Courtesy of Joseph Voci

Sitting in Starbucks waiting to interview fashion designer, Salem Moussallam, was kind of like going on a blind date – until he walked through the door. I knew right away that the good-looking, tanned model sporting a massive Louis Vuitton duffle, chic sunglasses, casual sweats and patent leather loafers was definitely the mystery man I’d been waiting for. And yet, his playful smile and double-cheek kiss made me feel like I’d known him for centuries. Not your average stuck-up, I-don’t-have-time-for-the-masses fashion designer, Salem wants to share his style with the world. His bold and beautiful looks have been seen on stars such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna, but surprisingly, his adventure all started with simply needing an outfit for the semi-formal.

Pony: What’s your story, Salem. How did you initially become interested in designing clothes?

Salem: It started out when I was 14 years old and basically, I came from a moderate family. They weren’t rich so they couldn’t afford designer luxury goods. This was hard for me, especially since I was attending a private high school where everyone was rich everyone had nice clothes. Not to mention I used to be skinnier, so I’d have to tailor my clothing to fit. But it all really started with my semi-formal. My parents couldn’t afford to buy me an expensive suit so my mother, she’s a seamstress, basically helped me design my own suit. I picked the fabrics and designed it exactly how I wanted – it was all black with fire engine red lapels. What’s funny is that people who used to make fun of me for my style or lack of designer flare actually complimented me when I showed up to the semi-formal in my suit. Afterwards, I just built up from there, going to design school and honing my skills.

Pony: Where do you get your inspirations?

Salem: Artists, especially musicians. I mean, the type of clothing I design is not for everybody to wear; at least, not yet. When I see a performer wearing my clothes I think it’s so cool because let’s face it, you’re not going to see someone on the street wearing lime green tights or anything eccentric. Then you take someone like Lady Gaga, she’s worn my pieces and is a huge inspiration for me. Ciara as well and Rhianna; these artists are all big inspirations for me. Designers not too much though, because I feel as though it’s the person who wears the clothes and who get’s talked about in them that’s most important for me as a designer. When you see stuff on the runway, only like 2% of people actually wear the clothes, then fashion houses have to make a commercial collection for the rest of us. Perfect example, Alexander McQueen’s underwater collection, three people wore that, so the house had to make the collection more subdued for everyone else so that it was sellable.

Courtesy of Joseph Voci

Pony: Do you find that the same thing has occurred for you, in that you’ve had to find a balance between the ready-to-wear, sellable, commercialized aspect and the more artsy, creative and unique quality of your collections?

Salem: Yes, definitely. Oh my god the past four years have been a struggle for me. I’ll tell you an experience that was very nerve-wracking for me. When I did my first ever Toronto Fashion Week show, we were in tents working with L’Oreal, it was the worst experience of my entire life. I was almost in tears and suffering from acute stress attacks because I literally felt that my creative talent was being degraded from beautiful art to sellable, mainstream clothing. I was working with the FDCC and they would tell me that my pieces were too crazy, too out there; that no one would want to buy, let alone see, my clothing. So, wanting to be part of fashion week as badly as I did in those days, I had to tone down my entire line. As an artist, I felt that it wasn’t my collection any more, it was something so detached from me.

Pony: If you had to pick someone to dress right now, who would that person be?

Salem: Her name is Little Boots. She is the UK pop version of Lady Gaga, but she plays her own guitar and instruments. She’s cute, bubbly and an eclectic. I mean, if I got to pick the next artist I could work with it would definitely be her.

Pony: Let’s talk about Toronto, as a city that is slowly growing in terms of fashion and style, do you think people in this city are afraid to take risks when it comes to their wardrobe?

Courtesy of Joseph Voci

Salem: Oh, yes, absolutely. I call these people fashion followers, instead of fashion leaders. Let’s take for example me and you sitting in this coffee shop right now, people around us are constantly looking at their surroundings, at other people, watching to see what they are doing, what they are wearing in order to judge whether or not they can pull it off. For the past five years in Toronto, I was made fun of for my style and for the way I dressed. Now, people are asking me to rip their jeans for them. Why? Because they see all these celebrities wearing my ripped jeans; they want to follow. Last year in fact, one of the designers from Urban Behaviour was at my show, and low and behold a year later they had knocked-off two of my skirts and were selling them in store – followers!

Pony: As a fashion designer, do you feel that you would benefit from a stronger presence of the sort of middle-man who isn’t working for a store or getting paid to publicize a brand, that people can go to in order to see what’s new, get ideas and style inspirations from?

