This past weekend Fashion Art Toronto presented its SS25 edition of 1664 Fashion Week, marking the platform’s historic 20th anniversary with a charged slate of designers who blurred the line between subversion and sophistication. Held across four days at T3 Bayside, this season’s programming presented spectacle, raw emotion, and a studied refusal of commercial polish. Whether through sculptural precision, queered historical references, or DIY glam surrealism, each collection contributed to a citywide rethinking of what fashion can still do. From the architectural constraint of OFFTN to Beautopie’s unapologetic kink, from Process Visual’s wearable deconstructions to Cetasia’s mythic softness, this season offered less polish and more provocation, sometimes refined, sometimes raw. Below, we review ten standout presentations.
OFFTN
OFFTN’s presentation leaned into sculptural restraint, delivering a series of austere silhouettes that balanced utilitarian hardware with soft abstraction. Black bandeaus, belted puff skirts, and ornamental headwear evoked a quiet tension, suggesting containment, discipline, and a refusal to flatter. The branding was tongue-in-cheek, while the proportions skewed subtly surreal, especially in a padded grey skirt with jutting hips and a bandeau emblazoned with “OFFTN.” Stark, severe, and elegantly confrontational, the collection traded in visual tension: soft versus sharp, wearable versus sculptural, streetwear versus silhouette.
SAGRADESA
Sagradesa reimagined femininity as collage, part prairie goth, part post-punk ingenue. Ruffled lace, pleats, and crochet evoked Victoriana, but the silhouettes were jagged, uneven, and knowingly askew. A pinafore-style mini with trailing doilies felt like a reclamation of domestic softness; elsewhere, puffed striped skirts, shredded hems, and visible bra tops conjured a kind of riot-grrrl intimacy. There was something nostalgic yet anti-nostalgic in the execution, as if the garments remembered girlhood through various epochs, both venerating but refusing to idealize it. Ornamentation and delicacy here was retooled with a quiet sense of power.
SAINT ISIDORE
Saint Isidore brought a sense of pastoral absurdity to the runway, where queered countryside met surrealist camp. Kilted shorts, nipple medallions, and oversized pearls transformed the rugged into the theatrical, while off-the-shoulder smocks and bonnet-like hats turned vintage rural garb into symbols of contemporary transgression. A standout pink dress with ruffled seams and metal snaps blurred doll-like nostalgia with DIY rebellion. The show felt like a storybook frayed at the edges, where familiar archetypes were undone and reassembled with irony, tenderness, and quiet gender subversion.
BEAUTOPIE
Beautopie‘s offering this season was unapologetic camp, burlesque bravado, and DIY sensuality in a show that felt part strip club, part queer fantasia. Sheer mesh, coin-chain skirts, and platform heels evoked vintage showgirl glamour and contemporary table dancer, yet everything here was twisted: bras gaped deliberately, corsets exaggerated vulnerability, and a pink staple gun became the most literal accessory of power. This was performance as protest, drag as design, sex as spectacle.
RACHEL SUDBURY
Rachel Sudbury offered a cheeky, post-apocalyptic take on Canadiana—part prairie hitch-hiker, part rave relic. Shredded hoodies, puffball miniskirts, rubber car-tire sculpted dresses, and fur-trimmed accessories recalled survivalist wear reimagined by club kids. A structured off-shoulder top in sculpted charcoal gray restrained the models arms, paired with ruched bloomers, there was a deliciously playful sense of closure and excess here. Sudbury’s signature sense of imperfection and irreverence was on full display: silhouettes were off-kilter, materials looked salvaged, and humour simmered just beneath the grit. Canadian cabin fever meets motocross meets mall goth, refracted through a self-aware, chaotic lens.
PEARLETTA
Pearletta delivered a glamorously dishevelled take on corporate drag, fusing late-night boardroom fantasies with hyper-femme noir. Oversized faux furs, exaggerated pinstripes, and ruched satin skirts played with scale and silhouette, while ID badges dangled like ironic power tokens. The collection walked the line between boardroom cosplay and gendered performance art, think Donatella meets American Psycho via Club Kid Berlin. With its aggressive tailoring, bare chests, and fluffy trims, Pearletta’s vision was less about polish than persona: fashion as persona code-switched, undone, and resolutely theatrical.
CETASIA
Cetasia conjured fantasy with sculptural excess—there was a certain oceanic through line here, sea foam couture met mythic goddess. Rippled textiles, floral appliqué, and textural layering created a sense of motion and tide. A white ruffle cocoon, a black kelp-like gown, and a pleated shell-like mini evoked aquatic metamorphosis, while celestial hair sculptures and glistening makeup blurred the line between creature and divinity. The result was both eerie and ethereal: a siren’s call rendered in volume and excess.
PROCESS VISUAL
Process Visual leaned into sculptural asymmetry and makeshift elegance, reworking familiar fabrics, cotton jersey, metallic sheen, pinstripes, into garments that looked pinned, folded, and half-undone. Silhouettes were voluminous and angular, recalling early Margiela with a modern twist: technicolour wrapping, off-kilter draping, and elongated caps turned each look into a wearable prototype. There was an intentional crudeness here, like sketches made flesh, anti-tailoring as critique, fashion as iterative disruption. An exercise in technical excellence; it wasn’t polished, but that was the point.
Images @cosplay_ @devansakaria
Cody Rooney is the Editor in Chief and senior contributor at liminul.
He is a PhD candidate, digital content specialist, writer, editor, multi-media artist, and photographer.