When Tanya Taylor brought her trunk show to Holt Renfrew Calgary on a recent Thursday, the highlight of her evening plans included spending some quality time with the television. “We haven’t had very much sleep, so we might do some room service and Scandal.”
While she may love a show whose main character is known for wearing white, Tanya’s palette this spring is anything but. Her designs are driven by color, and the one she’s loving this year is poppy orange.
That’s what Tanya calls it. I saw tangerine. But deep coral, peach, citrus zest, no matter how you interpret it, the color was a definite theme, spreading throughout the back room on Holts’ second floor.
There’s a couture element to this off-the-rack collection, available in Canada exclusively at Holts. The New York based designer says fabric is an integral part of her process. “I paint all the prints originally, then print them on silk. There’s an original hand-drawn quality about everything in the collection.”
Originally from Toronto, Tanya is painter at heart. With a finance degree. She found fashion to be the perfect intersection between art and business. “I liked the idea of starting my own company, similar to the entrepreneurship I’d studied, but also being able to sit down and paint on a canvas, then translate that into a dress.”
Trunk shows tickle Tanya with the opportunity to interact with the customers. Visiting Calgary comes with the bonus of interacting with her extended family here.
For those who need more than poppy orange, there are options. And while Olivia Pope has been branching out from her go-to color of late, Tanya Taylor’s Spring 2014 Collection has an outfit to bring her white wardrobe back.
