RUNWAY REVIEW: ATELIER STUDIO EDITION 007

ATELIERSTUDIO’s Edition 007 presented a world set inside the Montréal Biodome that was a cinematic void. The show unfolded as a black-and-white espionage sequence pulled from a reimagined James Bond universe stripped of cliché, elevated through fashion.

The choice of location did more than host the event; it directed it. Two massive curved white walls tapered into a triangular corridor, almost like walking through the inside of a blade, creating a dramatic vanishing point that pulled the eye deep into the frame. Towering ceilings disappeared into darkness above, making the space feel both intimate and infinite. A thin strip of warm light ran along the base of the walls like a glowing seam, the only runway marker this show needed.

It felt like the kind of place where a protagonist scans a room for a target… except here, the targets were the models. The whole environment read less like a venue and more like a set. It didn't compete with the clothes; it framed them, isolated them, and gave each look nowhere to hide.

WRITTEN BY ROCHELLE ALLEN

A Study in Black and White

The constraint was clear: black or white. But within that binary, the designers found infinite language. Rather than feeling limiting, the palette sharpened the storytelling. Every silhouette, texture, and cut had to speak louder. Black became power, secrecy, seduction. White became precision, purity, control or, at times, something eerily detached.

Each look felt like it belonged to someone with a backstory: a villain, a lover, a stranger. Something you’d expect in a Bond film, but abstracted, elevated, and pushed into the realm of fashion experimentation.

Designer Highlights

Chloe Courval @chloe.courval 

Control/Disappearance

Chloé Courval comes in precise, almost surgical. The opening white look feels corporate at first, crisp shirt, black tie, but it quickly unravels. The shirt is folded into itself, layered across the chest as if it has been reworked mid-thought. Clean becomes distorted. Controlled becomes questioned. It’s less boardroom, more psychological chess, very James Bond universe, but from the one watching, not the one performing.

Then everything drops into black, a shadowed silhouette with sharp shoulders and vertical zippers cutting down the body. The face is partially hidden, identity stripped back. It doesn’t demand attention; it absorbs it. Quiet, but dangerous.

The final look pulls both worlds together, wrapped, strapped, slightly undone. One side exposed, the other restrained, with ties dragging behind like loose ends. There’s a sense of reconstruction, like the body’s been through something and came back sharper.

Courval is mapping control through her designs. Who’s seen, who disappears, and who decides.

Lily Roy @lilyy._ 

Devotion/Concealment

Lily Roy arrives like a signal from two frequencies at once. The first look is pure shadow, an oversized black turtleneck consumed by itself. Swallowing the neck, the jaw, the lower face, and arms paired with a cropped mini shorts with lacing that dissolves at the hem like it's unravelling mid-stride. Knee-high black leather boots ground the silhouette, but only barely. The rest floats, swells, obscures. You can't read the face. You can't read the intention. That's the point.

Then comes white, and it hits differently. Total white. A structured off-shoulder bandeau top over a gathered, asymmetrically draped mini skirt that pulls to one side like fabric caught mid-motion. White thigh-high socks disappear into pointed white boots. A veiled hood, architectural, almost nun-like frames dark shield sunglasses and a delicate silver pendant. White lace trails from the wrist, loose, unclosed. Something ritualistic lives here. Something between purity and performance.

A third figure emerges from the same darkness, a heavily slashed black mesh long sleeve, chest cut open in jagged strips, worn over wide pooling trousers. Studded cap, silver chain, sneakers. Destruction walks forward while a white silhouette retreats behind him. The contrast is unscripted and perfect. This is the middle chapter, the one where something breaks open.

Roy is designing two states of being, the black look hides and the white look reveals, but only what it chooses to. When one collapses inward, swathed in texture and darkness, identity folded away. The other expands into a ceremony, every detail deliberate, every thread placed like an offering. Both figures move with the same quiet authority. Neither one needs to explain herself. 

This is fashion as devotion and as disappearance.

Nah Imma Saint - @nahimmasaint 

Rebellion/Architecture

Nah Imma Saint doesn't ask for the room; she takes it. The first look is a study in structured subversion. A fitted black zip-up jacket with exaggerated shoulder volume, almost militaristic, almost corseted. With bullets layered over that cuts across the torso like a sash, or a wound. Wide-leg black trousers pool at the floor, swallowing the silhouette from the waist down. A black beanie pulled low. White sneakers, the only exhale in an otherwise airless look. That contrast isn't an accident. It's the crack in the armour. The reminder that underneath the architecture, there's still a body choosing to be here.

