Montreal Fashion Designer Eliza Faulkner’s Next Chapter

In a city of black puffers and neutral palettes, Eliza Faulkner still believes in pink, tulle, and ruffles.

From her studio in Montreal’s Chabanel district, the Vancouver Island-born designer speaks with an ease that mirrors her clothes: confident, expressive, unafraid of taking up space or making a statement. Since launching her namesake label in 2012, Faulkner has built a devoted following for what she describes as “bold, feminine, contemporary womenswear.” While the wording is succinct, the garments are not. They arrive with puffed sleeves, generous bows, saturated colour, and silhouettes that refuse to shrink themselves.

When Faulkner launched the brand, fashion was in its normcore era, and her early collections, rooted in linen and natural fibres, were more relaxed, distinctly west coast in spirit. Dresses, yes, but pared back. Effortless.

Over time, the brand evolved as romanticism returned to the forefront of fashion with the rise of cottagecore. Her shapes grew more exaggerated, the frills more pronounced, the colours brighter. What some might have once dismissed as “dressing up” began to feel like a confident expression of personal style. “It felt like a natural evolution, but we are trying to grow up the brand, so getting a little bit more sophisticated,” she says.

After years of treating the label as a side project on Vancouver Island, Faulkner moved to Montreal a decade ago. There, she met her partner, Arin Gintowt, who joined the business as CEO, bringing operational focus to her creative vision. The shift changed everything.

Montreal’s creative ecosystem offered something she hadn’t found before: a like-minded community of designers, makers, and small-business owners. “It’s such an affordable city for artists,” she says. “There’s this great wealth of creativity and people doing things.”

Her studio is now sits in the historic Chabanel garment district, where much of the city’s manufacturing still happens. Design, cutting, trimming, and sewing all take place within blocks of one another. Local production began as a necessity. In the early days, she could not meet overseas minimums. But proximity became philosophy. Working within the city allows for control, transparency, and personal relationships. It also presents challenges.

“We’re not huge, but we’re not tiny anymore,” she says. The brand needs more production, but our numbers aren’t quite high enough for certain factories. She is frank about the broader contradictions of the industry. “It’s hard to reconcile sustainability and fashion,” she says. “They’re kind of opposing things.”

Rather than present an idealized version of responsibility, she focuses on incremental decisions: natural fibres wherever possible, deadstock fabrics, trusted suppliers, minimal packaging. Linen remains one of the brand’s strongest sellers. So do pieces crafted in organic cotton. “We just do our best,” she says.
That same pragmatism informs her approach to longevity: fashion rewards novelty. Faulkner, by her own admission, thrives on change. “I’m in fashion because I like novelty,” she says. “I get bored and need things to change all of the time.”

Yet she also wants her pieces to endure. To be worn repeatedly. To be repaired rather than replaced. The balance is delicate: silhouettes with staying power, refreshed through colour, proportion, or fabrication. “I want things to last a long time,” she says. “But it’s fashion—there has to be a bit of novelty, I think. And to keep me excited, I want to try new things and experiment.”

Collaboration has become one way to extend that excitement. Faulkner gravitates toward partners who either share her sensibility while offering a different product category or who stand in deliberate contrast: a brand that can provide what she cannot or one whose aesthetic challenges her own, such as a recent partnership with Séola Atelier on a bold chrome pendant.

The coming year signals a new phase. What began as a spontaneous summer pop-up in Montreal has evolved into a thriving permanent storefront. “It caught me off guard,” she admits. After years of prioritizing online growth, bricks-and-mortar proved unexpectedly strong. A Toronto store is now in the works.

Internationally, her gaze is shifting. The U.S. market, once a primary focus for expansion, feels uncertain. Copenhagen is on the calendar. London, where she studied at Central Saint Martins, remains a personal and professional touchstone. Europe offers both stability and creative resonance.

Still, Faulkner returns often to the west coast in her mind. The natural beauty of Vancouver Island, the light, the landscape. “It’s something I want to explore again in my work,” she says. Even after a decade in Montreal, the coast lingers.

When asked what she hopes someone feels pulling an Eliza Faulkner piece from their closet years from now, her answer is immediate. “I hope it sparks joy,” she says. “I hope they’re surprised and delighted by it. Or they think, ‘I wore the hell out of that.’”

In a sea of neutral outerwear, a flash of colour still turns heads. Strangers offer compliments, children stare, and older women smile. There is something quietly radical about refusing to mute oneself. For Faulkner, boldness is not spectacle. It is self-possession and the willingness to dress with feeling. To take up space. To age into one’s aesthetic rather than retreat from it.

The clothes may be playful. The intention is not.

Photographs by Sam Fournier.

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