If you want a preview of what’s going to be hot on boutique shelves this season, you have to go to the source.

Jody Phillips, who has produced Spend on Trend since 2004, says the showcase for Canadian-made design is “a way for shoppers to get a sneak peek at what’s new and what stores will be ordering that season”. Though she also coordinates a February event, the early-September sale (taking place Friday to Sunday [September 5 to 7]) “is a more obvious one to have because we do it as a fall preview”.

This season, Spend on Trend is moving to new digs and leaving its former home at Main Street’s Heritage Hall. “It’s a great venue, but we’ve kind of outgrown it,” Phillips explains.

Instead, the event will be taking place right downtown, in the Scotiabank Dance Centre, which has hosted other style-related events, such as B.C. Fashion Week in spring 2008. (Times and other details can be found at www.spendontrend.com/.)

Although some may feel that Heritage Hall, located smack-dab in the middle of a hub of boutiques featuring local designers, was more conducive to drawing a clientele that supports these designers, Phillips believes that if anything, a downtown location will help the Main Street stores attract an even larger following.

“So many of these designers already sell on Main Street, so this is maybe a way of hitting up the downtown shoppers who don’t always head that way.” She adds, “The local design industry is ready to expand.”

At Spend on Trend, find local designer Billy Would’s chunky-cool wood jewellery.

Besides attracting more than 3,000 shoppers over the course of a weekend, for designers, Spend on Trend is a potential opportunity to meet wholesale buyers.

“We have a huge contingent of wholesale buyers scoping out designers for next spring [that] they want to get their hands on,” Phillips says. “They want to see whose booths are busy.”

Returning Spend on Trend favourites include Bronsino Designs for Living, Denise Wilson’s buttery-soft, finely crafted handbag line (“Her stuff this season is killer,” Phillips says); jewellery label Toodlebunny, whose designer, Trudy Wynans, combines nature-inspired items like twigs, leaves, and gold owls with edgier elements; and Elroy’s stylized trench coats, cinched jackets, drapy dresses, and more in sustainable fabrics.

Also look for noteworthy newcomers such as Kulus Designs by Amanda Anderson—her bright-blue, purple, and black cotton T-shirts, hoodies, tunics, and jackets are screen-printed with First Nations art by renowned West Coast artists Rande Cook and John Livingston.

Other new designers at this year’s event include Billy Would, a jeweller from North Vancouver who crafts chunky pendants and earrings, not surprisingly out of wood; and Nixxi, a line of organic cotton and bamboo wrap dresses and ruffled tops. Prices at Spend on Trend start at $30 for jewellery and can exceed $500 for custom clothing.

You could put in a lot of time searching out these pieces at stores this fall, but why put all that wear on your new Fluevog Low Jo flats?