Defining Moments at Vancouver Fashion Week's 25th Year SS27: Celebrating Community, Creativity and the People Behind the Runway

During the five fabulous nights of October 14–18, 2026, everyone brought their own style to VFW. Some wore their own designs; others championed local emerging and established designers, well-known brands, or creations that complemented the international collections on the runway. Designers came from London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, South Korea, and beyond.

For me, one of the defining moments at Vancouver Fashion Week (VFW) was seeing the head of a fashion program wearing a dress created by one of her students. For opening night, Sarah Murray of VCC Fashion wore a dynamic blue beauty by Sonja Ladoux. What a wonderful way to celebrate emerging talent!

By promoting emerging designers, supporting local businesses, and celebrating cultural diversity, VFW shows how a city can embrace the world through fashion.

The Originator Awards: An Unexpected Honour (Oct. 14, 2026)

Vancouver Fashion Week recognizes and honours people who “shape, strengthen and advance Canada's fashion industry.” Celebrated annually in October, the Originator Awards recognize the many people who contribute to this creative community.

This year, I was surprised and deeply honoured to receive a Special Recognition Award. Thank you to Sarah and Maeve Downing for the introductions and wonderful anecdotes about our collective years at VFW. Sharing these memories was another defining moment for me. Sarah was one of the first people to welcome me to VCC when I wanted to interview students in the Fashion Program, there. She has continued to be enthusiastic and supportive of my ongoing projects with them. Maeve sat with me at Van Kids Fashion Week and was the first eight-year-old to appear on this blog. It's wonderful to see how these connections grow over time!

Congratulations to the Awards recipients! Please have a look at their websites to see their fabulous work and profiles.

Toyo Tsuchiya - Stylist

Jason Matlo - Designer

Chad Taylor - Hair and Makeup

Branches & Knots - Retailer

Erich Saide - Photographer

Ordel Group - Wholesaler

Selena Grummett - Teacher

Allison Dunne - Designer and recipient of the new Horizon Award

There were additional honours, too. Designer Delayne Dixon received the Nancy Mak Award, while designer Heidi Jade Wilson Jade McBride Designs received the Sue Randhawa The Optical Boutique award for her collection MADAME SANS CULLOTTE, shown on October 15.

Congratulations to everyone!

It Takes a Community

One of the greatest rewards of covering fashion is the people I meet along the way. I'm especially grateful to fellow writers Marilyn R. Wilson and Andrew Jackson.

Their knowledge of the fashion industry, their own design skills, and their encouragement have helped me get out there, meet everyone backstage and on the runway, and say yes to new projects throughout the year. Thank you both for sharing your expertise and enthusiasm. 

Of course, we cannot forget the extraordinary VFW staff and volunteers. Who keeps the social media flowing while constantly teaching us the latest technology? Who registers us, organizes seating, takes photographs, and rushes to translate when they see us reaching for Google Translate? (No, no!) Their job descriptions seem infinite, and their contributions make the whole experience special. A special shout-out goes to the new faces I've met and sometimes recruited at fashion school open houses, thrift shops, coffee shops, and other fashion events. One of my favourite defining moments is hearing someone say, “It's me from the car dealership. I got here. This is where I belong.”

That says it all. Fashion Week is about more than clothes. It's about finding your people, discovering your place, and being welcomed into a creative community.

Glitter, Glamour and Craft

A special mention goes to the Craft Council of BC for its first time collaboration with VFW. Their excellent jewellery and felt-work collections were featured on the showroom level on Friday and Saturday nights. Our breaks were filled with glitter and glam! Please see my Instagram Reel featuring these collections and Artists, on my Instagram.

A Heartfelt Grand Finale

Vancouver Fashion Week and its visionary founder, Jamal Abdourahman, were celebrated in a particularly moving way at the grand finale on October 18.

