Another year, another successful Mass Exodus. Curator Vivek Shraya told the audience at the curated fashion show that she had two requests for designers of this year’s event—to enjoy the design process and to seek inspiration from everyday life.
“When you are creating clothing, you have the possibility to create someone’s higher truth,” she said. “You have the possibility of facilitating someone to be their best and truest self. What an incredible gift.”
The annual event is run by Ryerson’s School of Fashion and Saturday’s show featured 19 student-designed collections. The theme was An Inevitable Shift, a message that aims to break commonalities and explore new ways to incorporate diversity, sizing and accessibility in fashion.
The curated show rounded off a series of capstone projects by fashion design and fashion communication students displayed at Daniels Spectrum. Ben Barry, the School of Fashion’s chair, said the projects represented various themes such as improving the aesthetic of hearing aids, commodification of black cultures by non-black audiences, transformation and trend forecasting and more.
“This range of topics and range of approaches used by our students pushed the boundaries of fashion and proclaimed their leadership in the fashion industry of the 21st century,” Barry said.
Shraya’s speech at the curated show touched on a few topics, such as using fashion as a means of expression. As a trans woman whose appearance is often chosen based on safety, she spoke about the importance of inclusivity.
“There is a large population who are regularly told through clothing that our bodies and identities are not normal, not valid, not beautiful,” she said.
She told designers that experimentation is essential in fashion, and it often comes at the expense of being unpopular.
“One of the most common and dangerous assumptions about fashion is that it’s frivolous.”
Here are some moments from the show.