Fashion Design Council of Canada

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The Fashion Design Council of Canada (FDCC) is a non-government, not-for-profit organization co-founded in 1999 by Pat McDonagh and Robin Kay.^[1][2] Their mission is to showcase Canadian fashion design nationally and internationally as well as introducing foreign designers to local Canadian markets. The FDCC aims to connect "designers, media, buyers, sponsors, and industry."^[1]

The current president of the FDCC is one of the founders Robin Kay. Joe Mimran, fashion designer best known for creating Club Monaco and Joe Fresh, is the current chairman of FDCC's board of directors. The FDCC's head office is currently located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Robin Kay, on behalf of the FDCC has been working tirelessly for the past several years to establish a first-ever sustainable mandate and federal charter that officially endorses the fashion industry in Canada as a crucial contributor to the country’s economic and cultural landscape.

Robin Kay[]

Robin Kay was born in 1950 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. She left Winnipeg in 1965 to begin her life defining it her way. After travelling to Europe to work in retail, Kay returned to Canada, this time heading straight to Toronto where after a few stints working in major department stores, she decided it was time to work for herself. It was a lesson learned growing up in Winnipeg in a family of entrepreneurs where the how-to’s of business were schooled upon her simply by her being there, an education through osmosis, saying, “I grew up in a very commercial environment. My grandfather was a cooper, a barrel maker, my father didn’t go to school, he joined his father. From barrels they went into steel drums, the company then grew into plastics etc. So I really heard all of that. I learned the intensity of making, buying, selling.” Robin Kay founded the ‘Robin Kay’ brand in Toronto in 1976. She wasn’t a designer but she describes herself as “instinctively” knowing how to sell.

Kay took a shop on Bellair in Yorkville (an upscale area of Toronto), painted it all white, it had a little neon ‘Robin’ sign on it. She then went over to Spadina (Toronto’s historic garment district) and got beautiful, never before worn army, navy clothes, carpenter shirts and carpenter overalls. And then one day, not long after, a woman walked through the door carrying a cotton sweater. She fell in love with that cotton sweater. The woman was from Switzerland and she made these pure cotton sweaters on the Dubied hand knitting machine. She and Robin became partners. Kay then opened a factory in downtown Toronto followed by a big knitting mill. (The brand) grew to 22-23 shops, 600 wholesale accounts across North America.

For someone who wasn’t a designer or trained as one when she started, she was able to tap into the style of the time, perhaps even before its time whether it was a simple white t-shirt made from organic cotton before ‘organic’ became fashionable or becoming a champion of sustainable fashion, making sweaters from unbleached and recycled yarn at a time when sustainable fashion wasn’t even a thing. For a while she and her business thrived. Until it didn’t. Debt and the economy would bring testing times in the form of a business partner to help the Robin Kay branch out. For someone who preferred to be self-sufficient, the partnership would prove to be misaligned with Kay’s life vision. She "lost the business to the Canadian firm Wing Son Garments", which she had taken on as a partner. The firm would do an about-turn and sever all ties with the woman whose brand bore her name. The new owner would own the ‘Robin Kay’ name and would eventually change the brand name to ‘RK’. Three months after her ouster, Kay was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It would take Robin Kay a year to heal and recover but she would never lose sight of her raison d'être--to champion Canada's fashion talent.

After given the all-clear, Robin was invited to chair a small provincial not-for-profit organisation called Designers Ontario which would inspire in her a need to create a national entity with a mission to champion the Canadian fashion industry. In 1999 she established the Fashion Design Council of Canada to build a stage on which Canadian designers and brands would be nurtured, supported, and celebrated.  At the same time Kay had the idea to showcase Canadian designers with a "fashion week" to sit alongside the major events in New York, London, and Paris. Toronto Fashion Week, under the guidance and promotion of the FDCC, held its first event in 2000. Toronto Fashion Week was a coup for the city and the country. It would become the largest fashion week in Canada with its first major and title sponsor, L’Oréal, in 2002.

