True Patriot Love - TPL On The Road： The Montreal Fashion Industry

00:00:00.000 today on true patriot love i'm lucky enough to be on the east coast road tour now in montreal

00:00:11.360 and i'm with oliver sury chernaschik and i hope i said the name you didn't need thank you thank you

00:00:17.040 i had a little background right so i always love to talk about people's background because

00:00:23.200 me being italian and quite frankly having a scottish mother and italian father

00:00:27.680 Mm-hmm.

00:00:28.980 Indian father.

00:00:30.280 Indian father, English father, Indian and English father,

00:00:33.280 and Slovak mother. 0.59

00:00:34.580 Oh, okay, yeah.

00:00:35.880 Well, that's, and that's what, you know, makes our cultures great,

00:00:39.120 because we actually come here, and we meet each other,

00:00:41.580 and just like my parents did, you know,

00:00:43.940 you create more stronger, creative children,

00:00:46.680 and that's a terrific thing.

00:00:49.180 So Montreal, we're here.

00:00:50.680 We made it, finally.

00:00:52.180 We got through Kingston.

00:00:53.480 We went to Ottawa through all the challenges, technically,

00:00:56.880 and everything else we got here, but we're here.

00:00:59.320 And we were looking forward to meeting with you

00:01:01.120 because when Montreal came up in our discussions,

00:01:04.780 and we have, I mentioned to you,

00:01:06.800 True Patriot Love has nine pillars in it.

00:01:09.240 We handle economy, politics, housing, healthcare,

00:01:13.480 and happiness.

00:01:14.520 So when we came to the summer, we said,

00:01:16.240 you know, we're gonna do more shows,

00:01:18.020 and more shows about stuff that makes people happy,

00:01:21.120 and of course, fashion.

00:01:22.600 And I know as a kid, my fond memories of Montreal

00:01:26.720 were coming to Montreal with my mom.

00:01:29.780 So we would go down, my mom was this fashionista,

00:01:33.180 you know, she really was.

00:01:34.680 I got to, you know, God love her soul.

00:01:36.940 We would, every season she would go out

00:01:40.020 and she'd buy three new outfits.

00:01:42.040 And, you know, she'd buy like spring, summer, fall,

00:01:45.540 you know, in that generation, right?

00:01:47.860 And when my mom went back to work,

00:01:49.680 she went back to work and she wore a tie,

00:01:53.360 which was kind of cool for a woman of that era, right?

00:01:55.520 You know, worked at A&P, but she would put us on the train.

00:01:59.420 She liked to travel, and my dad worked six days a week.

00:02:02.460 He was a hardworking guy, so he wouldn't come with us.

00:02:06.080 And we would come to Montreal, get off the train,

00:02:08.720 and we would go to Taylor's, right?

00:02:12.020 Like bespoke Taylor's.

00:02:14.180 Yeah, yeah, and we would have our clothes made.

00:02:16.720 In those days, we'd even get our shoes.

00:02:19.780 So we'd have our feet fitted, and we'd have shoes made.

00:02:23.920 It was a cool experience, and we would eat like crazy.

00:02:27.960 We'd stay in a hotel, eat, you know, get fitted for the day,

00:02:31.320 and then, quite frankly, catch the next train late the next day

00:02:34.780 after we go around the city and shop and have fun and eat in great restaurants.

00:02:40.220 So, you know, coming back was near and dear to my heart

00:02:42.720 because of what I remember about that memory.

00:02:44.980 So how do you get into this?

00:02:47.080 So I'm thinking about my childhood, and then I'm thinking I met you, you know,

00:02:50.440 and I'm thinking it's a pretty cool environment.

00:02:52.980 so tell me like yeah yeah what brought you here well i mean i'm born in kitchen in ontario but i

00:03:00.500 grew up in montreal um been here pretty much all my life what brings me to fashion itself i'm

00:03:08.700 guessing you're asking um i've always been a creative kid drew a lot when i was young

00:03:16.380 and always had I would say an interest for how how to present myself but also how to present

00:03:25.320 others and so eventually that sort of young creativity developed into more of a of an interest

00:03:34.860 as to how clothing can really come to be a means to express oneself yeah and

00:03:42.720 And I'm a COVID baby, so I started sewing.

00:03:49.840 My grandmother taught me how to sew at the start of COVID.

00:03:52.980 And since then, it's been through my own projects.

00:03:56.460 It's been through some internships, some work contracts.

00:04:01.140 And yeah, that's what sort of got me here.

00:04:03.820 Yeah.

00:04:04.340 Okay, the name of your company, right?

00:04:06.080 OSC is what I first got.

00:04:07.620 OSC is my namesake clothing label.

00:04:10.180 Yeah.

00:04:10.400 After my initials. And Untold Cowboy is a collective exhibition project.

