Get up close and personal with Montreal fashion designer Valerie Dumaine and find out what inspires the woman behind the confident, simply elegant and carefully embellished line.

In sixth grade, instead of donning the typical prepubescent uniform of Velcro sneakers and leggings, Valérie Dumaine would head to school in high heels, skirts and her mother's clothes. By age 12, she moved past borrowing and piecing together, and was modifying her clothes with the help of her grandmother's sewing machine. Her desire for uniqueness taught her to sew.

Born With a Passion for Fashion

"I so wanted to have badly what I couldn't find in stores," she says. "There was never anything that was like, 'Oh, wow! That's awesome!' I always wanted to be different."

Throughout grade school, Dumaine continued to concoct her own sartorial masterpieces and even worked her magic for friends.

She also honed her sewing skills with her father's girlfriend, who worked within the fashion industry, by heading to her place to whip up garments in a mere afternoon. And when high school rolled around, the annual school fashion shows were speckled with her designs.

The "Wow" Moment

This passion for fashion never faded and Dumaine, now the one-woman-show behind her self-titled clothing label, has created a line that satisfies her appetite for that "wow" moment. Valérie Dumaine, the label, prides itself in a sleek sophistication that pops with sassy spurts of color and punches of bold fabrics. With an uncluttered style that Valérie describes as "épuré," this line caters to the sassy fashionista who knows how to pull it together with classic pieces, the right accessories and clean yet bold lines.

Valérie Dumaine *hearts* Blazers

Keeping in tune with her love of well-cut tailoring and stylistic simplicity, Valérie has a special place in her heart for blazers. And when she was stitching together her own mastery of sewing in her teens and early 20s, it was not until she arrived at LaSalle College in Montréal for the Fashion Design program that she finally learned how to create a lapel – a blazer collar. Now, blazers pop up in each of Valérie's seasonal collections, each beautifully constructed garment adding a twist to this classic shape.

Debut Collection: Spring 2004

Fittingly, Valérie's first collection, Russian Disco launched in spring 2004, featured a white blazer that had the designer gasping "wow." Requiring a re-run after eager shoppers scooped them all up, the snow-white blazer found its success in trim, flattering lines and a black Russian graphic printed on its side. With an interest in Eastern Europe and Asia, and an adoration for fashion of the past, Valérie dipped her collection in the Russian aesthetic and graphic methods of the 20s.

Mod looks were sprinkled with a modern spice, resulting in a clean palette of black, white and khaki that was funked up with puddles of reds and yellows. For this newsprint-esque collection, Valérie worked with fashion/graphic designer Milan of Perplex & Lola to fashion prints inspired by soviet propaganda posters.

Unenchanted

This first collection did not come immediately after her graduation from LaSalle College, but instead after more than a handful of experience-building years on Montréal's infamous rou Chabanel and after a trip to Berlin in 2002. While working on Chabanel, the heart of the city's garment industry, Valérie's dream to start her own line was slowly fading.

"At that point, I thought if this was really fashion, I don't want to do it," she says of working on rue Chabanel. "It's kind of like industrial. It's the bad companies that do a lot of copying... a lot of copying and a lot of wannabes. Oh god, bad fashion."

Each year, she'd work a "bad Chabanel job," spend her summers working at a Chrysler warehouse, and would break it all up with a little traveling. All the while, she was constantly hoping next year's job in the fashion industry would be better.
Finally, when she took off overseas for Berlin, Valérie knew the job she was leaving would be her last, and the trip she was taking would be the final leg before she started her line.

Finding Optimism Overseas

In Berlin she did unpaid work for young underground designers in the area, investigating the fashion industry someplace that wasn't Montréal. And from the experiences she garnered and the success she saw in these young designers, Valérie was instilled with new optimism.

"I knew it was possible," she says. "I was not hopeless."

Valérie returned to Montréal in early 2003, and soon after applied for – and was given – a young entrepreneur grant, allowing the designer to pour all her attention into her label without worry about work. She plowed through the business plan for the next year, simultaneously producing her line. The first Valérie Dumaine collection hit stores in April 2004.

Uniquely Valérie Dumaine

The exquisite tailoring of her first season has continued to thread through her subsequent collections, and her patterns have matured toward a state of palatable couture. She has left behind the "young street wear" look of screen printing and instead embraced fabrics already infused with patterns.

"It's kind of like couture, but not high-end," she says of her line's direction. "I want people to be able to afford wearing designer stuff that's not high-end. I do understand why they make their prices like that, but I just want to be more accessible."

Gathering her inspiration in everything that surrounds her, from vintage record covers to 60s film, Valérie hopes to create collections that ooze with the particular mood that motivated her. She pulls elements from previous decades into her designs, realizing that in today's fashion, nothing is ever new. But by blending unexpected decades, working with simple yet bold palettes, and polishing it all with her épuré style, Valérie Dumaine has managed to create something new, satisfying that young girl in her – and the rest of us – who always wanted to be different.

"Nothing is ever unique, but I hope it's unique in its own way."