Welcome to my blog, and my very first post – I’m Paige, and I’ll be your tour guide!

Let me tell you a little bit about who I am and how I’ve found myself here, starting with the basics. I’m 23, currently living in downtown Toronto and finishing my fourth year at Ryerson University in Fashion Communication. I found myself here in a somewhat haphazard way, by moving out west after high school, living in Whistler, BC for a few years and working my way up the retail ladder.

The reason why I love fashion is its’ ability to provide a way for individuals to express personality and creativity, and create a canvas for a very personal type of artistic representation. I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a quiet, sometimes shy individual, and fashion has become a way for me to communicate and explore who I am.

So I’ve made this decision to open my own store within the next year, and as an extension of that, will be exploring the concept in a different context throughout my final year of school as part of my independent study, aka thesis. What I want to do is create an online network of people who are interested in my store concept and what I am doing, and generate discussion, thoughts, and ideas that relate to it, which will better help me in executing my idea. Essentially, I want to stimulate collaborative design and innovation, using this blog and other social networking tools, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Which is where you, as my reader and audience come in. For this “experiment” to work, I need people to  follow along with my journey and talk to me. Tell me what you think, what you want, and what your ideas are. A store is essentially catering to its’ customers, and so to build a successful store environment, I want to know what my future customers are looking for.

My blog will touch on a variety of topics: my own personal experiences, fashion and style, art, culture, music, design, shopping and retailing, with everything leading towards one common goal: to develop a store concept through visual exploration and ongoing, online dialogue.