I’ve never seen a Rei Kawakubo garment up close, so I had to check out her Comme des Garçons stuff for H&M. She may not be one of my all-time favourite designers since she’s so intellectual and stuff, but she is pretty groundbreaking.

I rolled out of bed around noon and went over to the Bloor Street H&M to discover that almost everything was gone. There were a few normal looking blouses and shirts, but nothing really interesting except for this crazy black dress with deconstructed bodice and scalloped hem. There were a million of them left; nobody wanted them for some reason, so I had to try one on.

It was so wacky that I had to have it since nobody else in Toronto wanted it.

When I went to go pay, I overheard a cashier telling another customer that in the morning, there was a “trampede”. A vision of Clubland girls in too-tight shirts, too-short skirts, and too-tall shoes fighting over avant-garde design went through my head and I totally laughed my head off! I always thought that Comme des Garçons attracted a more sophisticated crowd. Man, that shopgirl was funny! Trampede. Hee-hee!

Anyway, after the trip, I walked past Le Chateau and thought, “Hey, that’s one of Canada’s biggest retail successes. They always recruit new fashion grads, so why don’t they do an H&M-type collaboration with a cool Canadian fashion designer?” Town Shoes has already done it with Philip Sparks and David Dixon, so why doesn’t a Canadian clothing store do it too?