Vancouver Wedding Dress Designer - The Sun, October 3 6, 2006

Steph Song chooses dresses by a variety of home-grown designers to wear at film festival events.

Steph Song, who stars in the movie Everything's Gone Green, is wearing B.C. fashion for Vancouver International Film Festival events, including this gown by Manuel Mendoza. Make Up - Kerry Todd for MAC Cosmetics.
Photograph by: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun

It almost had the makings of a typical Vogue celebrity fashion shoot. The scene that unfolded in the recesses of a Vancouver art gallery as Steph Song, star of Douglas Coupland's VIFF feature Everything's Gone Green, prepped for the camera was what one might call synchronized primping: A scarlet-lipped makeup artist attacked her canvas with precision.

Song's manager repeatedly thrust a shawl at his charge, lest she catch a draught (and she repeatedly waved it away).

Meanwhile, a jewelry designer laid out a buffet of sparkling baubles for Song's personal consumption.

What was missing? Well, admittedly, there was no wind machine. But what really set it apart from your average Hollywood shutter fest was the absence of big designer names.

Song's small body (which has graced the cover of FHM Singapore twice) wasn't being draped in gowns by red-carpet outfitters like Vera Wang, Chanel and Versace. Instead, the Vancouver-based starlet is parading a variety of homegrown designers like Chulo Pony, Shi Studio, Manuel Mendoza, Erin Templeton and Sheri Rose to the festival's myriad screenings and schmooze fests.

"I know a lot of people who won't wear anything that's not a huge name to an event," says Song. "But I've always looked at the young, up-and-coming local designers. They need a helping hand."

One entrepreneur hoping that Song's helping hand will prove to be a Midas touch is Shi Studio's Cory Judge, who jumped at the chance to accessorize Song's wardrobe. By having Song sport her vibrant earrings, pendants, belt buckles and cuffs (all Chinese silk brocade under glass), Judge hopes to get her relatively new Victoria-based business some extra exposure on the glitterati circuit.

"If she loves it, she's going to be excited about it and then other people are going to get excited about it . . . and it just spreads like wildfire," says Judge.

"To me, it's also a level of success in itself to have somebody that is a star recognize your pieces . . . it's a huge compliment," she says.

For Song, the goal is not harnessing fame to amass free goodies. She perceives a common bond between artists.

"It's not easy being an actor, and in the same vein it's not easy trying to make your mark as a fashion designer," she says. "The young designers are the ones that are going to be big in a couple of years. They are going places, and I love supporting them."

Mimicking the big-time design houses, Fashion High, a non profit organization of B.C. designers, sent an open invitation to film festival VIPs, offering up the opportunity to dress in local pieces for the festival. But Song, who prides herself on weaving unique finds into her own everyday wardrobe, needed no introduction to some of them. For instance, a blue pendant by Shi Studio had already caught her eye in a boutique.

"I remember it looked really delicate and precious and it had a piece of Chinese embroidered silk on it, and I thought that's a really unique way of using that," because I like collecting old vintage fabrics as well," she says.

Likewise for the Chulo Pony outfit she wore to Everything's Gone Green's second screening.

"I've always loved shorts with long socks. It's like a little element of naughty going on here," she says.

But when it comes to Song singing a designer's praises, her first love is dressmaker Manuel Mendoza. Before she got her break, Song was just a struggling actress wandering the streets when she chanced upon Mendoza's store.

"I remember thinking: 'Those are the most beautiful dresses I've ever seen,' " she recalls.

As Song went on to achieve success -- she has appeared in nine television series and three feature films in just three years - she didn't forget that impression. She wore a navy blue Mendoza gown to her film's first VIFF screening.

Lara Kelly, the Saskatchewan-raised star of Run Robot Run!, also perceives a kinship between young designers and up-and-coming performers.

"I feel so good to help another company in Canada at this point -- and they're helping me," she says.

Kelly, who comes off as down-to-earth and even goofy, gets serious when it comes to her devotion to Canadian cinema. So her belief in Canadian fashion seems fitting. At the Toronto Film Festival she wore exclusively Toronto designers. During the VIFF, she is endorsing Vancouver's JC Studio -- in the form of 15 outfits.

"I come from artists, so I'd rather support an artist than some large corporation," says Kelly.

"I would bring up companies with me. I won't sell out for larger companies that have a name because I don't understand the point of that," she says.

While Kelly reaps obvious rewards from being handed a week's worth of chic designer clothing, JC Studio is also getting its share of recognition. Kelly says the floor-length, flowered gown she wore to a party at CinCin turned a lot of heads.

"I feel like I had half the people in the room come up and ask me where my dress was from," says Kelly, who estimates that she handed out some 100 JC Studio business cards.

"You know in the gossip rags where you turn the page and there are two pictures of two girls wearing the same thing? That sounds like a nightmare!" says Song.

By sticking with B.C. designers who offer a personal touch, Song is confident that she won't bump into anyone at an event clad in the same dress. Or knee-high socks.

Even Chanel -- famously responsible for dressing Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst in the same gown -- can't beat that.