00:04:18.660 Oh, okay. Collective exhibition. Give me more.

00:04:22.120 So Untold Cowboy is a series of multidisciplinary visual productions that are dedicated to creating eclectic cowboy characters

00:04:34.920 that challenge the myth of the heroic, glamorized American cowboy

00:04:42.160 and creatively reclaim and reimagine the omitted history

00:04:47.580 of black and indigenous cowboys in Canada.

00:04:50.420 Oh, cool.

00:04:51.380 Well, that's interesting.

00:04:52.760 Yeah.

00:04:53.500 Well, you know, and one day, you know, another show on that one,

00:04:57.280 for sure, because I like to hear, you know,

00:04:59.540 I spent a lot of time, I think, another show that I did recently

00:05:03.300 was with a farmer. I'm heading out, you know, to PEI. So I have a potato farm, a family of potato

00:05:09.700 farmers owned a farm earlier in my life quite a few times. We used to go camping there as a

00:05:16.340 when I was young. Yeah. Oh, nice. The red sand. Yeah, it's beautiful. So what is like this place

00:05:22.420 where we're at today? So we're pretty cool. We're sitting in the sort of exhibit room of Atelier

00:05:29.140 Textile, which is a textile printing and dyeing school that has a partnership with my own studio,

00:05:40.340 which is Ligne de Fuite. So Ligne de Fuite is a Montreal based fashion talent incubator. So they

00:05:48.340 host quite a few young emerging designers in their space. They also do lots of events,

00:05:54.100 They produce runway shows. But both of our spaces, Atelier Textile and Ling de Fut,

00:06:00.340 have a partnership, a collaboration agreement, if you will. So we sort of exchange services,

00:06:06.900 use the space, vice versa. So while Ling de Fut is really based around fashion, garments, making,

00:06:14.660 sewing. Atelier Textile, on the other hand, is focused on textile art, so dyeing, printing, etc.

00:06:24.660 Oh, good combination, right? Exactly. It's a rare one. I think we're one of the very few,

00:06:32.980 definitely in Montreal, perhaps in Canada as well, that have this sort of dynamic going on between

00:06:39.780 garments and textile so kitchener right which i know well because uh you know from ontario

00:06:48.260 grew up there so you make it to montreal i make it yeah my parents my parents studied

00:06:54.740 architecture in waterloo had me flew to europe for a couple years to move to montreal oh okay

00:07:03.540 all right and so you grew up in montreal went to school here yep right and then you decided

00:07:08.580 to get into fashion and then off you go so help me out here so you get into fashion you decide

00:07:14.660 how do you figure out kind of what part of fashion you want to enter into because that seems to me

00:07:20.180 always to be the most complicated thing right how do you how do you figure that what like it's it's

00:07:25.060 a good question because it comes i can only speak from my own experience but it comes from a very

00:07:30.580 sort of or develops in a very organic way right there's an interest at the start that that grows

00:07:37.780 into a passion and grows then into a need and then grows into a means to something right

00:07:44.860 fashion now has become a means for me to um to keep developing my craft um but in terms of how

00:07:54.600 what areas of fashion um there are so many but since i my context is one that's outside of school

00:08:03.140 right I'm self-taught so I didn't go to fashion school I really had to to figure it out on the go

00:08:12.400 so it started as my first fashion experience if you will was as a pattern cutter in the in

00:08:19.840 for a brand in the garment district then once that settled it was really through developing

00:08:27.340 my own projects and so my and i'm i'm you know a emerging designer that has a label and a project

00:08:35.760 going on so and there it's a saturated market the one i'm the one i operate in um but fashion has so

00:08:43.760 many different facets there's a creative side there's a designer side there's a very technical

00:08:49.720 side, there's also, it's a business in itself, right? So, you can, it's a huge, huge global

00:08:58.100 industry and I operate as a very small prism of that. Yeah, no, no, and I love the story because

00:09:06.160 quite frankly, so I tell it similar probably age to what you are now. I started basically building

00:09:14.700 homes um and i i started kind of from the ground up from foundations and basically from there i

00:09:21.820 learned carpentry and from there i learned so now you know just before covet hit uh we were building

00:09:28.380 homes uh and and it was great right because over time i just from without any traditional

00:09:36.060 education i wasn't trained as a project manager didn't become a red seal carpenter you know but

00:09:42.700 but i did a little bit of everything as my my family was in that uh that business so

00:09:49.900 then i learned it when you so when you talking about starting out and being a pattern cutter

00:09:54.620 i love that right because you're right there you know you're learning the trade hands-on

00:09:59.420 and then you get into it. So, hey, before I forget, behind you.

True Patriot Love - July 18, 2026

TPL On The Road： The Montreal Fashion Industry

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