Q&A with Fashion & Jewellery Designer Baby Steinberg

A Q&A with Fashion & Jewellery Designer Baby Steinberg

I met Baby Steinberg a few years a ago when we were both waiting around for our camera time on a TV series called Plastic Makes Perfect. I was the anti-plastic surgery opinion btw, but I think they just filmed my "character lines" in HD to make me look silly when I said I thought I looked fine the way I was... But I digress. I fell in love with her jewellery first, and you can see me wearing a necklace of hers in this pic, taken at a Media Bistro event:



(Captioned: Meet My Art jewelry and costume designer Baby Steinberg, CBC producer David Chu, and freelancer Anya Wassenberg.)

She premiered her new fashion collection SALVAGE at LG Fashion Week last October. From her website:

"Every day, more than 300,000 coffee filters are discarded by one major Canadian coffee retailer alone.

Through salvaging these and other materials to create her iconic designs, Baby Steinberg proves that fashion can be both beautiful and sustainable.


Q: How did you get started as a designer?

A: I started  with jewellery in Brazil as a teenager. I have been  always passionated about art and fashion. I got my first sewing machine in Canada 7 years ago, and only on the last 3 years did I decide to play and experiment with fabrics, material and technques, and taught my self how to make beautiful garments .

I applied for my first big show at Alternative Fashion Week in 2009, and got amazing response with my first recycled collection.

In 2010 I was invited to close the Alternative Fashion Week - FAT at this time I decided to present a collection made of re-purposed fabrics from Brazil. At that moment I knew I was ready to show at LG Fashion Week, a dream that started before I even knew how to sew.

I applied with a new recycled and re-purposed collection called SALVAGE - I had 2 months to make 22 looks.

My dresses can take up to 5 days to be made ... So I put a little group of girls to help me with my collection. I already had few friends recycling and collecting material for me for my upcoming projects. Working with all different kinds of materials is always a challenge, and you never know if it will work until  you are done.

The thrill of transforming something that nobody paid attention to and was disposed of in the garbage into something new and beautiful keeps me going, and along the way people are touched by my work one way or another and start or keep recycling.

The possibilities in my mind are infinite when I see a blue bin....

Q: Tell me your current projects, recent and upcoming.

A: I've recently been working on a project making dresses out of old Christmas ornaments that will be displayed on Queen West.

After my show, I was invited to showcase my collection at the Ministry of the Environment on November the 23th (2010).

I'm also dressing Caroline Dàmore an actress-model-singer in LA this weekend for a show with a  band called Street Drums Corps. They use only recycled materials for their instruments.
 
I'm working on men's wear collection for 2011 FAT  with Publicist Louie Jay from the Black Wool Collective.

In  Feb and early March I will be in south  Brazil teaching recyclable fashion  at the Fashion University in Blumenau.

Q: Anything else that you'd like to talk about -a pet project, whatever you might be working on next?

A: Yes i have a dear project that I'm working on. I'm applying for a grant, so I can  work in the same kind of project with kids in schools in the Toronto area. Recycled art.

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