This is somewhat shocking, but citing a lack of "local" support, IMG pulled the plug on Toronto Fashion Week.
"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,'' Catherine Bennett, senior vice-president and managing director of IMG Fashion Events & Properties, said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"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.''
It's long been an overly costly, elitist, spectacle with no real substantive return on investment for sponsors or the designers it was supposed to benefit.
Indeed, far from reflecting the true style of Toronto and creating real opportunities, the prohibitive costs and politics of TFW forced some designers to stage their shows outside of the official fashion week.
This isn't the death of Canadian (Toronto) Fashion by far, but hopefully this will serve as a wakeup call to not only our local fashion industry, but also to our government to give arts and culture the true support it deserves.
KB