Toronto Fashion Week: Caitlin Power is happy, calm and in control of her fall ... - Toronto Star

The designer makes last-minute adjustments with a model before the runway show.

RANDY RISLING/TORONTO STAR

Twenty minutes before the second big fashion show of her young career begins, someone walks up to Caitlin Power cradling a pair of pants in her arms like an infant.

“Excuse me, this has a hole,” the woman says.

“Oh my God,” says Power.

PHOTOS: Caitlin Power designs marked by alienesque, androgynous looks

The pair stand staring at each other for a long moment.

“Can someone sew them for me?” Power asks.

“Er … well … I … don’t …,” the woman says, looking over her shoulder for imaginary help.

Power reaches out and takes the pants. She walks them over to a folding table and begins digging through her bag. She’ll sew them.

Power, a 23-year-old from Calgary, has been planning this show at Toronto Fashion Week for six months.

For those six months, she’s had control of every aspect of her vision. For the hour and a half leading up to the walk down the runway, she has to give some away.

First, the hair and make-up.

Power wants her models to look “spacey, alienesque.”

This is apparently hard to convey to a make-up person.

Behind the stage, 40 estheticians are working. The room is steaming like a bathhouse. A passel of bored-looking late arrivals are sitting on folding chairs, waiting their turn. It’s the world’s prettiest dentist’s office.

Power is circling the chairs, chatting, remarkably laid back. Her support team of five crowds around her protectively.

She stops in front of one of her models and hesitates. She’s not sold. One of the eyebrows is “blocked out” with white plaster, a hairless stripe. The other eyebrow is heavily caked in make-up, revealing some hair. Power holds a hand up in front the model, Aleisha, looking at one eyebrow in isolation and then the other. This won’t work.

The make-up chief is called over, already flustered and growing unhappy.

“I think it’s so scary,” Power says of the hairless eyebrow.

“I think you should make a final decision, please,” the make-up boss says.

Power chooses. The make-up boss stomps off.

Once Aleisha is done right, Power walks her up and down the line of chairs — a 5-foot-10 instruction manual.

“I want them to look cohesive,” Power says.

Make-up boss swings back into the picture, still itching for a scrap.

“They look different,” Power says.

“But they are different. His skin tone (and here she points to one of Power’s male models) is like . . . ”

And she storms off again without finishing.

Advantage Power.

Throughout, Power remains serene. She might even be having fun. She’s pretty enough to star in her own show, and made prettier still by her ease.

“We’re still getting RSVPs,” one of her publicity people coos with less than an hour to go.

“Oh, oh, good!” Power shouts, jumping up and down. “Anybody like . . . ”

She lets “like” hang in the air, the word “important” unsaid.

The PR lady smiles. Plenty of likes.

With 45 minutes to go, the models are escorted into a curtained-off cubby backstage. Power and her stylist, Amanda Lao, are handing them clothes. They wait until the model is dressed. Then they stand back and stare. Really stare.

And then the pair descend. They begin adjusting, tucking, folding, pulling and pushing.

In the midst of one of these manoeuvres, one model, Oliver, looks up from where the two women are fussing over his trouser cuffs. He raises his eyebrows. Tough job.

A half hour before the 5 p.m. curtain, Power & Co. schlep all their gear into the room directly behind the catwalk.

“Models are coming in!” a stage director shrieks.

Volunteer dressers stream in first, one for each model. Power is still sewing. There’s a lot of un-self-conscious nudity happening.

Power’s phone rings. She can talk and sew at the same time.

“Right, yeah, it’s the white tent,” she says and hangs up.

She’s the calmest person in the room.

With five minutes left, Power is looking over each model. The models are being moved around like human furniture. To a man and woman, they are oblivious.

How do you become a model? Two steps. Be beautiful. Have no sense of personal space.

Five o’clock arrives and Power and a couple of her posse are dancing in the doorway. There’s no point in talking. The music is far too loud.

The models begin to line up. A pair of women are down on their knees bronzing the calves of all the models wearing skirts. Power calls her charges to attention.

“Powerful faces. You are the future,” Power instructs at high volume. “And no hands on hips.”

The show kicks off at 5:04. Eighteen outfits. It’s over at 5:11.

Power lets out a war whoop when the last model files back in. Her smile hasn’t changed.

An instant after it’s over, the models have fled and the room is once again nearly bare.

Six months for seven minutes. Time to start planning again.

More on Toronto Fashion Week from the Toronto Star

Cathal Kelly is a sports columnist.