In its decade under Kay, the event would grow in profits and prominence attracting global attention and major sponsors such as LG and World Mastercard. TFW would also grow to be the 2nd largest fashion week in North America, after New York Fashion Week. Robin Kay sold TFW to IMG in 2012 with the hopes that with IMG's vast resources and reach TFW would continue to grow and would play a dominant role in the fashion world. After selling TFW, Kay stepped down from her role as Executive Director of TFW. Telling the Globe and Mail newspaper, "The purpose in selling the event to IMG was to build out Toronto to more global exposure. This was the promise of IMG.” She went on to tell the paper, “IMG is a billion-dollar global corporation. And they failed.” But for a while, Kay took it as a personal failure saying, “I have to stand up sometimes and say 'look, Robin, you can’t look backwards, you have to look forwards.’ Because I am troubled by the sale of fashion week to IMG. That was a total letdown. I sold it so well financially. It was an excellent event that only needed tweaking. I regret that, that I wasn’t paying more attention. I believed IMG because they had 28 fashion weeks and they knew what to do , but they didn’t.”

With the FDCC, Robin Kay has been a vocal advocate for young Canadian designers trying to make their way through ever-changing business models and retail demands, and how they survive in a country where fashion is yet to be seen as art. Unlike Britain and France, Canada is the only G7country that does not include fashion as a cultural industry. Leaving Canadian designers and the industry for which they work and their nation's identity to which they contribute, essentially "orphans" as Kay describes it.

Without much, if any, provincial and federal support, designers in Canada are swimming upstream in a world where the demands of a fashion house are like a pressure cooker for already-established brands, let alone those that are still trying to find their feet on unsure ground. And so the FDCC and Robin Kay in particular, are fighting tooth and nail for them, travelling the world carrying the Canadian flag so that they are recognised and supported. And for Ms. Kay it’s personal. She’s been there. She knows what it takes to survive and succeed. She knows the pressures and pitfalls.

Kay is currently working on projects to establish a first-ever sustainable mandate and federal charter that officially endorses the fashion industry in Canada as a crucial contributor to the country’s economic and cultural landscape. Through her work with George Brown College, Kay is helping to educate designers of the future to become independent, creative, and confident artists that will add to the fabric that is Canadian culture and design. She is also an active advocate for working with organisations like the David Suzuki Foundation to find new solutions that will enable Canadian designers and brands to have available to them, new forms of creating that are not harmful to the environment.

Robin Kay believes in, and has worked tirelessly to promote, the world class talent that is inherent in the fabric of Canada’s fashion industry. It has been, and continues to be, her mission to find solutions to the challenges they face as well as mentoring them to become successes in the business of fashion.

Robin Kay Professional Timeline:

