Will Crosson's critical approach to Canadiana through fashion

Montreal-based designer Will Crosson brings a thoughtful, place-based approach to contemporary fashion. Drawing from Canada’s landscapes and histories, his garments balance wearability with critical reflection; from full selvedge denim sets, to classic trucker hats with hand-embroidered patches.

With a background in construction and graphic design, he now bridges time between his own collections and commercial production from his studio in the Mile End. Crosson recently released a summer capsule collection, with a focus on local sourcing and seasonality.

We caught up to chat about Canadiana, embracing the place we live in, and how to speak critically through clothing.

What first got you into making clothing?

I first started sewing in 2018, just after I graduated from university. I was living in Barrie, Ontario and I essentially learned how to sew from my partner's grandmother. A year later we moved to Montreal. I was working in social media and graphic design, after working in construction. The fashion world combined these two things really nicely: working with your hands, and exploring design practices. 

This design practice started from a very simple idea: the Canadian context is unique and important. Meditations on labour, paradox, and feelings of estrangement in our culture drive this body of work.

How do you engage with local communities, artisans, or suppliers—do place-specific relationships inform your work?

100%. It’s important to give yourself a box; especially now. There are no boxes anymore, we have access to everything always. This box, let's say, of keeping things as local as possible, it seeps through all aspects of my work: in terms of who I'm working with, what fabrics I'm sourcing and from who. It's very important, in terms of both my design practice and my day to day. All of my suppliers are local, so I'm able to really build up these connections and relationships.

Do you find that Canadian seasons or weather influence your materials or processes? How so?

The first thing that comes to mind is the seasonality.  We go between two extremes: hitting 30 degree weather in July and minus 30 in December. Because we grow up in that environment, we're exposed to those types of clothes. I think being informed by those seasons and innately knowing the materials that follow from them is a really important aspect in my work.

Your work is also political. How do you make a critical intervention into the Canadian landscape in your clothes?

Canada is famously built off of resource extraction. I would lean away from making it super explicit: it's more of a discursive element. I'm not going to print, “Stop oil extraction”, on a shirt, you know? In a very practical sense, I definitely veer away from using virgin / new petroleum-based products in the work. It’s a very simple way of doing that kind of thing. But yeah, I'm really not a fan of the explicit, heavy-handed approach. 

My work attempts to treat the themes of kinship, labour, and environment with gravity and nuance. Steering away from irony, I believe these topics deserve practical insights and interpretation through a novel design practice, exploring how self-examination might remind us of what we work for.

I think that's an interesting aspect of what clothes are and how they communicate. A spelled out approach feels like a misuse of clothes’ potential to make meaning. 

Exactly. I don't want to use virgin / new petroleum products because those products actually are part of creating these more extreme weather patterns. Over time we can look back and see why we did things that seemed natural or innate at the time. I think that's a much more important and useful way of looking at this type of art. I try to be very careful about keeping the work more discursive than explicitly political. I would rather provide a little bit of context and the work: you're free to do with it what you will.

Each design is brought to life through arduous pattern development, fabric manipulation, and couture sewing techniques.

Your logo is a Loon, what does the bird signify to you?

I feel like that's more of a personal thing, honestly. The loon is an icon. To me, it is probably the most majestic, place-specific animal.

Do you see your practice as part of a larger Canadian design language, or do you resist the idea of a national style?

I think it's important to romanticize some aspects of where we live. If I were to take a critical lens right now, I would probably be drowned out by a sea of a thousand other people: that lens is focused. It's not all bad: for example, a lot of my work focuses on workwear and blue-collar work.

A lot of traditional values are important to the people that work those jobs—devotion to family or passion for your work—these aren't horrible things. It's okay to romanticize them. There is a gray area, which is super important to explore to create nuance.