Technicolour dreamcoat Guys can finally apply Adhesif to their wardrobes. This fall, the locally made line presents its first male selection with the Jammer Jacket. It’s a patchwork of salvaged stretch-wool, in a kaleidoscope of cubist combinations that includes colours such as burgundy, chartreuse, and grey. A thoughtful touch is pockets roomy enough for carrying digital accessories. Each piece is one-of-a-kind and goes for $210.

Ready for takeoff On September 27, the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts will be transformed into a hot airport scene for this year’s Sky 360–themed gala of fashion runway, live music, and art performance, benefiting Make Poverty History and the WorldLoveWorldLove Project. Local designer Jolie Chan has created ’60s- and ’70s-inspired airline uniforms for staff.

Making its mark Ever score the perfect shirt, the one that’s really you, only to see it on someone else the next day? Mark-it apparel has the remedy, with hand-picked one-off Ts from Europe, Southeast Asia, and Japan. (The chances of seeing someone else with the same look are nearly zero.) Mark-it also features select name brands, vintage clothing, and accessories at its Blade Runner–influenced 525 West Pender Street location.

Situated just below street level at 157 Water Street, Lloyd’s of Gastown brings the newest menswear to Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood. International lines like Kenneth Cole, Matinique, and Ben Sherman join local labels such as fiveleft, Kairos Designs, and Jadefish in Lloyd’s well-crafted neo-industrial setting.

Friday night was marked by great fashion at the Roundhouse Community Centre. The marketing graduates of the John Casablancas Institute presented Doll Me Up, a fashion show showcasing designs from local boutiques around town, along with a stand-out first-time exhibition of the class’s own five student designers.

At an Obakki fashion show, attendees don’t hem or haw when it comes to the subject of men’s shorts.

The original plan was to tell you how to assemble a complete summer wardrobe for around $100. What kind of drugs was I on? The only places you can do that are thrift stores, H & M (and even there you'd whip through the budget fairly quickly), and the Real Canadian Superstore.

Judging by what’s hanging from retailer racks and the derrières of gamines, hottish pants and short shorts will hold sway once again on the beach and on the streets this season.

When I first started writing this column, Vancouver fashion design hardly existed and, when it did, few supported it. Armani or Donna Karan, fine, but a skirt by a local unknown? The Block and Dream were about the only stores that pushed local labels. And now look at us. Lower Main Street bursting with homegrown boutiques, the fabulous indie fashion at Portobello West market, stunning and marketable looks coming out of the design schools—Vancouver definitely isn’t the style backwater it used to be.

Sea Queen fills a gap in a world where most designs are geared to the young and coltlike, and according to Monika Schnarre, what designer jeans have done for the butt, their swimwear has done for the bustline.

For the first time in many seasons, ankle-length dresses will return to Vancouver sidewalks, with a wide range of styles to tickle your ankles.

Like many new moms, Elizabeth Yap-Chung wasn’t jumping up and down with glee at the thought of returning to the 9 to 5 world after her maternity leave ended. But where most women heave a sigh, organize childcare, and resign themselves to the daily commute, Yap-Chung started to think about a way around it. “I wanted to stay home,” she says in a phone interview. “I’d had a business of my own before, and I had a taste for that.

See the Gallery With Main Street and Gastown bursting with boutiques brimming with B.C. design, Portobello West a monthly must, and blogs and Web sites landing news of the hotness within the city limits in your inbox every day, it’s easy to forget that local fashion only became a major force fairly recently. A biannual happening since 2004, Vancouver Fashion Week was a once-a-year thang when show producer Jamal Abdourahman first launched the event in 2001. “He wanted to create a forum for B.C.

A fashion and image project for teens encourages them to evolve their own style rather than follow the fashion herd of scuzzy celebs and supermodels.

Know your itinerary and dress right for business travel; at Impact: An Event for Change’s fundraiser, low-income women get job-ready style help too.