N.B. designer pays tribute to her mom with toilet-paper dress

A Saint John fashion designer took home the top prize at an annual competition and fundraiser for breast cancer, utilizing a common household item and honouring her mother, at the same time.

Chavah Lindsay, a graduate of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, was one of 16 designers invited to Toronto to participate in the recent Cashmere Collection fashion show, an annual event by the toilet paper brand, to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society.

It was Lindsay's second time to compete in the show. 

"Just to be asked to do it a second time is huge," she said. "And then, this time, what I did was [I] drew inspiration from my mom's journey through cancer and how my family was affected by it.

"So [I] poured my heart into it, to be honest. So then to win in the end was just incredible."

The Cashmere Collection fashion show was founded in 2004. The Toronto-based show raises money for breast cancer research and support programs. According to the Cashmere website, many great names in Canadian fashion have contributed to the collection in the past, including Greta Constantine — one of Lindsay's biggest design inspirations. 

Lindsay said the idea behind her design, which was a short white toilet paper dress with pink flowers, was that the cancer journey can have positive aspects to it as well as negative.

"It brought my family together. We were there to kind of uplift her," she said, adding that the roses under the skirt are meant to represent the family lifting her mother up.

"Sometimes there's quiet strength and not everybody sees, and so that's where the roses are sometimes peeking out and not entirely seen."

Lindsay said when she was backstage speaking with her model for the first time, she looked at her neck and noticed a butterfly necklace.

It brought Lindsay back to when her mother was dying and she asked her family to think of her whenever they see a butterfly.

"There were just so many moments within the show itself that I just felt connected to her," she said.

And while the winning moment made it all worth it, working with toilet paper isn't easy.

But after last year's the competition, she came into it more confidently this time.

"I was like, 'You know what? I did it before. No big deal.' And then when I received the bathroom tissue in a box, I pulled it out and it just ripped," she said, and once it rips, there is no fixing it. 

"So [I was] quickly humbled at the experience again."

When she isn't making garments out of toilet paper, Lindsay is creating and selling her own designs and teaching sewing classes at her Saint John studio.

She thinks the desire to learn how to sew is making a comeback, and she gets lots of comments from people expressing the wish they could do it. 

"And I said, you know, 'It's not too late. You can learn,'" said Lindsay.

"Fashion and sewing isn't a lost art."