Carlie Wong is running out of time. Yet she answers the phone with a relaxed hello. There is no P.R. girl, no snooty receptionist -- rather, a fashion designer in the humble beginnings of an illustrious industry. Humble, sure - but no less impressive.

After thanking Carlie for speaking with me, I quickly realize how lucky I am to have some of her time – thirty dresses in thirty days. It’s a seemingly impossible equation. But behind all of the silk, chiffon, and cashmere this is a business of speed and numbers. Thirty days for fifteen minutes – and the second hand on the clock has never been more important.

The Vancouver based designer graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University with a bachelor degree in fashion design. At 23 years old, she became the youngest contestant on the inaugural season of Project Runway Canada. And since taping for the show began, she has been moving at lightning speed.

“It was totally unreal,” says Carlie. The pace on the show was non-stop. Hopeful designers were hooked up to microphones for eighteen hours a day, and slept for only three hours a night. With only one or two days to design and construct an outfit, the pressure was on. Two days would quickly shrink once time for interviews and travel to and from the set was factored in. By the end of her run on the show Carlie had lost all sense of normalcy.

But the experience on Project Runway was essentially boot camp for what was to come. Now the show is over, and just a year and a half later Carlie is in the spotlight as one of Canada’s freshest designers.

Her Spring 2009 luxury collection has garnered a great response in the industry. Its sophistication comes from the inspiration for all of Carlie’s designs – gangster meets glamour. The style is all about contrasts: masculine and feminine, classic and modern, strength and beauty.

I asked Carlie about the first time she walked into the tent at Nathan Phillips Square. She said with an unpretentious laugh “I thought, I could do this”. Showing a collection is an enormous amount of work, but once you get to the tent, it only lasts fifteen minutes. And now with two Toronto Fashion Week’s under her belt, Carlie is preparing her Fall 2009 show. Preparation has taken the form of a full on sprint, as she must complete thirty outfits in just thirty days.

Sure, the pace of fashion is always accelerated – spring lines become old news before the snow has begun to melt – but even this seems extreme.

“I should have started a while ago,” admits Carlie light-heartedly. She says that when the madness of showing a collection is over, “you go home and sleep for two months”. And then typically you begin the next collection. The self-proclaimed procrastinator says that the frenzy of Project Runway was a crash course in designing her own line – in no way does the pace slow down.

It isn’t just thirty dresses in thirty days. Carlie styles her own shows as well, right down to the shoes. She sits through model castings, picks the music and lighting, and retains creative control over every aspect. “I’m a little bit anal you could say,” says Carlie with an infectious laugh.


Photo Credit: George Pimentel

Many designers hire show producers to put all of the finishing touches together, but the thrifty designer exclaims why pay someone to do something she could just do herself?

And if there was ever a time to be prudent in the fashion world, this is it. Reflecting on Vancouver’s up-and-coming fashion scene, Carlie says that there just aren’t enough people in the city who are buying. Not enough people care about shopping locally, or about the local industry. The people who can afford her luxury line generally “just go to Holt’s and buy Gucci,” she says.

Don’t expect a cross-country move however. The designer loves Vancouver and isn’t planning on leaving. She’s a testament to the fact that if you have the office space and the means to get to the shows, then you can do this business from anywhere.

Photo Credit: George Pimentel

And having a few celebs photographed in your designs doesn’t hurt either. Celebrities are the newest, and possibly most effective, means of publicity these days. “In the 80’s it was all about the designers,” says Carlie, “but now it’s all about the celebrity.”

I ask her which Hollywood star she would want to outfit for the red carpet, and after naming her choice glamour girls, like Anne Hathaway and Kate Holmes, she gives an endearing laugh. “I don’t really care about that in the end,” she explains, because if someone wants to wear her design, the response would be an emphatic “here, take it!”

www.carliewong.com

by Heather Loney