In some very sad fashion news, IMG has pulled a plug on the Toronto Fashion Week, citing lack of funds, which is very surprising considering that is one of the most popular and well funded fashion market in the world.
According to fashion reports, “In the market in Toronto we just weren’t seeing the local support for the industry.”
What is the Toronto Fashion Week?
The Toronto Fashion Week is in collaboration with IMG Canada and IMG Fashion since the year 2012. Since then, they have taken several steps in dedicating the fashion styles and designs from various fashion designers from the Fashion Design Council of Canada. The Fashion Design Council of Canada is a non-profit organization which had owned and produced Toronto Fashion Week for 13 years, previously.
What did the organizers have to say?
According to an interview with The Canadian Press, Catherine Bennett, senior vice-president and managing director of IMG Fashion Events & Properties, said, “As we continue to evolve our portfolio of fashion events around the world, we’ve made the decision to no longer produce Toronto Fashion Week.”
“We are constantly evaluating our fashion properties to make sure that they best meet the needs of designers and the industry — both locally and internationally — and we felt like the time had come to make a change in Toronto.
“We really felt that our Canadian fashion footprint was not generating the local commercial funding that we really required in order for us to continue producing the event to the highest standard that, really, the industry deserves and the designers in Toronto deserve,” she added.
“We’re sad to be moving on, but think it’s the right decision and the right time to make it.”
The event in Toronto had undergone a makeover this year after the deal with World MasterCard ended as the title sponsor, for six-seasons. She also included that, “IMG will no longer be involved with the Mercedes-Benz Start Up program for emerging designers, which had a grand-prize package that included a $30,000 bursary and a fully produced runway show in Toronto for the winners.”
What is extremely sad to note about the sudden closing of this Fashion Week is that, other international fashion weeks which are commercially owned and represented by IMG, staged in London, New York, Sydney, Berlin, and Tokyo can now be under the scanner.