Salem: For me yes, because every day I see people who quite frankly, could be wearing H&M and rocking it. Then you see people wearing Dolce & Gabbana and they look horrible. Everyone in Toronto is driven by you know, the Holt Renfrew aesthetic, where they blindly go into Holts and think OK, if I assemble my whole outfit from this store I’ll look good and be in style. That’s not necessarily true because as you can see, the person wearing H&M may actually rock their outfit 100 times better. That’s why I feel that the presence of someone who can set styles regardless of the designer name or the price would be beneficial to people like me, who obviously don’t sell their pieces at Holts.

Courtesy of Joseph Voci

Pony: What’s the must-have for Spring 2010?

Salem: Well for me, it’s these [pointing to his Christian Louboutin studded, patent leather tuxedo shoes]. I bought these in New York, from Louboutin’s first-ever men’s collection; I basically spent my entire spring budget on them so I’m never taking them off – look I’m even wearing them with sweatpants! I love them. But for everyone else, this spring it’s all about colour; one colour is definitely neon! A lot of designers are doing the whole neon-technology thing.

Pony: The profits from your show are going towards your project for Haiti, what are you hoping to do with the funds you raise?

Salem: My project right now is that I’m trying to go to Haiti next month and I’m working with MTV and MuchMusic to get this off the ground. Basically, I wanted to see what happened there and by raising money, I want to make 2-3 thousand pieces of clothing to bring back with me to Haiti. I want to experience what they are experiencing right now in rebuilding the country and by doing what I can to help provide clothing for those who lost everything they had. I feel as though sometimes we don’t do enough to give back to people who aren’t as lucky as we are, so I feel like this is a good thing to get involved in.

Courtesy of HIBEBE

Check out Salem’s upcoming show DIVA this Thursday at Century Room.

– Justine Iaboni

Courtesy of Meech

Lucky for her, in this multicultural city, there’s more than one! Along the way she will talk with many DJs, party planners and socialites, take one too many pictures and drag all her friends into the wee hours of the night. So, with a full tube of electric-red lipstick in hand and a final destination unknown, she programs her GPS to start off in Parkdale. This will be hard work, folks but after a few vodka tonics, things should get mushier.

First stop is the new, I-don’t-give-a-beep, DJ-owned hotspot, Wrongbar (1279 Queen St. W). With its acute taste in programming and no holds barred party atmosphere, Wrongbar is quickly becoming home to the better-looking, Queen West hipsters. Chatting with Meech, a household name at Wrongbar, who will be spinning this Saturday alongside owner, Nasty Nav and guest DJ, Hijack, from the UK. The plan is to kick off the night with the triumvirate – burger, fries and beer – at The Rhino (1249 Queen St. W) and then mosey on over.

Pony: What are the best moments when you’re spinning?

Meech: The best moments? I think the best moments, for me, is when I turn around a crowd that’s more/less stale and I can get everybody into it again. There are so many aspects that make up a good party – people hook up, people go crazy. If you can make a kid want to do drugs, I know it sounds bad, but you’re doing something right because they want to experience more of the thrill of the evening.

Pony: So when you’re DJ’ing, do you gauge the crowd’s response to help you decide what you’re going to play next?

Meech: Oh of course. 100%. I hope I’m not misquoting here, but the most important thing a DJ has to do is read the crowd, he’s gotta play for the crowd but at the same time he’s gotta educate them; he’s gotta tease them a little. And if the crowd’s feeling a certain type of music, even though it might not be my favorite, I’m gonna go to it. Obviously, I still play stuff that I like. I only have music that I wanna play and I think people have realized that with me.

Pony: Yeah, I feel that. I find too that in Toronto there’s this whole separation between big clubs and really popular music, and it almost seems that it doesn’t even really matter who’s behind the turntables just as long as you play the hits. And then there’s this whole other DJ-centric vibe where people go to these parties just to hear a certain person spin because they like the music the DJ chooses to play, how the DJ plays, etc. How do you see yourself fitting in that?

Courtesy of Zephyr

Meech: Of course there’s totally two scenes. There’s the Richmond club district scene and then there’s the Queen hipster scene. One’s more mainstream, the z103.5 stuff, and then the other is more educated. There’s no right or wrong. I personally don’t want to go to a mainstream club and be expected to play Hip Hop because that’s just not me. That’s probably the hardest thing, to be able to be a Top 40 DJ and go into a club not knowing what crowd you’re gonna get. With me, I think people kind of have an idea of what I’m going to play, but actually, I really have no idea. I play for the crowd and I try to mix it up because the same genre gets boring fast.

Pony: Have you ever fucked up on a gig?

Meech: Oh of course, of course. One night I was DJ’ing, I don’t even know where, and I forgot to plug in my computer to the power! My laptop just died, literally died on the spot and I was like “what just happened?”. It took a good 30 seconds but it felt like half an hour to figure out what was going on. But you know the benefit with that is that the crowd a lot of the times gets woken up when something like that happens and they get more into it afterward.

