The Style Council

Documenting the street styles of Dufferin & Eglinton.

The Style Council was a fashion media pilot program I conceptualized & coordinated for Toronto-based community arts facility, Art Starts.

In the fall of 2009, I brought together a collective of emerging writers, stylists & photographers in documenting their own style, as well as what they saw on the very streets they walked.

The participants in the program successfully created Toronto’s first community-driven “Stylebook”, which focused on the unique styles of the Dufferin Eglinton / Oakwood Vaughan communities. The participants were Septembre Anderson, Melisa Arruda, Murissa Barrington, Sasha Charles, Sherifa Douglas, Jeba Bowers Murphy, Mina Nguyen, Gloria Ohemeng, Janeba Saho, Orinthia Wilks.

The 10 sessions involved guest facilitators from the fashion industry. They included I Want – I Got editor & founder Anita Clarke, photographer Alexis Finch, stylist Jeanette Linton, make-up artist Roxanne DeNobrega & interactive art director Cherisse Thurab.

The Style Council was one of the first Art Starts programs that involved interacting online as an integral part of the sessions. Participants maintained a Tumblr that documented in “real time” the development of their publication.

We also had a Flickr & YouTube channel for documentative video content produced by Lorena Salomé.

The Stylebook was launched with a fundraiser at 69 Vintage in partnership with the Deadly Nightshades.