Longtime Edmonton designer Stanley Carroll is debuting his first runway collection in over two years. The collection, titled Flight, is inspired by feelings of freedom and escape.
“It started off with this kind of political thing where I saw people throughout the world for whatever reasons, whether it be political, environmental, social, economic, like the plight of refugees, and basically started doing clothes that have a lot of pockets,” says Carroll. “That sort of became the starting point. And then also, what happened was that the pandemic was sort of disappearing. And people were able to move more freely, a moment of euphoria.”
Flight features over 100 pieces, which is a nod to the variety in which people live their lives and wear their clothes since the pandemic. The collection offers freedom for people to mix and match pieces based on their personal style and preferences.
Carroll has been designing for over 30 years and has about 100 collections under his name. The pandemic made it difficult to host runway shows, so he took a break over the last two years, and instead focused on creating Flight.
“I’ve pent up a lot of stuff,” says Carroll. “You do it and you go through the motions. You sketch all the time, you make stuff all the time, but in terms of actually formalizing it as a collection — that’s why the collection is kind of big because there was an awful lot of stuff that was in the pipeline that just never really had a reason to see the light, for lack of a better word.”
The runway show is set to be a memorable production with a cast of about 50 models and talent from Fame Dance Studios. See Carroll’s collection on April 29 at Acacia Hall, located at 10433 83 Ave. Shop the looks at the popup show on April 30 at the same location.
