Mile-end mad hatter

>> Master of Millinery Jennifer Glasgow mixes and matches with her Solo street line

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

If you’ve ever dropped into the whimsical, womanly arts and craft emporium that is the Elle Corazon Crafty Chick Bazaar, you may have spotted her. Jennifer Glasgow was the petite blonde in the back corner by a rack of intriguing frocks and fuzzy hats. Glasgow, originally from Winnipeg, has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and confesses to never having studied fashion, instead completing a Master of Millinery program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, after which she spent a year designing costumes for the Cirque du Soleil.

“Hats are my forté,” Glasgow explains, “but all along I’d been making clothes for friends.” From the Cirque, where she found that she “couldn’t work under the roof of red tape and administration,” she went on to designing a children’s line with a friend under the Solo name. But since her partner went back to school last year, she’s been piloting Solo on her own and it’s flourished into a streety Mile-End favourite with local ladies eating up her creations as fast as she can sew them.

“I have a group that I e-mail and we have a wine and cheese where we sell stock in all different sizes,” says Glasgow of her mix-and-mingle approach. “It’s great because I can be one on one with people.” She also somehow manages to take dance costume contracts, as well as having been commissioned by Plateau meals-on-wheels program Santropol Roulant to design their soon-to-be-launched line of clothing and accessories. Glasgow’s fashion outlook seems to echo her openness to creative impulses of every ilk.

“This city is complete inspiration all the time,” Glasgow enthuses. “From drag queens to indie bands, it’s a social thing, with the music and the aesthetic that goes along with each group. Plus, I have a couple of ladies who are my muses.” The delightful mélange of social fauna that Glasgow slips in and out of certainly was evident at her fashion show last September. “I got all the crazy rock ’n’ rollers and breakdancers together and let them appropriate my designs however they wanted. That’s what it’s about: taking the elegant and making it funky, taking the rock ’n’ roll and making it refined. Like a controlled mayhem.”
As for her latest collection, to be revealed at a carnivalesque catwalk caper in June, Glasgow has plundered her artistic roots by painting, topstitching and sketching onto fabric. Some sneak-preview highlights: “Loads of denim, bleached insects, ’70s rock flag bustiers with laces up the back, men’s ties, fedoras, cotton fleece, puffed sleeves and high hoods.” Also, a heavy dose of positive vibrations: “I’ve bleached positive words into the fabric. Words like ‘give,’ or ‘extol.’ I’m so sick of the negative. It’s got to give off positivity!” l

Contact Jennifer Glasgow and Solo at 278-6982 or soloapparel@hotmail.com