INFLUENCES: Four of our style touchstones
The Montreal look is an organic, ineffable thing, but as the newly published Montréal Chic: A Locational History of Montreal Fashion points out, certain touchstones can be cited. Here are three — and one more, not in the book, and now, alas, plying his tr
EXPO 67 HOSTESSES
Anyone old enough to remember visiting Expo will likely recall them: battalions of young women decked out in variations of a uniform whose sleek, stewardess-style lines had a futuristic edge that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the then-current Star Trek. “Expo was really the world’s first perception of Montreal, and it was our first presentation of ourselves to the world,” the book’s co-author, Sara Danièle Bélanger-Michaud, said in an interview.
“It was a mutual opening-up. Montreal was creating this spectacle of modernity, and those hostesses’ uniforms were a huge part of that. Their design had to give the impression of young, active, free-spirited, educated, forthcoming women. From today’s perspective, we might think ‘they were all young, models, really, chosen for their specific body types.’ Yes, there was objectification, but still it was probably helpful to present a kind of freeing image of women in Quebec, to show that we were not all (stay-at-home) mothers but single women and working women, too.”
When he hit the music scene having already made a name as a poet and novelist, Cohen stood out from his contemporaries in both age and appearance, cutting a refined Old-World figure amid the wild counterculture swirling around him. “He’s from a family of Westmount clothiers, so he knew that tradition, and right from the start he was a dandy,” said Bélanger-Michaud. “Even through the period when everyone else was a hippie, he never really changed — he was always well turned out, the icon of a certain classic look, and he still is. He presents a good picture of Montreal. If audiences dress for his concerts in their formal best, I think it’s a way of showing him respect.”
LES AMOURS IMAGINAIRES
For his 2010 feature (Heartbeats in its English version), Quebec’s most acclaimed young filmmaker, Xavier Dolan, chose to set his tale of young love in gentrifying boho-friendly Mile End, dressing his protagonists in a version of Mad Men’s Kennedyera bold tones, a look that overlaps in certain aspects with the neighbourhood’s still-thriving vintage-shopping, dumpsterdiving hipster aesthetic. Was this a case of art imitating life or vice versa? So of-the-moment was the film’s esthetic that it was hard to tell.
“Like a lot of people, I’ve kind of had it with the whole hipster thing,” said the 36-year-old Bélanger-Michaud. “The word as it’s used now has almost no connection to how it was originally defined by people like Jack Kerouac. But there is no denying that look’s importance and influence.”
P. K. SUBBAN
More than just a provider of oldschool on-ice flair on an otherwise dull team, more, too, than an inspiration to local black communities, in his off-ice dandy mode Subban is also decidedly fashion forward. All the more reason why many of us think shipping him out of town was a tone-deaf move on the part of Canadiens management. Bélanger-Michaud has a different take on the trade.
“What has just happened is indicative of one aspect of the Montreal spirit,” she said. “I’ve heard that Subban wasn’t always appreciated by his teammates, and if you get too arrogant here, if you take up too much space, you’re going to get rejected. It’s very Québécois — we like a rebel, but we’re allergic to arrogance and pretentiousness.”