The rain has only just been soaked back up into the sky and a crisp beam of winter sunlight rays down on the shop front of Vancouver’s Greenhorn Cafe. Blanche Macdonald Fashion Design graduate and owner of self-titled label Sara Armstrong ambles up, folded in to the dark cocoon of her coat, and we pause together to marvel at the timeful turn. As we upright a couple of chairs outside, brushing off a few straggling drops, the magnificent line and craftsmanship of her jacket are addressed.
“I finished it just now actually. I had been feeling a cape, but I think I might stick with this,” shrugs Sara humbly, her shoulders framed in angled raglan seams, sloping and structured all at once.
“My style is a really strange combination of fashion and sculpture,” she muses slowly, thinking fully – everything with a dream-paced purposefulness. “Though I actually feel that the combination should be more common. It’s transforming anything from a two-dimensional to three-dimensional form, and I reference this a lot in my architectural seams. My background in sculpture has been helpful also in being a bit more fearless in materials.”
Sara refers to her BFA in Intermedia & Sculpture from her hometown University of Regina, where her foray into the world of art-as-career first began. Though she ultimately decided that sculpture was not the medium for her, it built the foundation from which her dynamically arching lines and intriguingly formulated silhouettes – which have garnered her international acclaim – have been wrought.
“When I was doing my degree, I was focusing mainly in public sculpture. I thought, ‘Well, what do you do – work on one project for five years? How do you stay inspired in that?’ Fashion design is my own kind of public sculpture I suppose. Everyone can take a piece, and what I want people to do is to make their own stories and life around them. I don’t think of them as these trendy one season pieces. I want the people who own them to incorporate them into their lives.”
In her third season with her eponymous label, Sara’s impeccable craftsmanship and heritage-minded design stalked down the Vancouver Fashion Week runway to grand success. Reaching a new culmination of hype in the fashion community, eager requests for pre-orders and editorial pulls rained down on her like confetti after the show. Not to mention that it was picked up by, and featured on a global scale by Vogue and Glamour UK, as well as Elle Italia.
“[Vancouver Fashion Week Founder] Jamal and his team are amazing. He’s such a good mentor; he really builds you up, and it’s a great network of people. I’ve done Saskatchewan Fashion Week, and it’s so city identified. What I love about Vancouver Fashion Week is that it’s international. There are people from all over the place which is really cool.”
Inspired by ‘Peruvian nights,’ Sara’s Spring/Summer 2015 collection saw romantic, gender inclusive looks with compelling proportion and a structured ease that fused urban design with the effortlessness of dusk backcountry strolls.
“Silhouette, shape and form always come first when I’m thinking of a theme. Then I think of what it sounds like or what kind of scene would this be in. From there it runs into runway, music, video. All of those things paired together makes a collection. I can’t say that I’d be interested in showing a collection if I didn’t have all of those things because that’s what brings it to life. It’s completely holistic.”
Bringing a vision to mind, to harmonious matter each season is no easy feat and Sara insists that it couldn’t be done alone.
“Your team is everything really. A good leader, a good brand has great people behind it. Delegation is huge because as someone who’s designing and working full time, and trying to build a type of brand, you can’t do it all on your own.
“You need people with the right skills who are just as passionate. This is especially true now, the further I go with my collections, photo shoots and videos. Even my music last season was completely made from scratch by my friend, Branton Olfert. It’s the only way to really take your thing to the next level – you need next level people.”
When it came to choosing her people, Sara knew where to turn, taking on two PR mavens, Tara Osipoff and Albian Kwok, straight out of the Blanche Macdonald Fashion Merchandising classrooms. She knew that she could be confident in their knowledge and skills, coming from the Top Fashion school that first launched her own journey.
“When I moved to Vancouver from Regina I had maybe $200 saved which was not practical,” laughs Sara. “My Aunt, who is practical told me, ‘You need to look into schools.’ I had some friends who had been to Blanche Macdonald and so I enrolled. It’s been one of the better experiences that I’ve had in Vancouver for sure. It’s a community, which is something you need when you move to a new place.
“It was a year, but I feel like I’m still in the program because I still talk to [Fashion Career Director] Mel Watts, and so many of my friends that I met in school are still friends. Sewing classes were always fun – Lisa’s a riot! I’m such a history buff and so the fashion history that we learned in Peggy Morrison’s Fashion Awareness class is still something that I think about a lot when I’m designing – when I want to pair a sleeve, thinking about how they might have done it in the 1940’s or some Gothic era. There’s so much that I learned over the year and I literally use it every day; even when I’m doing press releases, or writing out the description of what a piece is.”
Though Sara’s design focus may lie with a home-grown aesthetic, the extravagant and fast-paced arena of social media and web marketing is not one that she shies away from. Cultivating an online presence with her seasonal collection videos, regular updates on her Instagram page, and a soon-to-be-launched web shop are all things that Sara has on her mind in the now, and looking ahead.
“I know that my audience might not be 100 percent Vancouver. Maybe the people that I’m trying to reach are nomads; maybe they’re people who could live anywhere and wear anything they want. I think that it’s important that my target is able to access that wherever they are, whether they’re in Beijing or Stockholm. It’s a good way to start because that’s ultimately what I want to do, is wholesale internationally. So I love branding, and I love my Instagram – I’m out of control on that!”
All the same, at the end of the day it’s the intimate and immersive practice of hands-on-fabric that has Sara enamored with her career.
“I feel like I have an ‘aha-moment’ every day – I just have to do it. It’s an inclination to design and create.”
It’s an inclination, but it’s not all ease and affinity; Sara knows that in the cutthroat world of Fashion, talent is only as good as how far you push it.
“Every season we learn something new, and every season we have higher expectations for the next season. There’s always an ebb and flow and there’s always a chance to learn. Design can’t be everything if you want to have a business – it has to be well-rounded, and it has to be promoted. That’s real life. Moving forward, outside of the actual design, something I could be better at is selling.”
Sara is being modest. With international acclaim and a strong local support so early in the game, Sara’s line is set to flourish in the years to come – and we’re eager to watch. Reflecting on her success so far, she has apt words of acumen for the next generation of emerging Fashion Design talent.
“Own your craft. Own your future. Make your own curriculum. Go to your classes, do well in your classes but also look outside in your community; what workshops can you take, what can you do to be the best version of yourself? That’s what I did when I went to school – I really dove in and that year was committed to learning what I wanted to learn.
“That’s the biggest thing; you can go to the best school but if you don’t have a vision of what you want to make, of who you are then it doesn’t really matter. So own it.”
