Let’s Play Dress Up
An interview with Tosca Webb
about her female-led collective Dress Up
(plus vintage clothing, Andy Warhol, and the future of sustainable fashion)
Written & Produced by Laurel Kho
Makeup by Brithani Phatal
Photographed by Betsy-May Smith*
*unless stated otherwise
“Dress Up is one vintage sequin mini away from ground breaking success.”
I’m sitting across from Tosca in her slightly lopsided kitchen in Montreal. It’s damn cold outside and her space heater moans in the background. Tosca’s Carrie-Bradshaw-curly dirty blonde hair sits in a pile atop her head held together by a pink scrunchie. Her no-skincare-routine-skin is glowing which is frankly annoying, especially for those of us who maintain a 5-step regimen. She recently watched a video of Princess Nokia sharing her beauty routine on Vogue’s Youtube channel and had decided that “fertile” was her new favorite beauty look. I don’t get it either.
Looking down at my hand, I am reminded of all we’ve been through; our matching lightning bolt tattoos had been a spur of the moment decision after a day of Chinese food and justifying buying vintage jackets in Montreal. We met years ago when I was 21, she 20. Our boyfriends at the time were best friends and all 4 of us had lived together in a beige-coloured apartment from the 90’s that was most often rented out by divorcees and young people. It’s off-white popcorn ceiling and stained carpet was anything but cool. We adored it.
Tosca's had a busy year founding Dress Up Collective, an initiative aimed at exploring self-expression through fashion. Holding multiple sold-out events this year in Montreal, Dress Up invites guests to come dance and leave your boring street clothes at the door. A curation of vintage clothing is ready for you to get dressed up in as you enter (think back to when you played dress up in elementary school). With the addition of a co-Creative Director, a studio, an interview series exhibition, and an official merch line, Dress Up is one vintage sequin mini away from ground breaking (re: florals? for spring?) success.
What is Dress Up? It’s an adult dress-up party. It’s a space for people to come and experiment with clothes and fashion; a space where judgement is not welcomed nor encouraged. In a larger sense, Dress Up is a manifestation of all of the angst and constraint that I’ve ever felt in my life and it’s the release of all that in a very physical way. I think it's my angry 16-year-old self growing up in the suburbs and being made fun of for wanting to do things differently or wear things differently. It’s not really about fashion—that’s the conscious thing you can take away from it but it’s so much deeper than that. It’s so much more subconscious—it’s a feeling.
What inspired Dress Up? Before Montreal I lived in Berlin, which inspired me so much. The nightlife in Berlin was such a huge eye-opening experience for me. And calling it ‘nightlife’ simplifies it because it really was so much more than that. It was witnessing people release and connect and fully express themselves—being exactly who they are and the people they weren’t allowed to be in their everyday lives. I wanted to create an intersection of different forms of expression and art.
“It’s not really about fashion… it’s so much more subconscious—it’s a feeling.”
Also, a huge part of my inspiration and something I was always obsessed with and drawn to was Andy Warhol and the Silver Factory in the 60’s. It’s very similar in my mind to what I experienced in Berlin but completely different at the same time.
No one loves Andy Warhol more than you…probably. Haha probably not. In our last apartment and we had an Andy Warhol canvas of a Campbell’s Soup can on our wall. I remember sitting and staring at it and just thinking, ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to have an impact?’ I wanted to do something that made me feel the way he did.
Is Dress Up your Silver Factory? Yes. It’s the 100% no-looking-back refusal of society and everything we are told to be.
Tell me about your first event. I had just moved to Montreal and needed a creative outlet. I reached out to a photographer who was a mutual friend and asked her if she wanted to collaborate on a fashion editorial. Instead of styling, I wanted to curate a selection of clothing and let the models choose what they felt best in. It felt like a revolutionary idea at the time. Screw the stylist! I was lying in bed and thinking about it being an opportunity for people to express themselves with clothing—so we decided to turn the shoot into an event. We enticed people with free beer. We got this huge big plastic tarp as a photo backdrop and 30 people showed up, which was more than we expected. That night is still so special to me because it was like ‘Oh, I did this and I can do this.’ The thing about the pictures is that they didn’t really turn out well—we accidentally used expired film so they all came out yellow. But it didn’t even really matter because we had tapped into something.
And your next event after that? Dress up really took off at Psychic City; an underground venue that is now shut down. There was no fee to rent the venue they just took a 10% cut at the door. Cover was $5 dollars. All my friends helped me; 12 of us sat in a circle under a street light at the park and created the blueprint for Dress Up events. I was renting all of the clothes from a vintage clothing store I used to work at in Montreal; I was financially responsible for all of them which I had to take very seriously. It was scary because it was over two thousand dollars worth of clothing. I put up the Facebook event and within 2 days there were 500 people interested and by the time we threw the event there were 900 people interested and 500 attending. We were all freaking out like ‘what the fuck?!’ Within 10 minutes of doors opening we were sold out.
When people come to this event, what is the vibe? I want someone to feel the way that my 16 year old self always wanted to feel…free. I want people to feel like they are allowed to be exactly who they are.
Let’s talk about uninhibited self-expression. It’s something you live your life by. I think that uninhibited self-expression is the refusal of fashion norms, societal norms, and pressures. There’s no specifics to it—it’s a feeling. It’s a confidence. It’s standing up for yourself and using your aesthetic as a form of activism and a way of saying something.
“I want people to feel like they are allowed to be exactly who they are.”
Do you have a favorite piece of clothing? My leopard-print coat. It’s the first one I got in Vancouver. My sister bought it at Salvation Army for $3. It’s missing all the buttons and the pockets are ripped. It was my first and my baby and I’ve worn it in so many crucial instances in my life.
That coat inspired mine. I texted you before I bought it to make sure you liked it! There isn’t a leopard-print coat I don’t like, that’s the thing. What makes me feel the most myself is when I’m in a leopard-print coat.
Where does your love of vintage clothing come from? I was really lucky to grow up around both my grandmas. My dad’s mom made all her own clothing from the 50’s to the 80’s and she was an immaculate seamstress. Growing up we would go to her house for family dinners and I would try on all her clothes. It wasn’t just a few pieces, it was full wardrobes from each decade. It was so instrumental to me imagining the stories of my Oma and the parties she wore these clothes to. I think maintaining that thought process and childish imagination is what still draws me to vintage and why I find the search so exciting. It’s like a treasure hunt and whenever I find old party dresses I wonder about the life they had before me. I have been shopping vintage since I was 18, so I can’t really wrap my mind around shopping fast fashion.
Is the future of sustainable fashion vintage clothing? Yes, vintage fashion is sustainable but on whose terms? A lot of it is not financially accessible to low-income people, it’s not as widely available as fast fashion. If you want to make something truly sustainable, it needs to be accessible to everyone.
What’s does the future look like for Dress Up? I love Montreal and I always will for providing such a strong and loyal following and community, but I want to go everywhere, starting with New York and Toronto. I see Dress Up as an intersection of fashion, music, and dance—there’s so much more we can do with those concepts. I’m only starting to explore the impact clothing has on people’s lives and their psyche.
