Canada has long exported world-class talent to America and the world — actors like Jim Carrey and Catherine O’Hara, pop heavyweights like Justin Bieber and Celine Dion, even architects like Frank Gehry — and plenty of other folks you might not even realize are Canadian. What the country hasn’t traditionally been known for is fashion (unless you count the Canadian tuxedo).
Canada doesn’t really have a single aesthetic or anything as immediately recognizable as Americana, but that’s also allowed the country’s designers to do things their own way. There is, however, a deep clothing history rooted in the outdoors that stretches back to the Hudson’s Bay Company trading beaver pelts in the 17th century. That has led up to today, where popular brands like Arc’teryx, Canada Goose and Reigning Champ are known around the world.
Right now, a new wave of independent brands is gaining traction among style-savvy shoppers, known for their slower approach to fashion and attention to construction. From indie technical pieces to bespoke winter parkas to refined tailoring, new labels are reshaping Canada’s relationship with style.
These seven brands are among the best the Great White North has to offer.
Kluane Mountaineering
IYKYK gets tossed around liberally, but with Kluane Mountaineering (pronounced Kloo-AH-nee), it actually applies. The brand began in 1979 when two students started sewing gear for themselves and their friends. In 1982, a woman named Betty Squair bought the business and essentially ran it on her own for decades. No Instagram or website; you genuinely had to know about it.
Things have only slightly changed since local customer and longtime fan Dylan Lynch purchased the company and began gently guiding it into the future.
Today, Lynch is moving to grow the brand, but keeping the slow approach to crafting beautifully handmade-to-order parkas and down jackets intact. Each feels both functional and refined, filled with high-loft white Canadian duck down sourced just miles from the company’s headquarters in Edmonton, Alberta (North America’s northernmost city over a million). You can customize colours, pockets, and details with each parka taking several months to produce. The coats are already developing a strong following in Asia, and even Drake’s carried a small run of ready-to-wear parkas this past season. You might want to start planning for next winter right now.
École de Pensée
École de Pensée takes inspiration from the artists of 1940’s Montreal, a city that has always had a thriving arts and music scene. The label has built a reputation for what it calls “new wave tailoring”, clothes that keep the craft and structure of classic menswear but loosen the rules around how it’s worn.
Founded by longtime friends Marc Garand, William Lessard, and designer Julien Gauthier, the brand has steadily grown since its first collection in 2015, opening a flagship shop in Montreal’s trendy Mile End neighbourhood. They’ve earned a diverse clientele, young and old, as well as recognition from a number of European retailers along the way. What sets École de Pensée apart is its blend of thoughtful design and material obsession — canvas-constructed suits, knitwear sourced from heritage mills and inventive fabrics that give traditional pieces a more modern feel. It’s a distinctly Montreal approach to elegance that’s relaxed, unpretentious, and cool as hell.
Wanze
Toronto designer Wanze Song launched her namesake label in 2022 with a simple idea to make everyday clothes, done beautifully. Trained as a pattern maker and having worked with avant-garde labels like Kiko Kostadinov and ASAI, Song brings a technical precision to garments that still feel easy to wear. Her collections — produced in Canada for both men and women — focus on sharply tailored trousers and sculptural tops made from Japanese and Italian fabrics, often sourced as deadstock.
Her early breakout moment came with a design she dubbed the “dumpling bag,” a cleverly constructed crescent-shaped bag that went viral with the city’s creative set. Since then the brand has developed a following among design-minded dressers and is now carried by a handful of retailers like Colbo in New York.
James Coward
Vancouver-based James Coward has developed a cult following for its understated but precise take on everyday clothing. Founded by friends Daniel Garrod, Aaron Gray and Joseph Walia, the brand focuses on timeless pieces produced in small batches rather than seasonal collections, further distancing itself from most of the fashion world. Think chore coats, shirts, and trousers made in Canada from premium fabrics.
The approach is deliberately simple with garments built of the best materials available (say, Japanese denim or dense Belgian linen), produced in limited runs that tend to sell out quickly on the brand’s website and at the select retailers, like Neighbour, that carry it. Even something as simple as the brand’s Shetland sweaters reflects the bands ethos with thoughtful construction, on-point proportions and pieces meant to stick around for years.
Body of Work
Toronto’s Body of Work approaches basic sportswear with a more thoughtful touch. Founded by Brittney MacKinnon and Dwayne Vacher, veterans of several Canadian apparel companies and lifelong athletes, the couple set out to merge a refined design sensibility with the kinds of garments they grew up training and living in.
From the beginning, the focus was on local manufacturing. Garments are designed and developed by the founders, then knit, dyed, cut, and sewn in family-owned factories within about an hour of their Toronto studio. The resulting pieces — cotton tees, hoodies, and knits — lean into a relaxed, easy kind of sportswear, built around what they see as the fundamentals of good design: custom fabrics, expert construction, strong fits, and thoughtful details. The palette stays grounded too, with earthy browns, pebble greys and faded blacks reinforcing the brand’s understated sensibility.
Colin Meredith
Vancouver-based designer Colin Meredith has one of those CVs that makes you take notice. Before starting his own thing, he put in time at some of the biggest names in performance apparel (including Arc’teryx and Rapha). Meredith’s collections blend utilitarian, timeless silhouettes with unconventional textures and colour palettes, giving familiar outdoor pieces a sporty edge.
His unique designs have built an international following with stores from the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia stocking his gear, and he has even collaborated with Italian outdoors brand ROA on a hiking sneaker. Meredith also co-founded Portal, a more performance-minded project focused on running, hiking and cycling gear. But across everything he does, nature remains a central influence, from patterns to the structures of his garments.
Henry’s
Self-taught Toronto designer, sewer, and patternmaker Keith Henry runs his namesake label largely on his own, pattern-making and producing each garment by hand. Working with heavyweight fabrics and drawing on military and workwear traditions, Henry has developed a following that started with his roomy jeans inspired by vintage utilitarian silhouettes. Slowly, he’s expanded his offering to include shirts and jackets, but the pieces are all built to soften and age beautifully with wear, improving with every lived-in moment.
His dedication to the craft has started to attract wider attention too, including a collaboration of sorts with Nepenthes using deadstock Engineered Garments fabrics and a recent appearance on Throwing Fits.
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