A wonderful video, introduced by Marilyn R. Wilson, celebrated the many people who have become part of this creative community: those invited to participate, those who presented remarkable collections, those who travelled with Global Fashion Collective, and those who have built careers through fashion. So much achievement, all in one room!

These designers, writers, and emerging talents have received tremendous support from Jamal, the founder of VFW, whose vision has helped create opportunities for so many.

The setting was intimate and beautiful: candles and flowers on the table, champagne flutes, and cake at the centre. Designer Larissa Healey led an Indigenous feather ceremony. Close friends gathered around the table, and the full house seemed to move towards the light.

It was heartfelt, Sarah, and we were all invited to share in the moment. Thank you, Jamal, for being at the helm and for continuing to support writers, designers, cultural diversity, careers, and the future of young fashion talent. To see a special video of the ceremony, visit YouTube and look for VFW Day 5/SS/27 SHOW 3.

The video also reflects the support given to Writers such as Marilyn R. Wilson; many Designers,  including Allison Dunne who  spoke eloquently,  and Ay Lelum, Aunalee Boyd-Good and Sophia Seward Good, and family, who showed fantastic footage of 10 yrs of their collections, art and performance at VFW,  thanking Jamal for his encouragement to further develop and record their own music. Representing emerging talent, Maeve Downing enthusiastically talked about  her early forays into modelling and backstage work at Vancouver Kids Fashion Week, as well as VFW. 

The Grand Finale Runway: October 18

The final night of VFW, Sunday, October 18, brought together an exciting mix of local and international designers.

The lineup included:

Bahar Kianpour 

Pattern Nation

Claire UpCycled 

JAQKE 

Zula 

Bella Kim 

XOA by Daphne Chorot

Shima Asri 

BTM Project by Matteo Buttiglierri

Fuku Fuku by Yukiko Fukai 

What a fitting finale: local talent alongside international perspectives, all brought together through fashion. For me, these are the defining moments that make Vancouver Fashion Week so meaningful. It's the student-created dress worn with pride, the unexpected award, the backstage conversations, the new faces finding their place, and the friends who keep opening doors for one another. It is leadership that is open to new ideas and is instrumental in making them reality. Above all, it's the community.

Thank you to everyone who makes it possible. Here's to the designers, writers, educators, volunteers, supporters, and young creatives who continue to shape the future of fashion. It truly takes a community, and I'm honoured to be part of it.

Sarah Murray

Maeve Downing

Sarah Murray talking to Branches and Knots Retailer Naomi Anju

Branches and Knots Retailer Naomi Anju

Selena Grummet

Marilyn, Sarah, Larissa, and Me

Andrew Jackson and me

Heidi Jade McBride and Sue Randhawa

Founder, Jamal Abdourahman

Lost In Three Perfect Canadian Books at The Writers' Extravaganza at Indigo on Robson

Where do I go when I get lost in a book? I might go out to the seawall, where I can see others lost in pages or screens and wonder if their worlds might be worth a visit. The skytrain offers a dark journey down to the platform, and I can pretend I am in Japan where everyone reads as they travel. Or, I can take my perfect story into the den and wink at the tv which doesn't wink back as it is off, unable to engage. And what is the perfect book? What is it that brings me to stillness, immersion in different worlds and the exciting possibility of meeting new people? These three titles are perfect reads for me because they are Canadian, set in Vancouver and elsewhere, and written by well known Authors, including one, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho, who has just published her first book, The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street. Crime/Detective Fiction is a favourite and fedora or not, PI Dave Wakeland stars in Sam Wiebe's Guns Across the River, as well as five others: Invisible Dead (2016), Cut You Down (2018), Hell and Gone (2021), Sunset and Jericho (2023), and The Last Exile (2025). 

