Stitch City: a primer on the four Toronto-based designers leading the city’s style revolution

Three years into her fashion career, Stevenson won the 2013 Toronto Fashion Incubator New Labels competition—a $25,000 prize from benefactor and noted clotheshorse Suzanne Rogers. This year she also won a contract for a limited-edition collection for Target Canada, putting her among the ranks of established designers like Proenza Schouler and Jason Wu, whose collaborations with the mass retailer resulted in shopping mayhem and eBay bidding wars.

Designer Matt Robinson is leading the charge on the recent military-inspired menswear trend. His aesthetic stems from an admiration for his WWII-vet grandfather and teen years spent at military boarding school. They’re the clothes your father might have worn, or your father’s father, but they fit right in at a bar on Ossington or a coffee shop in Leslieville. Even better? They’re all produced locally, by hand and in small batches.

Launching a career via reality television has become a viable way for creative types to get noticed, and that’s exactly what Lucian Matis did when he signed on for the first season of Project Runway Canada in 2007. Although he lost out on the $100,000 grand prize, his story was charming enough—he honed his sewing skills in Romania (he was born there and moved to Toronto in 1999) under the tutelage of his mother, a tailor—that he managed to gain enough attention to jump-start a thriving business. His designs are frequently worn by Canadian stars and socialites like Sarah Gadon, Nelly Furtado and Coco Rocha.