Le Hou Hou, originally uploaded by Velvet_Moustache.

The latest addition to our team, resting comfortably on the couch in our lobby, is Hou Hou – created with Delyla fabrics by Velvet Moustache of Montreal. More on our little Hou Hou…

“Hou Hou est le dernier né de la grande famille des Velvet Moustache. Hou Hou est un hibou. Il est beau, sage, adore la nuit et jouer avec ses amis les coussins et oreillers.

Hou Hou est le fruit du mariage entre le Guerrier de l’Arctique et du Poussin Babyface. Il retient de cette alliance ses grandes qualités physiques d’un plumage haute qualité tricoté localement. Ses pattes et ses yeux sont faits de tricot récupéré, son nez de suède recyclé, et sa bourre est toujours achetée localement.

Voilà, c’est à vous d’en profiter, jouez et admirez autant que vous le pouvez!!!

Le Hou Hou disponible en exclusivité à la Maison Simons, 50$”

Another quick note: there is some new written content in our ‘About Us’ page: Click here and read up!

Cheers,
Team Delyla

Also, an example that proves government support of sustainable fashion! Check out the recently released Sustainable Clothing Action Plan by Defra (UK). A good summary of the plan can be read here, or in this article by the BBC.

The following article was published in the Montreal Gazette on March 3rd, 2009. It gives an interesting take on the area we work in at Delyla Fabrics. Once defined as the heart of Montreal’s textiles industry, St. Viateur East has certainly been transformed- one might even say, run down. However, there are still a handful of occupants adding lustre to the neighbourhood (Delyla stands as proof that not every manufacturer in the area is dead!). Whether you’re a resident of Mile End, interested in urban issues, or both, read on to find out more about how this neighbourhood is changing…

Redefining St. Viateur East

Café consultations give residents voice on what should happen to old textile, clothing-manufacturing area
By LINDA GYULAI

When the garment factories jamming de Gaspé and Casgrain Aves. and St. Viateur and Maguire Sts. were operating, and thousands of workers filled them to tend knitting machines, cut, press and sew, and line loading docks to feed a steady stream of delivery trucks, it wasn’t just the mammoth buildings that came alive.

The neighbourhood seemed to tremble with activity.

But it has been a decade since most of the clothing and textile manufacturers in the St. Viateur St. E. area shut, victims of global trade policies and cheap labour elsewhere.

Now the giant industrial buildings, vestiges of Montreal’s textile and clothing manufacturing supremacy in the 1960s and ’70s, appear out of place. For the most part, the district has given way to smaller-scale artisanal activities, clothing design and multi-media creation.

Ugly is the most common way Montrealers seem to describe St. Viateur St.’s eastern part, an area hemmed in by the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and roughly bordered by St. Laurent Blvd., Henri Julien Ave. and Laurier Ave. in the Mile End district.

But the Plateau Mont Royal borough, and a number of local residents, take exception to that description, preferring instead to see potential where others see railway tracks and overpowering masonry-and-concrete buildings.

The city and the borough have earmarked the area for a major rejuvenation, including new sidewalks, new street lights and, possibly, an extension of St. Viateur east to meet Henri Julien.

The borough figures its efforts to revitalize the area could serve as a catalyst for an estimated $250 million in private residential and light- industrial development over the next 10 years.

That’s fine, residents say, but let the people decide what the neighbourhood needs and where it belongs.

Since January, the Mile End Citizens’ Committee has hosted a series of coffee-klatch- style public consultations to solicit ideas from residents, artists and businesses on what they would like to see.

Each of the six sessions has had a theme – transportation, housing, culture and artists’ spaces, economy and local services, heritage and environment. And each has attracted about 100 people, who have crammed into the back room of a café at St. Laurent and St. Viateur.

The grassroots initiative came about last year, after the borough announced a $9-million revitalization over three years, said Richard Ryan, a Mile End Citizens’ Committee member who helped organize the consultations.

“This area has never seen urban planning, at least not on a human scale,” he said.

“Now that the area is being redefined, it needs to be done with residents in mind.”

The locals worry the city’s investment will bring gentrification and speculation, which would drive up rents and property taxes, Ryan said.

So, after inviting municipal officials to explain their vision for the area at two public meetings in April and November, the Mile End group launched the café hearings to sound out neighbours.

“We need to work together as residents to develop a common vision, and that’ll help us influence the politicians and the civil servants who make decisions,” Ryan said.

“How much power we have depends on how well organized we are.”

For instance, as part of its plans, the borough want to relocate its public-works yards and build one central yard along the tracks.

“A lot of people are afraid of that because it’ll bring a lot of truck traffic and equipment into the area,” Ryan said.

The borough also hopes to change the vocation of the some of the industrial buildings and insert new homes in vacant spaces to attract 1,700 to 2,600 new residents.

As well, it plans to create a path for pedestrians and cyclists from Mile End to get across the tracks to Rosemont métro station.

The café sessions have been orderly and civilized. Participants are asked to take turns calling out answers to a list of questions that are formulated by the organizers to steer the discussion toward ideas.

A Feb. 9 session on culture and artists’ groups, for instance, elicited proposals for a public board to allow artists in the area to promote their shows, co-operative housing, and launch of a municipal- tax rebate for building owners who rent space to artists.

Recurring ideas at all the sessions include the covering otherwise drab exterior walls with vines, planting trees, installing public art, limiting car traffic and ensuring not all the industrial buildings become condos.

The café sessions are to culminate in a public forum on April 26 to bring together the proposals from all of the sessions and deciding priorities.

The consultation is a source of pride for the borough.

“It’s an opportunity to address certain aspects of neighbourhood life in a different way,” said borough mayor Helen Fotopulos, who has attended the sessions.

“It’s grassroots.”

Residents wanted to head off a repeat of what happened in the Southwest borough last year, when a developer’s

$1.3-billion project for Griffintown was presented at local public hearings as a done deal, historian and architect Susan Bronson said. “It’s an opportunity for citizens to participate before all the decisions are finalized,” she said.

Bronson, a member of Mile End Memories and Friends of Boulevard St. Laurent, two community groups supporting the café consultations, will host the next session, on heritage, on Monday.

The neighbourhood boasts the Carmelite convent, built in 1895 and surrounded by thick stone walls on Carmel Ave. The province recently classified it as a heritage site.

It also includes the Bain St. Michel, a public bathhouse built in 1910.

Bronson also includes the massive garment factory buildings, known as “daylight factories” because of their rows of windows, as heritage.

“Everyone thinks they’re ugly, but I think they’re pretty neat,” she said.

The railway line, meanwhile, harks back to the area’s roots as a railyard about 1900. Clothing retail and manufacturing moved in during the 1950s, spilling over from St. Laurent.

“The idea is not to have a confrontation with the city,” Ryan said.

“But we need to express a vision that reflects the wishes of the people in the area.”

The next café consultation is Monday at Le Cagibi café, 5490 St. Laurent Blvd.,

at 7 p.m. The last session, on March 23 (environment), is at the Green Room, 5386 St. Laurent Blvd., 7 p.m.

Find the original article at: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Redefining+Viateur+East/1346695/story.html