Beneath Dark Waters, is an intriguing title, and I thought it might be a Mystery. Having read previous books by Investigative Journalist and Writer, Eve Lazarus: Cold Case Vancouver (2015), Murder by Milkshake (2018), Vancouver Exposed (2020), Cold Case BC (2022), I am amazed by her extensive research and her ability to bring history to life, especially in Beneath Dark Waters (2025) where the story, starting in Quebec City, details what really happened in the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck, in many ways a Canadian Titanic disaster. So, yes, there is mystery here, but also so many people to meet and learn about. I met all three Vancouver Writers at an event: Extravaganza, 20 Vancouver Authors - 1 Fun Day, Saturday July 11 at Indigo Robson and organized by Lisa Brideau whose book: Adrift is also a great read. My reel is on my instagram I encourage you to attend bookstore events, the INCITE series at Vancouver Public Library and of course, Vancouver Writer's Fest (whose 2026 lineup is already posted) so that you can meet Writers and hear them read from their latest. My book vacation is usually planned around genre, story (fiction or nonfiction) based on a real problem faced by real people, book cover, and the dedication and acknowledgements. 

The cover for Guns Across the River, by Sam Wiebe, is black and white, a night scene at a marina nearby, the lights like eyes in the looming dark apartment buildings, seen through a windshield riddled with bullet holes, like spider webs (traps, danger, death) and deep water, menacing, almost pulling everything down. The title is blood red. I love the red Canadian sticker that seems to shout: "Here's our flag. Here we are." The dedication is a quote from Thomas Hardy, "A Broken Appointment": "And Love alone can lend you loyalty". I like to ask Writers about the dedication and how it relates to their work. In this case, I have to say that the quote is compelling and fits with PI Wakeland's deep loyalties, in terms of his work and his work partner, Jeff Chen, his confidants/sources, and initially to people, until they prove they deserve otherwise. And about love interests, ...love, intense, and from heart, just might be on loan, short term, for the length of the story, but always in the near future and one day, maybe long term. So here you have commitment to honesty, justice, an appointment with love, solving real problems like guns, associated violence, gun making, gun selling, close calls and death... oh and racing minds and broken hearts. And did I mention appreciation of great literature and yes, great writing? Here is Sam Wiebe's hope, expressed in the Acknowledgements: "My hope is that I've depicted the legitimate world of shooting and hunting accurately and dfifferentiated it from the absolute insanity of assault rifle kits and ghost guns." He thanks a huge list of those who helped along the journey. And he thanks us. "Thanks to the readers, always." Thank you, Sam Wiebe for helping us get away, but not far from home! 

