Vancouver Fashion Week 2023

Why have we been MIA?

Well, we had a lot going on….

In 2021, Lé Lesél was contacted about an opportunity to participate in Vancouver Fashion Week the following year, and we took the opportunity to do so. Thus commencing the madness that followed all of 2022 leading up to the Spring Summer 2023 Vancouver Fashion Week that showcased October 20-23, 2022.

“To witness God’s hand and grace on this entire journey has been a blessing and a half; this was the year I got to know Him as Jehovah Jirah to me”

— Lesél Picou

“To witness God’s hand and grace on this entire journey has been a blessing and a half; this was the year I got to know Him as Jehovah Jirah to me.” States head designer Lesél. During this process, we reached out to our friends, family and you guys to help us reach the financial goal, even to showcase and bring forth this new collection. We had to decide to open up a GoFundMe account and set a goal of $5,500 to cover the cost of showcasing in Vancouver and pay for materials to create this new collection. With some donations rolling in, we ended July with an in-person fundraiser, and I can not say thank you enough to everyone who came out to support and show love during this time. We exceeded our goal by just under 1K, and everything came to $6,450.27. We want to thank God publicly here in doing all this.

Fashion Fundraiser overview

Proverbs 16:3 “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”

Music: You Were Mine. Musician: Carl Storm

After the fundraiser and with our goals more than being reached, it was all in for the countdown till show time. We hit up Queen Textiles Inc in Toronto and got most of our fabric from there. (We want to try and stay local when resourcing our material as much as we can) the rest of our materials and most of our accessories came from Fabricland, and some extra pieces from Amazon. Then for the next two months, it was a mixture of refining designs, sewing fiascos, and sending in all the material to the VFW team.

We wanted to bring in some new elements we had not entirely done before for the collection we showcased. We have been getting comments from the male side of the world asking for designs for them as well. It was always our intention to eventually broaden our work to incorporate men’s wear outside our custom orders, so we took up the challenge to do just that in this collection. With Golden Hour still being available, we wanted this collection to blend well with the soft feminine touch we have already established while still making room for more masculine pieces for our male audience. After much design thought, we looked to fantasy, techwear and anime, hoping to create a seamless blend of the two. Its name is G LOFI, and there is no need to tute our own horn, but we think it was a great hit.

“G LOFI is a blend of fantasy and romance with a bit of grunge to it,” our head designer stated. When looking at techwear, we have been able to bring an edginess to our work; however, since this was a spring/summer collection and techwear mostly stays using only black and pops of neon colours when it comes to colour pallets, we took on the challenge of not using any black at all in our designs to lighten the mood of techwear. Other concepts in our previous collection stayed the same, such as the play on texture, structure, hard and soft material used, and the layered lines for silhouettes. As the collection developed more and more, Ephesians 6: 11, “Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” started to become the forefront of thought. G LOFI hopes to signal a creative Armour of God.

Ephesians 6: 11 “Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

The G in G LOFI stands for Genesis the first, which is very fitting as this was the first time we were showcasing our work outside of Ontario, where we are located. Lofi stands for Lo-fi, as in music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate choice. Putting all that in the context of God's creative armour, meaning your imperfections, whether by choice or not, are still seen as perfect, has poetic beauty.

Overall the experience at VFW was terrific, and we are grateful for this opportunity. The staff was accommodating and enthusiastic and answered any questions we had. Choosing the models the day of was highly nerve-racking however I believe we chose a solid team to show our work. Our sound engineer Xyavier was able to fly out and be a part of the whole experience which was amazing to have the entire team together to pull this show off. Thank you, VFW, for everything.