“The mask is the face.” —Susan Sontag, “On Style”

“Taste is constant; style varies from season to season.” —Bill Cunningham, “On Taste”

Fashion implies an accelerated mode of temporality.

Microtrends dominate social media nowadays — and even the media themselves are subject to fashion’s fickle whims. What is hot now seems to cool all the more rapidly as a result of the timeline’s impetuous, algorithmic turnover. Today, tomorrow more quickly becomes yesterday.

“Time keeps going, keeps going,” says the designer and textile artist Genève-Florence. “You try to catch up to it.”

Florence is giving me a guided tour, circling a third-floor studio space in the Chabanel district that serves as the production and design headquarters for their eponymous fashion label, showing me a series of garments and objects that at once designate this specific cultural moment and appear timeless. Florence’s creations embrace a post-modern gothic look in intricately rendered clothing that is both rugged and delicate, rough and refined.

Material is strewn everywhere in assemblages categorized by composition. A wall of thread. A rusty metallic chain. Wooden shoe formers. Tools arranged by size and purpose. And fabric — lots of fabric.

Among Florence’s most preferred fabrics is leather, bolts and patches of which are rolled up and collected in several banker’s boxes on the floor. “When they kill the animal, there are often scars and discoloration,” Florence says, handing me samples of various shades of hides. “But these, they just keep the skin whole. The cows are very well treated. They don’t have a lot of scars from bugs and scratching.”

I was introduced to Florence’s work through the artist Tomas Dessureault and was instantly enamoured with its techniques and textures. Pleated folds and braided laces embellish skirts, blouses, handbags, notebooks, and other articles that are more-or-less wearable or functional, but also formally appealing as pieces that would look equally at home in an art gallery.

“People might not consider me an artist,” Florence admits, preferring the title “craftsperson.” “Maybe it’s just me thinking that. But I want to just do a proper vernissage one day. I love spending time around people who are artists and passionate about what they’re doing, passionate about craft. What I’m doing is less about fashion and more about craftsmanship. I like to do everything. But I’m trying not to exhaust myself. You can’t do everything. I’m trying to figure out what to give, what to take, what I’m willing to give up, or what to not give away.”

Florence, 23, is a rare breed, Franco-Albertan, born and raised speaking French in the Bonnie Doon neighbourhood of Edmonton, one of Canada’s unlikeliest bastions for Francophone culture. “My grandmother is from Brittany in the north of France and my grandfather is Quebecois,” Florence informs me. “On my dad’s side, my grandfather is Italian and my grandmother is French Albertan. People are always surprised when I tell them I’m French-Canadian but from Alberta. People don’t even know we exist.”

Florence’s interest in fashion manifested in drawings of clothing at around eight years of age and flourished after attending a community youth sewing camp. “After that, I was obsessed,” says Florence.

“My mom bought me a super-cheap $50 Brother sewing machine — basically, a toy from Walmart. I would go thrifting with my grandmother. I would buy clothes and bedsheets and make stuff with that for myself and my friends. Outside of school, that’s all I would do. My great-grandmother was a talented seamstress and embroidery and textile maker. I grew up around a lot of clothes, but not in a glamorous fashion designer way. It was purely about making stuff and being around objects that carried a lot of value for the people around me. Seeing that value,” Florence recalls, “it was important to preserve that.”

There is an impression of weighty history to each object that emerges from Florence’s workshop. Although they are pieces of high fashion, they betray a sense of slow time, often involving significantly more labour than their prices reflect. Still, exchange value is not the point.

“I always had a very busy mind,” Florence reveals. “But whenever I would make things with my hands, it would be like peace. It would calm me down. I felt like there was purpose. Even if it took a long time to make something, the time you spend with the objects, you create a bond with them. I do like making ready-to-wear clothing. I like the process of making it. But it’s not my end goal. It’s just for the experience of making it. Becoming. That’s the purpose of it.”

During our visit, I gradually grow aware of the music Florence is listening to and inquire what it is. “It’s Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou,” she says, an Ethiopian mystic who died in 2023 at the age of 99. Florence, raised in a strict Catholic tradition, finds inspiration in the divine qualities of music, and specifically in Emahoy’s compositions, she says.

“It’s very spiritual music,” Florence explains, “and when I’m working, it feels very spiritual to me. The act of making with my hands, all my work is based on ritual and repetition. The connection of the hands to something greater than yourself. All the pleating I do is stuff that is repetitive and very monotonous. But when you’re doing repetitive things, you lose yourself in it. I’m not religious by nature. But things are not always based on reason. I believe in human emotion and the greater knowledge of ancestral history and the weight of everything around you. Everything has a place.” Florence pauses for a moment, examining the room. “I also like silence. I work in pure silence sometimes, with no distractions.”

The pieces that Florence creates each possess a soul, almost as if they were living manifestations, ritual magic made flesh. I ask about a blistered chair that commands attention in the center of the room.

“I call this chair ‘The Flood,’” Florence laughs. “It’s chemically treated. It’s a chemical reaction that disintegrates the leather and makes it shrink and dehydrate itself, the parts that are big and bubbly. To me, this chair is the opposite of control. I splatter the liquid and then it does what it wants. The thing with craft that I love so much is that it’s very human. It’s the most human. That’s how we evolved to where we are, using tools, and using what’s around us to build things and create a world around us. That’s what feels spiritual to me.”

Spirituality, focus, and devotion clearly characterize Florence’s designs and represent more than fashion, style, or taste. They represent the subjective experience of passing time — time in an age in which time itself feels unmoored. Florence speaks to the human condition and expresses an ageless wisdom that is surprising for such a young artist, and unheard of in the fashion world that is predominantly preoccupied with precisely defining trendiness.

“All my friends call me grandfather,” Florence says. “I always love old things, and I love being around older people. I like peace and quiet and when things are slow. I like to take time.”◼︎

_{Cover image: Detail of handbag designed by Genève-Florence. Photographed for NicheMTL.}