Tia Kureshi turned to fashion to help build her confidence after being bullied in school when she was 12.
She translated this hurt into sewing and making clothes with her mom. At 14 years old she began sketching, then started studying fashion.
“Turning my trauma into an inspiration is something that I’m really proud of myself for,” said Kureshi, the 2024 Fashion Student of the Year winner at the Canadian Fashion and Art Awards.
Kureshi realized she had a different aesthetic from her peers in India and moved to Toronto to study fashion.
“The best part is here there are no restrictions,” she said.
Kureshi’s pieces are about empowering everyone, particularly women. She uses fashion as a way to overcome personal hardships.
She is showcasing an exhibit at Toronto’s fashion week, which began last night in a new venue at T3 Bayside on Queens Quay East.
Fashion Art Toronto week will include an exhibition of photography, paintings and installations by local designers, including Humber Lakeshore graduate Tess Morgan.
Morgan, a former business fashion arts student, now works as the creative content director for Fashion Art Toronto. She was the editor-in-chief for Humber’s fashion magazine Infuse and managed the social media accounts for this position.
She made connections at Fashion Art Toronto while working for Infuse, working backstage during her second year attending, then helping on and off until she naturally found her role in a creative, community-forward position.
“The thing that really drew me to Fashion Art Toronto was the permission that it gave to both artists and attendees to dream big and push their own kind of boundaries, and you know, kind of turn fashion on its head a little bit,” Morgan said.
Morgan has always loved exploring fashion, and the feeling of transformation clothing has provided her. Her favourite part of fashion is the way it brings people together through conversation, and now she works with artists and designers doing this daily.
“We work to help create opportunities for people in our community to create content, to create work, to express their artistic capabilities and present them in a beautiful way that is also cohesive and tells a story,” she said.
Morgan Creative directed the photography for Fashion Week's promotional content and pictures around the exhibit.
Kureshi and Morgan’s work will be included in the exhibition for the remainder of fashion week until the last night, Sunday, Nov. 17.
The event focuses on where art and fashion meet while highlighting the diversity in Toronto’s fashion scene.
“It's specific to Toronto which is interesting because as one of the most multicultural cities in the world, it's so diverse. The inspiration that these designers have and where they are designing from ... are all such a unique perspective and very artistic,” Morgan said.
Select Canadian artists will exhibit their pieces in the remaining days through runways, and tickets are available on the Fashion Art Toronto website.
Zoë Stone is one of the designers showcasing her collection on a runway on Saturday.
She started working on her collection for Fashion Week in early September. Her collection will include 12 pieces with dramatic design elements, focusing on shape and silhouettes with the models coming out in pairs.
The models will be wearing two different styles but will be tied together by a certain design element, usually shape, Stone said.
Her runway was inspired by nature and can be seen in the visuals behind the models and the pieces themselves, but she didn’t want to give away too much information before the show.
Stone said her runway will have a theatrical opening and recommends attendees to be as close as possible.
The designers look forward to participating in fashion week and for attendees to see the garments and collections they have been working on while inspiring the audience through fashion.
Kureshi wanted to inspire attendees in her collection by sewing motivational quotes from her professors, classmates and herself into a dress she featured in the exhibit.
She used this collection as both a way to inspire others and an opportunity to try new things in her creative process.
“I felt like I needed to push my boundaries, and I did, and that’s how I ended up with this collection,” she said.
