With Absolutely Fabrics, Founder Kaelen Haworth Is the Ultimate Curator

“I think I’ve always been a better curator than designer,” says Kaelen Haworth, the founder and creative director of the Toronto concept store Absolutely Fabrics, showing the self-awareness and self-assuredness of an entrepreneur who started a clothing line in cutthroat New York City straight out of Parsons School of Design. Haworth helmed her label Kaelen and a second line, Second Sight, while living there for 15 years before returning to her hometown of Toronto and opening the Queen West retail experience in 2023. Arriving in Toronto, Haworth felt there was space in the market for something a little bit different.

Absolutely Fabrics is the kind of place for which words like “store” and “boutique” feel flimsy and incomplete. It’s an artful environment that spotlights burgeoning designers like Diotima and Marie Adam-Leenaerdt alongside established brands like Marni and Proenza Schouler. “It’s always a balance. We want some of these marquee brands that people know and will come in for. But then we also always want to have the brands that are harder to find and brands that people might be discovering for the first time,” Haworth says. “We want people to come in and say, ‘Well, I came here because I wanted a Proenza jacket, but then I left with a Bettter suit.’”

There’s a tight curation of vintage, including mint-condition treasures from Chanel and Mugler, at Absolutely Fabrics, plus an event space on the second floor that regularly hosts private events to launch designers like Christopher John Rogers in Canada. It’s a place, and a project, that’s steeped in style—and love of the craft.

Does Haworth miss designing? “I do not miss it at all,” she says firmly. “What I enjoyed the most about having my own brand and my own business was creating the storytelling: styling the shoots, creating imagery, doing the shows.”

Haworth might be tough when it comes to critiquing her own designs, but she recognizes that those formative years creating and selling her product into retailers has helped her now that she is one herself. “It’s really interesting to have the perspective of the buyer and the wholesaler,” she says. “I can read between the lines of the language during showroom appointments. And I’m like, ‘I know exactly what’s happening here.’”

Having her fashion lines makes the store a better retail partner to designers because of the understanding of what is happening behind the scenes, such as the issues with cash flow, she adds. “It made me want to carry designers who have a really strong point of view. They can be brand new or they can be very established, but they have to have a distinct point of view and a really good edit.”

Collaboration, partnership, and often friendship are evident in her business relationships. The branding company she used, Design of Brand, is helmed by a good friend. Her head of strategy and brand development, Colt Iggulden, is so integral to the operation that she says she can’t give him an adequate title. (“It’s impossible to put a name on what he does.”) Many of the designers she carries are the result of personal connections she made in New York.

And her team now at Absolutely Fabrics? When I ask what kind of leader she is, she stresses the importance of hiring good people with deep knowledge of the fashion world.

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“We really want to be able to educate people on why we’re asking them to spend their money on these brands and why it’s worth it. So it’s really important to me that people who work here know and love fashion.”

 

She goes on to mention every employee, from sales associates to their social media whiz, by name. “It’s a really wonderful team. And I like being a boss. Although I don’t really feel like I am a boss,” she says, with a laugh. “I just feel like I work here too.” (A few other disembodied laughs are heard in the background—Haworth is taking the call while at work.)

Is there a story behind the name Absolutely Fabrics? “I had no thoughts about what I wanted it to be called,” she says of working on the store’s branding with a team of experts. “And so when they would do a presentation and show their ideas around typeface, for instance, they would just put an absurd placeholder name that referenced the garment district location.” Absolutely Fabrics is in the garment area of Queen West near neighbouring stores with names like Affordable Textiles.

“They put Absolutely Fabrics in as a joke. And we referred to it as that during the entirety of the rest of the process. So when it came time to go through the naming, I was like, ‘No, I don’t want any of these names. It’s Absolutely Fabrics.’”

She notes with a wry laugh, “It’s kind of dumb, but it’s also kind of an homage to the garment district.”

With Absolutely Fabrics, Haworth is creatively satisfied. “This is the right lane. And I was just kind of coming at it from a different direction before.” And she’s looking to the future with excitement. “We want to expand on the events. We want to bring more people in. We want to partner with more brands,” she says. “I want it to be a household name. I want it to be something bigger than just a retail experience.”

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