Glencora Twigg, Christine Hotton, and Jessica Vaira have brought their personal style and skill set to a new capsule collection of sustainable and fashion-forward tops for the fall 2008 season.

Monique Mousseau works with enamel, using a venerable technique that appears in Chinese art, to create distinctive pendants, pins, rings, and earrings, mainly in a West Coast blue.

The Vancouver designer drew her inspiration for her latest collection, which has a more Miami feel with standouts including a lime chiffon dress and a white cotton bomber jacket, from Edie Sedgwick.

Local designer Melanie Hull drew her initial inspiration for her signature line of colourful feather hair combs and headbands from her Ukrainian grandmother.

A new local label's line is ideal for the Vancouver lifestyle: a three-quarter-sleeve, black-and-white-striped tunic dress for a trip to the beach, a chunky bangle for a patio barbecue, and a pair of comfortable heels for a night of dancing.

The culmination of 10 months spent toiling over patternmaking, illustration, construction, and design, the students’ work featured everything from feathered skirts and sequined dresses to floor-length gowns and even a set of period costumes.

This summer, Vancouver designer Katie Quinn is determined to make Downtown Betty a household name with her colourful signature hand–silk-screened skimboard bags.

A Vancouver-based fashion designer has turned the white, plasticky weather-barrier material normally found at construction sites into her medium of choice for everything from men's costumes to wedding dresses.

Designer Christie Clayton has created an easy-to-wear, beach-friendly collection that was inspired by nu-rave music, with funky silkscreens and zipper pulls featuring the Holy Ghost.

Kimberley Dawn Cathers’s vintage-fabric designs on label kdon are cool on-line sellers—and never coy.

More photos from Carnevale

Liz Law isn't your typical fashion designer but, influenced by China and Italy, she conjures up clothes that are pretty, wearable, appropriate to Vancouver, and affordable.

The season of grey has finally lifted, and that’s not just in terms of Vancouver’s usual cloudy weather. On the fashion front, winter and early spring’s coolly depressing charcoals and silvers are giving way to a summer of happy, retina-searing new colours, and leading the charge is French Connection, whose recent event at its Robson Street flagship store was all about eye candy.

Check out Carmen Majeau’s crafty wares, and what you don’t see is as revolutionary as what you do. Majeau creates happy, summery wallets embroidered with cute octopuses and forest animals; purses that close with antique buttons and sport appliqués; and cheerful polka-dot bas. As well, she’s walking in the footsteps of the arts and crafts movement’s William Morris, and those of midcentury anticolonialist—and spinning-wheel enthusiast—Mahatma Gandhi. How?

Yes, Vancouver, get a hold of yourself: H&M has finally arrived. The Swedish fashion retailer will open the doors to its Pacific Centre location and, of course, its scads of hip, inexpensive clothing for women and men on May 22.