David Dixon
spring/summer 2004

There are other perks than being asphyxiated at the doorway that come with attending a David Dixon show. One of the main ones is witnessing how the designer lives up to his reputation as the nation's (or at least well-heeled Toronto's) arbiter of style.

I could have sworn that Carmen Miranda dropped by for a mojito, because the place was littered with bananas, and yellow also staked a huge claim in the new collection.

The show opened with delicate lace blouses in creamy tones, and some of these were modernized out of their Victorian torpor with the intersecting lines we've been hearing so much hot air about for Spring 2004.

For something a little dressier, the crisp white suit jackets are angular and strong, but are softened by the easiness of the flared cabana pants. The dresses with mohair ribbon encased in tulle are probably going to be the hot sellers when the collection hits the racks.

If avant-garde fashion can be characterized as extravagant but not gratuitous, experimental but not masturbatory, then Dixon is slightly ahead of the pack.

Working in two layers, as seen in Dixon's rose-print creations in blue chiffon, can lead to dynamic results in the area of movement. A dress can have two lives, shimmying to two different rhythms at once. This is fashion, my friends-in stereo.

I better not hear anyone lambaste the silk taffeta that paraded around the Round Room, despite how I feel that it should otherwise be phased out as a fabric altogether. Here it happened to catalyze Dixon's forays into electric blue, and possibly also held vigil to the sombreness that we've come to love in his collections.

Daniel Cox
Fashion Editor
Marek Wlazlo
Photographer


Copyright ©2003 MINIMIDIMAXI LTD.
The Canadian Fashion Stage
All Rights Reserved