The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street, a Memoir by Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho, is a personal story, about coming to Vancouver from Taiwan, a circuitous route, for sure, and surviving with her brother and sisters, here, without parents. As a former teacher, I am very familiar with the very real experiences of kids on their own, here, while parents work and live abroad. Often the stories don't get told because of the fear of being 'discovered and reported'. There are such high expectations for students to excel, to go to university, to avoid trouble and to provide a home for the rest of the family to return to, even only for holidays. Oh, and everyone should be happy that they got this opportunity and never express sadness, lonliness, fear or resentment. The cover of Wiley's book shows the mountains and trees and a neighborhood of city apartments, viewed from a big house in Dunbar. Wiley, as a young teen is looking out of the window of her house (not a home, yet) upon a city that seems far away, remote. I think she is wondering how she will survive in this new place, by herself. I like that the words A Memoir are also written in chinese characters and when she signed her name, she had a red Chinese name stamp, too. Two languages, two cultures. I like the dedication: "For my parents, who undertook different journeys to make mine easier, and for all astronaut families trying to make their way home." One of her quotes really invites the reader further: "The first generation thinks about survival; the ones that follow tell the stories.." -Hua Hsu, Stay True. I think of my own relatives, who came as single workers or as married couples and settled on the prairies to farm. But they were older and certainly had communities here and families back home. Wiley thanks many, many people who helped along the way. She thanks all of her family and says they are her "refuge and her fuel" She encourages them and us to "Eat. Eat" She provides a hug of a recipe for all of us. She connects with us, as readers, and encourages us to tell our stories as we all come from other places. Thank you Wiley, for sharing your story in The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street. The cover of the book: Beneath Dark Waters, by Eve Lazarus, shows the doomed ship, The Empress of Ireland, in a sea of letters and notes, the colours of blues, greens and blacks, the colours of an unpredictable ocean. I knew about the Titanic, but had never heard of our own maritime disaster. The true story is told through the letters of survivors and families of those who perished. (1,000+) The passenger lists and where people came from to take the journey from Quebec City to England, make you want to know more about each and what happened to them. There are so many details about the ship, it was a 'safe ship', the crew and the safety equipment and procedures, and how quickly disaster occurred when the ship was struck by a Norgwegian ship and went down in 14 minutes. All new learning for me and making me think twice about cruise ship dreams. This is dedicated to people close to the Author, "And in memory of the passengers and crew who travelled on the Empress of Ireland on May 28, 1914". Lots of thanks to those who helped along the way; I liked her thanks to Librarians and Archivists, who are often unsung heroes. I also like her shout out "to Canada Council for their funding to make her research, travel and writing possible." And to her team at Arsenal Pulp Press "...for making the whole process so much fun." Eve just loves research, in fact her face just lit up when she talked with me about the process. And as for me, I love to read and meet the Writers. And about doing research and sitting down with a pen, well I say: "Let's get lost", and I will do that on a seawall, with a marina and other readers, nearby. I might look up occasionally, though to see if I can spot these local Writers or their characters. I might be wearing a fedora, shade from the sun, you know.

Vancouver Gitxsan Fashion Designer Yolonda Skelton (Jackson) Costumes a New Ballet with Joshua Beamish, Choreographer and Director of Ballet Vancouver April 23-25, 2026

I first saw Designer Yolonda Skelton (Jackson) at Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto (IFTO) 2018. The contemporary black, sleeveless dress with a White Killer Whale border around the hem, spoke to me about her mandate to show, through Fashion, the importance of "Animals, Plants and Elements and their connection to the land and its importance to our people". I also loved the cashmere, black and white, high collared short cape, with "ultrasuede applique: Eagle Meets the Ocean under Moonlit Sky". On her website,  Yolanda has an extensive section: Indigenous Symbology and I learned that Killer Whales/Orca "...embody the values of cooperation and community and "they represent the connection between human and marine life, highlighting the importance of respecting and preserving the ocean's resources. The Eagle is "revered as a powerful symbol of strength, wisdom and freedom" and is a "messenger between the spirtual and physical worlds". The themes of relationships, connectedness and the power of story and cultural sharing through traditional and contemporary design are conveyed in all of Yolonda's pieces, on Indigenous Fashion Week stages, at the Leo Awards, on Theatre stages in the Movies and everywhere she goes. 

Yolanda Skelton 2018 IFTO

Yolanda Skelton 2018 IFTO

In 2018, I heard Cris Derksen, Juno Award nominated Cree Cellist and Composer from Northern Alberta. Cris's music is also heard in the new ballet: WINTERBOURNE. Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week has already posted its theme: EARTH, and its dates: Nov. 18-21, 2026. Yolonda always designs a red dress for Red Dress Night, in which local and international Indigenous Designers "come together wearing red, in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous men, women, girls, two-spirit and LGBTQ members of our communities." See post I wrote for the event in 2024.

Yolonda also creates a runway collection and a marketplace booth for selling her gorgeous pieces. Before each VIFW, there is a fundraising auction and preview of the 4 days to come. Last time, Marilyn Wilson and I attended and met Yolonda. (photo) Marilyn's "Interview with Fashion Designer Yolonda Skelton (Jackson) of Sugiit Lukx Designs", can be found here.

