2011 spring/summer women’s wear collection by Sunny FongSpencer Xiong
When your name's Sunny, you're not exactly channeling the North Pole.
Your inner compass veers more naturally towards hotter climes, for instance Spain and Africa, equatorial countries that Toronto's Sunny Fong says inspired him in designing his latest line for VAWK, the label he reignited last year after a five year hiatus.
Accordingly, the clothes the Project Runway Canada winner presented inside the Art Gallery of Ontario's Walker Court on Monday afternoon as part of his 2011 spring/summer women's wear collection were hot, hot, hot.
Think leather minis so high on the thigh you got a nosebleed just looking at them, and diaphanous cheetah print gowns so revealing they needed to be caged.
The colour palette was part Sahara Desert, part Barcelona at night, with creams, sand browns and black and white predominating.
Textures ranged from the hardness of a croc leather bolero to the gauzy softness of chiffon pantaloons.
Toro Safari, as Fong waggishly called his staged presentation, also featured tight-fitting embossed leather vests that emphasized the bosom with darts and scalloped stitching.
They looked not unlike the breastplates the mythic Amazons wore as armour into battle.
Female empowerment was definitely a theme, here.
The models were not the undernourished, underage waifs typically seen at fashion shows.
Instead, Fong sent women of varying shapes, sizes and ages down a makeshift runway that undulated in imitation of the Frank Gehry staircase overhead.
The underlying message was that his clothes are wearable and accessible to a large swath of the Canadian female population.
Highlights included a nude so-called Zebra dress slashed and layered on the bias to create a series of floating metaphorical stripes that lent the garment a vintage feel, and a laser-cut grey-blue leather mini, what Fong called his Silver Afro Dress, that sexily defined the breasts and the waist using solid pieces of leather sewn to enhance the female shape.
That look was so hot it was smoking.