Kinder, gentler couture the rule at Canadian fashion mags

The devil may be in the details, but not in Prada, in Canada at least. Comparisons with the just-released movie, The Devil Wears Prada, based on former Vogue intern Lauren Weisberger's "fictional" memoirs of her own experience working for the tyrant Anna Wintour at Vogue are a long way from how things are in Canadian magazines.

"The truth is that the Canadian magazine industry can't pay anyone enough money to dress in designer duds twenty-four/seven, so we scrounge for second best," says Kate MacLennan, an assistant editor at Fashion magazine, in an article she wrote for the Vancouver Sun.

"In the film, naive, frumpy and earnest wannabe-journalist Andrea takes a trip down the proverbial rabbit hole and goes from poly-blend peon to couture co-worker with a quick visit to magazine's legendary merch room," says MacLennan. "The merch room, allegedly a fashion columbarium at the offices of Vogue, is where the world's most revered designers dump last season's samples for even the most lowly fashion magazine employees to gorge upon. This is exactly the kind of thing happens at Canada's fashion magazines. Uh, no, trust me, it doesn't."

Canadian fashion magazines have merch rooms, alright, but they're temporary storage locations for clothing borrowed for fashion editorial shoots.

"Once in a while we'll be flowed a cute top (never couture) or pair of jeans from a compassionate clothing rep, and one lucky Christmas Louis Vuitton took pity and sent the country's fashion editorial top dogs (certainly not the interns) cute little handbags, but for the most part we are on our own," she says.

"Otherwise, most Canadian fashion magazine folk squeeze their size 0 through 14 bodies into well-styled vintage, almost-designer pieces (think stores like Zara, H&M and the ilk), locally designed gems, or any designer clothing they are fortunate enough to score at places like Winners."

"I've discovered, as Andrea did, that life in this industry is much easier if you dress well. That much is true. People treat you better when you have on a respectable (and that's respectable on a fashion industry scale) ensemble, but you also feel more appropriate and therefore more confident. That said, I left the movie deeply considering what I felt was its most important message: that clothes can make the woman, but ultimately it's the woman who must make the clothes."