in Milan, a half-glass of prosecco that found itself in motion, and a sequence of events my publicist is characterizing as "a passionate misunderstanding rooted in artistic temperament." What Geoffrey is characterizing it as is "don't leave the country" — except I was already in Canada by the time Geoffrey finished the sentence, which is either excellent intuition or a misunderstanding about which direction "don't leave" applied to.
The details are sub judice. The leather jacket — the one that is vintage Prada, that is absolutely Prada, that I will hear no further discussion about — came with me. One travels with one's trophies.
I am in Toronto for Fashion Art Toronto, officially described as "a multidisciplinary festival celebrating the convergence of art and fashion," and which I am less officially describing as the place Milan sends you when Milan needs a minute. The Canadians, to their credit, seem thrilled to have me. Several people at the press registration asked if they could photograph me, and I said yes, because in this country there are apparently consequences for photographers who do not move when asked, and I am newly committed to jurisdictions that enforce this.
The hotel room has a west-facing window, so the evening light came in sideways the way it does in Brera — briefly, brutally, on schedule. I looked at my phone. Marco had not texted. Marco never texts first. This is partly his personality and partly, I suspect, his understanding that if I wanted to be contacted I would have made contact easier. I have not made contact easier. I have made contact essentially impossible by being in a different country and telling only Geoffrey where I am. Marco is resourceful. Marco is not resourceful in Canadian.
This is fine. This is exactly as I intended. I poured the minibar Prosecco into the hotel glass — Toronto minibar Prosecco, a category of object — and went to find the fashion.
Fashion Art Toronto takes over several venues in the King West district, which is Toronto's attempt at the Marais — same general idea, better hardware stores, worse wine, more apologies. The main runway show was held in a converted factory building that was now an event space with exposed brick and that particular smell of ambition and structural instability you associate with everything interesting ever built by someone under forty with insufficient capitalization.
I arrived late, which is correct. I was seated in the third row, which is not. But the woman in my second-row seat was wearing a full-length puffer coat — indoors, in May — and I decided the universe was protecting me from something.
The show itself — Théodore Arsenault, Montréal, whose name I had not previously encountered but have since committed to memory — was, and I say this with the specific reluctance of a woman who did not come to Toronto to be impressed, who arrived in Toronto on the explicit understanding that she would not be impressed, who had structured her entire week around the assumption of disappointment: extraordinary.
The collection was built around the Canadian wilderness as silhouette: elongated coats with the slow, gathered weight of something that has been living in a forest for a long time and seen things; asymmetrical hemlines that fell like waterlines; a palette of late-autumn grey and the specific green of a lake that has not yet been warm enough to swim in. I sat up slightly straighter in my third-row seat, which I would not have done for anything less than a Montréalais.
There was a coat. There is always a coat, in the collections that matter. This one was charcoal double-faced cashmere, with a collar that rose to the ears and fell to the collarbone in a single sweep of terrible, gorgeous impracticality, and I thought: I would never wear this in Milan. In Milan in June the heat is a physical oppression, and the Milanese do not wear things that suggest they might need protecting from the elements. The Milanese wear things that suggest they command the elements.
But here — here, with the grey sky through the factory skylights and the particular loneliness of a runway show in a country where I know almost no one and my lawyer has my passport — the coat made a kind of sense. A coat for a woman who is somewhere she did not choose to be. A coat for exile.
I bought it at the post-show presentation. I paid an amount that Geoffrey would characterize as "inconsistent with our current financial posture." Geoffrey can zip up his fleece.
The installation space was harder. Not difficult-art hard. Earnest-art hard — which is to say, sincere, and sincerity is the one allergen I have never developed an immunity to, which is why I avoid it as a general policy.
The piece was by a Toronto artist named Mira Leblanc, and it was a room filled with garments hung from ceiling-height wire, each one tagged with a handwritten note about who had worn it and when and why they'd let it go. A bridesmaid dress from 1994. A security guard's jacket. A wedding suit donated "because he died and it didn't seem right to keep it in the closet."
I walked through it slowly, which is not my standard pace. I was wearing, as it happens, the leather jacket. The possibly-Prada, definitely-not-Zara, absolutely-Prada leather jacket I found at a market near the canal in Milan — in the presence of Marco, who had just said that I looked exactly the same as when he'd last seen me, which is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me and also, apparently, the thing I think about most when I am trying not to think about Milan.
A woman next to me — nice, Canadian, wearing what I will diplomatically describe as an aspirational parka — asked if I was all right.
I told her I was twenty-nine. She accepted this. Canadians accept things.
Outside the installation I took out my phone again. Still nothing from Marco. He has my number. He has always had my number. He has my address in Milan, the name of my preferred bar in Brera, and the general understanding that I am easier to find when I am not looking to be found. This is a system that has worked for us for — some years. A number of years I will not specify, because the number is not the point. The point is the system. The point is that he doesn't reach out, and I don't reach out, and we continue to exist in the same city, occasionally the same bar, occasionally on the same side of a conversation neither of us is willing to finish.
Except I am not in the same city anymore.
I put the phone away and went to the hotel bar to drink something cold, Canadian, and restorative.
The bar was called something involving "Junction" or "Collective" — one of those words Toronto uses to indicate a space is trying. The bartender was very good and very earnest and made me a gin gimlet with house-pressed lime that was, I will admit, nearly as good as the one I have been drinking for twenty years at a small bar near the Navigli. Almost. Different gin, different water, different latitude. A gimlet that knows it is not in Milan.
I drank it. I ordered another. I did not text Marco.
I want to be very clear about this: I looked at my phone, and I thought about the negroni bar in Brera, and the way he said I looked the same, and the way he went off to his "thing" — Marco always has a thing; the thing is never a therapist — and I did not text him. What I did instead was open my airline app.
Milan, June 19th. Fashion Week Global's Menswear S/S 2027 runs the 19th through the 23rd. The boys will be in their beautiful, soft, slightly undone tailoring; they will cry in their convertibles over whatever they are currently crying about; I will be there; Geoffrey will have sorted whatever Geoffrey needs to sort; the charcoal coat will come with me; the leather jacket will come with me; and everything will be as it should be.
Marco knows I'll be there. Marco knows this the way he knows everything about me, which is to say: by understanding that I always come back to the things that make me unreasonable, because the things that make me unreasonable are also the things that make me whatever I am.
That is not, strictly speaking, a fashion column. But then, neither is being in Toronto.
I'll be in Milan June 19th for Menswear S/S 2027. Geoffrey says I will not. Geoffrey says many things. Marco is not invited and also already knows.
Kisses, -K
Kharla is the Fashion Director of IRREVERENT Magazine. She remains, as ever, twenty-nine. Fashion Art Toronto is real. The vintage Prada leather jacket is also real, in the sense that she insists it is. IRREVERENT cannot verify the photographer's whereabouts, the airline app's June 19th confirmation, or whether Geoffrey owns any garment that is not fleece.