Pony: That sucks, and you were saying to me that you’re kind of tired of the Toronto scene. If you had to move to a bigger party hub city, where would you go?

Meech: The only reason why I’d consider it boring is just because I’ve done it all; seen it all. I don’t get the butterflies anymore. When you go out and you play at other venues, in other cities, you don’t know what to expect. It’s like a first date. In Toronto, you get a lot of DJs that think being experimental is playing a mash-up of MSTRKRFT and Wonderwall. Which makes no sense; you’re just playing something that’s on a hype machine. That’s not being experimental, that’s not taking risks. Risk is when you’re like, alright, the crowd is feeling deeper let’s play some real cracked out stuff right now and see what happens. I want a different level of music that gets you out of your comfort zone. I think that the worst thing with any business, with anything in life, is when you get comfortable and stop growing as a person.

Pony: So is there any style of songs that you want to experiment with that you haven’t had the opportunity to do yet in Toronto?

Meech: Well the benefit that I’ve had is that I’ve been offered many different types of gigs. You know: Top 40, House, etc. But the sound that I’m dying to play, is like a real sketched out after party. I want to play from 5:00 until 10 a.m., or something crazy like that; see the sun go up. I wanna see people realize that they’ve wasted 12 hours or whatever at a club. I think that’s the difference that I want to experience right now.

Courtesy of dsrnr.ca

Pony: So when it comes to experimentation and getting exposed to new and different sounds, how important do you think music festivals are for DJs in Toronto, and for you, how have they allowed you to grow?

Meech: They vary depending on a lot of things. The Time Festival will bring in international artists like Mehdi, A-Trak, huge guys, and they’ll still make room for the local artists – it forces you to play at the same level as them, which can be terrifying. It’s like being called up from the minors to play in the major league; opening for someone bigger than you. But there’s an art to it, I think a lot of DJs are guilty of not knowing what that feels like. But yeah, festivals are important, more than anything it’s good for exposure. That’s huge.

Pony: You also think though that production is another great way to gain exposure. I understand you’ve produced music. Your tracks include Ecstasy, Beatdown Funk, etc.

Meech: Haha yeah Beatdown Funk, that one’s dedicated to my buddy who got beat down that weekend by a cop. Every track I’ve ever produced is so different from the next I mean, that’s my DJ’ing. It’s very chunky.

Pony: How did you get started in all of this anyway, what’s your story?

Meech: That’s such a weird question for me. Honestly, I don’t even know. Before I was a DJ I used to run a photoblog. I used to go to all these parties and concerts; taking pictures, that was my thing. In that whole mess I met Jesse Keeler, who is one half of MSTRKRFT. I remember the day I met him he was like “I’m going to introduce you to my partner, we’re working on this Disco-House project called MSTRKRFT”. And I was like “Oh alright, whatever, lemme hear what you have”, you know you don’t think much of it at the time. And when he played me a couple of tracks I was like “wow this is really good”. I mean, I never thought I was going to be a DJ. I just kept taking pictures and one of my friends would bring his Serato for me to play. But it’s not until I really got into Electro, I mean Electro is what brought me into that scene. Slowly that scene grew in the Queen West area with The Drake and The Social.  It was weird; it was like it came out of nowhere. That’s how it started with me; it came out of nowhere.

Courtesy of Wrongbar

For More Info:
http://www.myspace.com/iluvmeech
http://www.myspace.com/nastynav
http://www.myspace.com/hijackhouse
And for tickets and event Info:
http://www.wantickets.com/EventDetail.aspx?e_id=99435

XoXo
– Justine Iaboni

Friends and New Visitors,

Mainstream media in Toronto is all a bit of a buzz kill. That’s why Mushy Pony is here – we’re here for the other guys. The ones who don’t need to be seen Tweeting at the Drake’s patio. The ones who work hard, and ride harder. Between our hot interviews, our hot sex columnist, and our mega hot motorcycle reviews, you know you’re saddled up for a good read.

Our articles are a lot like our ponies. Short, sturdy, quirky, and can deliver a good kick. They delve into the various gems that make up this wonderful city of ours and deliver you the goods. Not sure what all the mush is about? See below for contact info and ask us personally:

For advertising & media, contact:                  For general pony talk, contact:
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Founding Director, Editor
– Emma Farquharson.

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Some of our superstars interviewed on Mushy Pony!

COWGIRLS/BOYS: Ross Gower, Justine Iaboni, Mike Bozinovski, ZDS, John Hastings, Bareback Cowgirl,

PRESS:

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XoXo
– The Cowgirls