Nearing the finish line

TODAY we just recorded our narration voiceovers for the project with the help of Neil Gillis, our excellent sound tech and musician-in-residence. The doc is coming together beautifully. The story arc – if I can be so bold as to call it that – will follow the  rise, decline and transformation of the manufacturing and textile industry and all four (six?) of our vingettes are fleshed out with colourful, real people.

We also came across a man who ties all our stories together with a macro-sized bow that seems almost too good to be true. Almost by accident, I met the outsource man himself – Roger Ibell, the man who finds the cost-effective material in Bangladesh and a needleworker in Nepal who, put together, make possible the pocketbook friendly shirt you found at American LargeBird Store. His narration provides the much-needed landscape view that ties together the intensely personal stories we tell in our half-hour show.

We are rocking this doc and I can’t wait to see the end.

Mike Mind

Montreal analog sequencer guru Mike Mind has expressed an interest in helping the project with music production. His understated minimal acid techno sets a psychedelic, spacious atmosphere that will bring out the desolate nature of some of the industrial scenes. Notably, he has organized and played at underground music events in many of Montreal’s former industrial spaces.

Listen:

Satellite Son by Mike Mind

Aux Archives

Family from Peru got their start at Classy

I met a tailor by the name of Juan Mina who arrived in Montreal from Peru about thirty years ago. After some courses at U de M, he answered an ad in the paper for a tailor at Classy. Without any experience, they asked him to start right away. “I was a fake,” he said. “I didn’t know how to use the machines, but they hired me anyway.” He worked there 15 years before leaving to open his own business just across Phillips Square, opposite his old employer.

Juan’s mother and father, his two brothers and two sisters followed him to Montreal, and with the exception of his mother, all found work at Classy.

Juan Mina came over from Peru thirty years ago and ended up learning to tailor at Classy. He now has his own business in Phillips Square.

Interesting Story on Ubisoft

This is a simple news piece that outlines Ubisoft’s plan to make Ubisoft MTL into the biggest gaming studio in the world by 2013.

Here’s the link.

The tax ‘generous tax credits’ part is especially interesting, as well as the part about wagering on ‘Quebec’s creative potential’ by Ubisoft.

I know this isn’t necessarily about our economic spaces, but it’s certainly about our economic sectors, and I’ll be damned if it’s not an example of what we’re all feeling MTL needs right about now.

Some Crazy T’s

Ever heard of the Hexagram Research Institute?

As nerdy as the name  sounds, this group of academics from Concordia and UQAM is into, among many things,  fashion. More specifically, they’re into the ‘electronic textile sector’. Yes, as the name suggests, these are clothes that integrate technology in their very fabric – things like a BPM sensor stitched into your shirt and that sorta stuff. Okay Hexagram Research, fashion or not, that’s still pretty nerdy.

Anyways I stumbled across this and thought, ‘hey, this can hang on to the coattails of Tobi’s Classy Tux piece!’ Check it out.

Right here at Concordia we have what is called the XS lab. They’re the ones who are all about developing this ‘tech clothing’:

The very first interactive garments designed at XS Labs, housed at Hexagram, made a big splash in the media as early as 2003, and are destined for a brilliant future. Generally speaking, industrial applications for these textiles focus on specialty clothing (military, health, sports) and electronic product add-ons, like the recent partnership between Apple and Nike, but XS plans on seeing its fabrics on the catwalks and on the stage.

At XS Labs, you can see this technology applied to clothes that change colour or shape, or versatile electronic textiles, like Berzowska’s Kukkia dress, which has flowers that slowly open and close on their own. This innovative approach already interests a number of companies, like Cirque du Soleil, Jacob and Parasuco, but Berzowska would like to collaborate with many players in the Montreal performance and fashion industries. “I think this is an asset that will ensure Montreal’s world-wide influence in this field.”

The name ‘Berzowska’ is mentioned in the blurb, she’s the Associate Professor of Design and Computation Art and Research Director at XS Labs – not to mention a prime academic candidate for our story.

Berzowska not only has her hand around the needle of this exciting new industry, she also seems to know her stuff when it comes to Montreal’s textile industry woes. She’s like a double whammy, offering a professional take on the state of clothes manufacturing in our fair city, and someone who can guide us towards future possibilities. I think the sound effect your looking for is bodda bing, bodda boom. Do you guys hear it that way?

Here’s some links:

XS Labs

Berzowska’s webpage

~I’ll continue to research this. Who knows, maybe these shirts will some day tell us what man-nipples are really for.

Decorative Font Test

This is a very preliminary test into redesigning the stylized, decorative calligraphy fonts widely used in textile and fashion business signs in the early part of the 20th century.

Mysterious man in the Tux

This 1977 art book featured the Art Deco figure in the tux that was originally designed for Classy's logo. I'm still trying to find photos of the original logo.

Classy institution closes after 90 years

Sat down Friday with a possible interviewee for the show. Here’s the skinny:

Clifford Hecht is the grandson of the founder of “Classy” tux manufacturers and rental, est. 1918.

Classy was a medium sized but influential Montreal-based business that expanded throughout Canada. Manufacturing plant in Montreal, warehouses in Montreal, Mississauga and Vancouver, storefronts all across the country. They were the first to modernize and professionalize the tux suit rental business, according to Cliff.

The business is ninety years old, but following the economic crash it closed its doors at the beginning of this year. The original Hecht family owners sold out in the 1990s, and three subsequent owners tried to make a go of the once dominant business name.

Founders Marcus and Rose Hecht, Cliff’s grandfather and grandmother, went from occasional tailors to full-time tux makers, and then began renting out suits in the 1920s. The 1980s were a boom decade for Classy: Cliff and his brother Stephen, with their father Joseph, managed all operations. At the company’s largest they employed 500 people.

Cliff and Stephen Hecht running the family business

The Hecht family business, Classy’s catalogue circa 1986

But in early 90s, union workers forced the tux-makers to go on strike and they walked off the job. Stephen pushed to have their designs sent to Korea for manufacturing, and they decided to outsource. That was the beginning of the end. Everything started to go downhill. They had no need for the manufacturing sector anymore and once Moore’s clothing got in the market with cut-rate low prices for tux rentals, Classy had to downsize even more.

Cliff sold his shares in 1992, got a few other clothing stores going, but now works, ironically, for Moore’s on Ste. Catherine.

Classy owned storefront property in Phillips Square, and since they held on to the building and rent out to restaurants, we can get in there to film. The iconic Classy sign still up, which for its time was one of the biggest and flashiest in the city. Their Art Deco “man in tux” logo was on the cover of an art design magazine (still trying to find out which one). Their offices at 486 Ste. Catherine O. won an award for architecture. It’s now a Japanese restaurant. They were given an award in Ottawa by Prince Charles for the best middle sized company in Canada in the mid 80s.

We could also talk to Harold Simpkins, a professor of Marketing at Concordia, who was their VP of marketing for years. Cliff is still in contact with him. He might be a good source on how and why things went down.

How things went down, and where we go from here, is a theme we continue to explore.

A former leather tannery in Saint Henri