Mass Exodus 2012: Lucid

This years Ryerson School of Fashion Mass Exodus presentation had one key goal: to provide a vision into the young creative minds of it’s graduates through the lens of fashion and music. As an event known for it’s fresh creativity and innovation in fashion design, we couldn’t wait to see what they had up their sleeves for this year’s show.

As soon as we arrived, we knew we would be in for a treat as the set and stage seemed to be bigger and better than ever before. It was very obvious that the entire team had worked hard to create a sense of weightlessness with many light layers of sheer fabric and a glowing sphere that pulsated like a heartbeat in the middle of the stage.

To us, the Runway Show’s curator (and OTM alumni), MuchMusic‘s Liz Trinnear, was the perfect person for the job as she is most certainly an icon in Toronto’s fashion and music industry. Since becoming a part of the MuchMusic family, she has embraced her role as a style setter all the while supporting Toronto based talent, “We as Canadians should stick together, and we as up and coming creative minds should stick together.” It’s almost like she took the words right out of our mouths.

Over the course of the two months prior to the show, Liz had spent countless hours looking through the student’s look books and collection plans to see which candidates should become a part of the top 25 show. As she made her selections, the designers who had a strong vision and a unified collection set themselves apart. But the most exciting part for Liz was, “Watching the designs come to life. It was such a beautiful process.”

The beauty came to life on a stage that mixed the power of fashion and music together. With an all Canadian playlist to set the beat for the designs, Liz’s selections accurately reflected the breadth and depth of the Mass Exodus 2012 designers.

When we asked Liz which graduate she would like to see another collection from she instantly said Stefanie Ayoub. A designer who had certainly caught our eye as well, Liz had nothing but love her entire collection, “She understood being creative but also making it wearable. She spoke to our present day trends while making it her own. Backstage, Stefanie spoke about creating a dreamland with fabric and I think she did it really well. ” We totally agree.

Congratulations on yet another amazing year intriguing collections, graduates!

Check out some of our other favourite looks below. We look forward to seeing where these designers take their collections in the coming months.

Photography by Parker Kay