Then comes the undoing, and it's softer than expected. White bandage fabric wrapped and twisted into a strapless top and micro shorts, the textile crosses and overlaps like something being bound, or unbound, but you can't tell which direction it's moving. Warm amber fur sits at the shoulders, adding unexpected heat to an otherwise clinical white. Dark brown leather knee-high boots ground the look with just enough grit. The whole thing reads like a figure caught mid-transformation,  not yet arrived, not quite gone.

The third look snaps back into command. A sharp black military jacket, high-collared and buttoned to the chest with silver hardware, spiked shoulders declaring rank. Beneath it, a muted sand micro short held by a studded grommet belt riding low on the hips. Brown riding boots. This is someone who's already decided how the story ends.

Nah Imma Saint works in tension, between softness and severity, between falling apart and holding the line. Each look is a different answer to the same question: what does power feel like on the body?

The answer changes every time. That's the point.

Uril2 @u_ri_l2

Deconstruction/Grace

Uril2 works in white, entirely, devotedly and finds within it a full spectrum of intention. The first look is architectural precision meeting controlled unravelling. A sleeveless white shirt dress, buttoned down the center with small silver studs, begins as something almost formal, collared, structured, and composed. Then it diverges, the fabric below the waist is gathered, twisted, and split into a dramatic asymmetric skirt that opens at the front, fabric pooling and pulling to one side like it's been caught mid-motion. A cutout at the waist breaks the line just enough. Black pointed heels. This is someone who started buttoning the dress and then decided to do something more interesting instead.

The second look exhales.

Then a long-sleeve white top, cut asymmetrically across the chest, one shoulder dropped, a small cutout revealing negative space at the collarbone, draped and wrapped loosely across the torso, a trailing panel of fabric hanging free at the hip like an afterthought that became essential. Beneath it, wide-leg trousers in a bleached marble print, grey and white bleeding into each other like ink in water. White platform sneakers. A small pendant at the throat. The whole look reads unhurried,  like someone who assembled something beautiful without trying to.

Then everything strips back to its purest form. A floor-length white slip dress in semi-sheer fabric, sleeveless, with a deep draping V-neck, columns of subtle texture catching the light as it moves. No hardware. No layering. No deconstruction. Just the body, the fabric, and the space between them. White strappy sandals. The look is so reduced that it becomes radical. A reminder that after all the cutting and wrapping and folding, sometimes the most powerful statement is simply: nothing extra.

Uril2 moves through three distinct modes of white, structured, deconstructed, and elemental. Each one feels like a different kind of freedom.

Fausse Maison @faussemaison 

Texture/Tension

Fausse Maison closes Edition 007 with something that feels entirely its own. While the rest of the show operated in clean binaries, sharp black, clinical white, clear intentions, Fausse Maison works in the space between. Their palette is black, but it breathes differently. Textured, worn, alive. Where others used darkness as absence, Fausse Maison uses it as material. The first look announces itself through proximity. Up close, the fabric of the black button-up jacket reveals itself, crinkled, almost scorched-looking, the surface catching light in irregular waves. It's fitted through the chest and waist, structured without being rigid, worn over matching black trousers, with brown fingerless gloves and small gold earrings. The only precious thing in an otherwise deliberately roughened look. 

Then the silhouette loosens with a fine, horizontally striped black shirt hanging oversized and unhurried over wide-leg matching trousers, the fabric substantial and slightly textured. The stripe pattern gives the monochrome a hidden geometry, only visible when the light hits it just right. A small dark clutch tucked under one arm. 

The final look reintroduces structure and cuts it open. A fitted black off-shoulder zip-front jacket, the collar standing high while the shoulders drop deliberately bare, paired with a long flared skirt in dark textured fabric that sweeps the floor. The proportions are unexpected: the top half controlled and close, the bottom half fluid and expansive. Black ankle boots disappear into the hem. The figure moves through a space flooded with white, the brightness of the Biodome's curved walls amplifying how deeply, resolutely dark the look is by contrast.

Fausse Maison trades in spectacle for a feeling, the particular sensation of clothes that have been lived in, and made to last. Creating a world is populated by people who dress well without appearing to think about it. Fashion doesn’t feel like armour or a costume, but something closer to skin.

ATELIERSTUDIO Edition 007 succeeded in doing what many shows attempt but rarely achieve: creating immersion. By limiting colour, they expanded meaning. By choosing an iconic Montréal location, they anchored fantasy in something real. And by framing the show through a cinematic lens, they transformed fashion into narrative. It wasn’t just about what was worn; it was about who could wear it, and in what world. A world of silence, tension, and sharp edges. A world where every look feels like a secret to uncover.