• 2020
  • The Fashion Design Council of Canada unveils new website with a revitalized ‘call to arms’ supporting Canada’s fashion industry in the time of COVID-19.
• 2018
  • RK is presented with the Toronto Fashion Academy International Fashion Encounter Lifetime Achievement Award.
• 2017
  • RK is awarded with the Fashion Group International Visionary Award.
  • Taylor Brydges Publishes Made in Canada: the strategies, spaces and working lives of independent designers in the Canadian fashion system; includes RK.
• 2016 - 2019
  • The FDCC submits official proposal on behalf of the fashion design community to Ontario’s Minister of Tourism, the Honorable Michael Coteau, on the province’s ‘Core Elements of Ontario’s Culture Strategy’ to include fashion as a “creative expression” and part of what, as outlined by the Province, “makes arts and culture in Ontario distinct and remarkable.” The FDCC emphasizes the need to recognize the cultural and economic contribution from Canada’s fashion community to gain government support.
  • The FDCC actively lobbies the Canadian government to recognize and include ‘fashion’ in its outlook and policies in the wake of the Honorable Minister of Canadian Heritage Mélanie Joly announcement of Ottawa’s strategy to promote a sustainable economy by recognizing the cultural and commercial importance of Canada’s creative industries.
  • RK goes to Buckingham Palace for The Fashion Exchange initiative; she brings Lucian Matiss and Triarchy to London.
  • Ottawa announces the Creative Export Strategy including a Canada Export Fund of $125 million over five years in which ‘fashion’ is recognized and eligible to access funding under the ‘Design’ category. This followed the Honorable Minister Mélanie Joly’s announcement of the Canadian Government’s vision for and commitment to “Canada’s cultural and creative industries” in their Creative Canada policy.
  • The FDCC adopts the Swedish Fashion Council’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action presented to the United Nations.
  • The FDCC commissions and conducts an extensive Angus-Reid Survey, asking thousands of Canadians one simple question: do you agree or disagree - the fashion industry is a pillar of culture and commerce?
  • RK joins George Brown College’s Fashion Program as Sector Liaison and is tasked with improving curriculum programing, ensuring students graduate with the real-world skills needed to succeed in the global world of fashion.
• 2015
  • The FDCC commissions Nordicity Data Study on the “direct economic impact of Canada’s fashion design industry” to Minister Joly as Ottawa reviews Canada’s cultural policy. The submission includes a letter requesting the Office of the Minister and the Government of Canada to “recognize the fashion industry as a cultural industry, like TV, film, and music; to support and promote the fashion industry domestically and abroad; to invest in the fashion industry in order to strengthen the economic competitiveness of the sector”.
  • RK co-produces RE\SET 001 Fashion Event with THE COLLECTIONS at the Great Hall.
• 2014
  • RK is awarded the prestigious Icons of Empowerment Award from the annual Fashions for Passions Gala.
• 2012 – 2016
  • RK sells TFW event and is retained by IMG Global, who owns New York Fashion Week, as Creative Director.
  • World MasterCard is secured as the main corporate sponsor; TFW is named World MasterCard Fashion Week.
• 2010
  • The FDCC launches MERCEDES BENZ START-UP.
• 2008
  • LG Electronics Canada becomes new title sponsor, TFW is renamed LG Fashion Week, taking over from L’Oréal Paris.
• 2002
  • The FDCC signs L’Oréal Paris as title sponsor for Toronto Fashion Week (TFW), which is renamed L’Oréal Fashion Week.
  • Twinning of two cities – Toronto and Milan: Italian fashion house, Missoni, elects Toronto’s Fashion Week to showcase a retrospective commemorating their 50-year anniversary. The event was seen as a recognition of the formal partnership between the cities of Milan and Toronto, and to endorse trade relations in the area of fashion.
  • RK launches initiative with City of Toronto to bring European buyers and media to Toronto Fashion.
  • RK brings Canadian designers to Milan.
• 1999
  • RK is asked to chair Designers Ontario and changes its name to Fashion Designer Council.
    • The Fashion Design Council of Canada is a non-government, not-for-profit organization whose mission is to showcase Canadian fashion design nationally and internationally as well as introduce foreign designers to local Canadian markets.
  • RK travels to Bhutan and is inspired to start TO Fashion week.
  • RK travels to main four fashion cities to meet with the respective organizer of their respective fashion weeks for insight.
  • In October, RK launches Canada’s biggest and most successful fashion event, Toronto Fashion Week.
  • RK embarks on a coast-to-coast designer outreach, including international invitations from countries like Colombia.
• 1998
  • After 25 years of business, Robin Kay loses label via a hostile takeover.
• 1985
  • The Robin Kay Clothing Company expands to 22 retail outlets in Canada and 600 wholesale accounts across the United States.
• 1976 • Robin Kay opens a lifestyle boutique in Toronto’s upscale Yorkville neighbourhood selling eco-conscious, local artisan crafts, homewares, skincare, and 100% organic cotton products.
  • cut and sewn on Simcoe;
  • then moved to knitting mill in Liberty Village;
  • to keep production local, a factory is erected in downtown Toronto, manufacturing the Robin Kay label exclusively.

Fashion week acquisition by IMG[]

In August 2012, the Fashion Design Council of Canada announced that they had sold Toronto's World MasterCard Fashion Week to the global media business IMG.^[3] In a press release at the time, Robin Kay said, "I am confident that the time is right for IMG to take World MasterCard Fashion Week to the next level."^[3] It was seen as a major coup for the FDCC and Robin Kay whose hard work to build Toronto Fashion Week as a major player in the global fashion calendar was recognised by IMG. As a result of the change of ownership, Robin Kay stepped down from her position as Toronto Fashion Week executive director. However, in the subsequent years, Toronto Fashion Week has waned both in public support and private sponsorship.

References[]

External links[]

• Official website