Granny likes tea when she knits. We like to stitch and bitch with a double G&T on the rocks – please and thanks.

Heidi Ackerman’s eco-friendly knit wear is far from being sold in a church basement bazaar. In fact, her style is almost too cool to wear at the office; you might need to find a hot party or city sidewalk to strut down to get the proper jaw dropping attention it deserves.

Showcased at FAT, Toronto Alternative Arts and Fashion Week, Heidi’s line was so bold, inspirational and utterly creative that she scooped up the inaugural Beefeater Innovative Spirit Award. Congrats!

Having recently graduated from Ryerson fashion, and receiving much praise from peers, fashion gurus and press; Heidi is well positioned to get her knits in the door and has already been picked up by Toronto’s eccentric and fashion mainstay, Boutique Le Trou.
Heidi knew she always wanted to incorporate environmentally friendly practices into her work, but it was her exchange to Australia, through Ryerson, at the University of Technology in Sydney where she picked up a lot of tips on sustainable design in fashion. Returning back to Toronto with a clear direction and plan – Heidi got to work!

She considers eco-fashion to be two fold; both materials and locality are important factors. All her materials are organic and she has recently been working with Blue Sky Alpacas, a company that imports fairly traded wool from Peru and all the sweaters are hand knit locally. I like the idea of wearing a hand crafted sweater, shorn off the back of a Peruvian alpaca – high in the mountains happily eating grass. Baahhh. Or would it be mwahhhh! Not sure and not important right now.

Her clothes are experimental, and she loves to play with movement and spaces. Watching the models trying to figure out how to put on the sweaters was fun for Heidi; her sense of play and expansive imagination is obvious. Some of the sweaters had no arms, but if you stretched, you could see a sexy silhouette underneath. Others had enormous hoods that appeared galactic and toy like.

Seated in the front row at FAT watching the models adorn these fantastical getups, I found myself dreaming of a fogged out English Moore clad in a giant sweater, frolicking around with a pet unicorn at my side, or perhaps storming the streets of Barcelona with an Ackerman sweater accessorized with power heels and big shades – tromping from one museum to the next gallery. Not many lines cohesively pull together the pleasure of comfort but also sophisticated style and gutsy statement all the while remaining eco-friendly.

I raise my gin and tonic in cheers to you.