One of Yolanda's latest stages is on the stage of The Playhouse, where she has designed costumes for a new company: Ballet Vancouver, and for a new ballet: WINTERBOURNE, in collaboration with Director/Choreographer Joshua Beamish. This had its World Premiere April 23-25, and was one of the 4 dynamic ballets performed in the AFTER THE RAIN & OTHER WORKS Program each night. I went on the 24th and was awed by skillful, athletic, fast moving, modern ballet, standout music, (Cris Derksen on Cello) terrific stage lighting, a quiet theatre (no cameras or phones) and then, this wonderful, "harmonious, thoughtful integration of indigenous design and ballet". This not only brings more ballet to Vancouver, with visiting dancers, and companies, but also brings Vancouver's local talent to the ballet and shares that with the world. There were 4 Indigenous dancers: Tristan Chad Ghost Keeper (Cree & Metis) Bryn Bridgen (K'omoks Nation) Keilani Elizabeth Rose (Lheidli T'emmeh Nation), and Jonatan Lujan. (Huarpes) I think that a new company, Ballet Vancouver, is new and exciting in so many ways. It highlights the city's rich cultural milieu, the abundance of local talent, the development of new ballets with new music, costume and yes, new ways of performing. And, what is local goes international, to the world stage. 

Here are a few photos of Yolonda's costumes from WINTERBOURNE. The vintage blue leather coat features a killer whale and water and Yolonda says it was created to honor White Gladis, a pregnant Killer Whale hit by a boat. This caused trauma that resulted in the whale 'attacking' every boat. Ripples in the water echo the spreading effect of trauma to animals, people and the environment. Cris Kerksen's song about this further emphasizes the urgency for environmental protection, healing, and peaceful interaction, connectivity and the circle of life. You will notice that Yolonda and Joshua and so many others are wearing ties. They are her "Circle of Courage" ties reflecting people around the world and symbology: Killer Whale - belonging, inclusivity and connectedness, Raven - Mastery - reflecting curiousity, intelligence and determination, Eagle - Independence, Eagle eye, Wolf - leadership and taking care of each other. All 4 = balance, depends on belonging, mastery and independence and generosity= harmony. No balance = imbalance,which is what we have now and are working to change.they are made out of Merino wool, for its vibrational quality and connection to energy in the body. The ties can be worn and understood by everyone, bringing us together, as a whole.The red tutu is such a vibrant colour, and represents Phoenix, feathers falling, rising from the ashes. This tutu was created for Yolonda's red dress, worn for Red Dress Night at Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week. This is a memorial to the murdered and missing and a tribute to them and is at every Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week. (Photo by Luka Cyprian)

Very new to me was watching with full attention, rather than with a camera. At the end of the ballet, I watched a standing ovation that began as one or two people and then spread like waves, row by row throughout the theatre. Bravo! Wish I had a video of that. While I wanted to write about the costumes, words are not enough and I thank Yolonda Skelton, Joshua Beamish, and Ballet Vancouver and Laura Murray (Murray Paterson Marketing) for photos and much more. The 26/27 season is coming right up Sept ll, 12 with Balanchine's Apollo, Black Swan Pas de Deux (Swan Lake) and Slice To Change. I am looking forward to going and writing more often. I sense there is room for conversation and new ideas. Have I written a ballet? No, but perhaps there should be one to celebrate Matriarchs, especially Sandra Moorhouse-Good, who leads the Good Family of Artists, Designers, and Musicians of Aylelum a multigenerational Design Family in Nanaimo. Ballet Vancouver is new and open to new ideas. There is room for all of us. 

Links: 

• APTN News (Tina House) YOUTUBE.COM 
• Ballet Vancouver (balletvancouver.com) @balletvancouver (Instagram) X: @balletvan TIK TOK - @balletVancouver 
• Yolonda's website (gorgeous photos and design details) Yolonda Skelton on Instagram
• CBC: Urban Regalia Fashion Exhibit Inspired by Audrey Hepburn and Indigenous Culture (Jean Paetkau-CBC Mews Oct 10, 2019