For the first time in many seasons, ankle-length dresses will return to Vancouver sidewalks, with a wide range of styles to tickle your ankles.

Like many new moms, Elizabeth Yap-Chung wasn’t jumping up and down with glee at the thought of returning to the 9 to 5 world after her maternity leave ended. But where most women heave a sigh, organize childcare, and resign themselves to the daily commute, Yap-Chung started to think about a way around it. “I wanted to stay home,” she says in a phone interview. “I’d had a business of my own before, and I had a taste for that.

See the Gallery With Main Street and Gastown bursting with boutiques brimming with B.C. design, Portobello West a monthly must, and blogs and Web sites landing news of the hotness within the city limits in your inbox every day, it’s easy to forget that local fashion only became a major force fairly recently. A biannual happening since 2004, Vancouver Fashion Week was a once-a-year thang when show producer Jamal Abdourahman first launched the event in 2001. “He wanted to create a forum for B.C.

A fashion and image project for teens encourages them to evolve their own style rather than follow the fashion herd of scuzzy celebs and supermodels.

Know your itinerary and dress right for business travel; at Impact: An Event for Change’s fundraiser, low-income women get job-ready style help too.

A sumptuous cape pieced together from silk scarves coloured with natural dyes from plants grown in the artist’s own garden. Discarded duds cut into strips, rewoven, and stitched into a jacket. Good idea or what? These are just a couple of the items you’ll see at the Green Is the New Black Wearable Art Fashion Show, on March 30 at 2:30 p.m. at the Vancouver Museum (1100 Chestnut Street). Presented by the Vancouver Guild of Fibre Arts, the show features close to 50 textile talents and students.

Thanks to the Internet, relatives in Croatia and a friend in Australia had front-row seats as RozeMerie Cuevas sent her signature curvy dresses and suits down the runway.

The big decision this spring is which trend to go with. You’ll see plenty of options out there spanning the whole spectrum of metalness.

The lipstick of the moment is both botanical and tantalizingly pretty, but the eyes have it with dreamy emeralds, olives, and limes.

Every wardrobe needs a cache of shape-shifting goodies, the small, evil additions that successfully take the piss out of bland or serious clothing. When you pair fishnet hose with even the most corporately classic suit, you alter its personality for the better; or you could tie a leopard-print scarf over a trench coat.

If even your mom didn’t send you a Valentine and the forecast threatens rain for the weekend, what better way to raise your spirits than with a wearable bunch of flowers.

While Milan, Paris, and London tend to rock the fashion headlines, cities all over the world are hotbeds of style. In Vancouver, events like Spend on Trend (see Chic of the Week) and Portobello West provide a stage for emerging designers. Sydney, Australia, has its weekly Paddington Market. And, across South Africa, there’s a movement called “Local is lekker”—lekker being local Afrikaans slang for “good”, explains Larainne Kaplan. “Dress local, buy local, manufacture local.”

Consignment stores are catnip to an impoverista (a clotheshorse who’s temporarily—or permanently—broke). First, you have the instant joy of spotting your favourite terra cotta or olive green, even if fashion currently ignores it. Next, although you may see their labels, this isn’t Gap or Club Monaco. It’s not racks and racks of the same thing; everything is one-of-a-kind.

Somewhere amid all the Christmas chaos, it occurred to me that the same national newspaper that recently lauded electric blue as the cool new colour had also included it in its list of picks and pans from the past year—and it wasn’t a pick. Maybe that was the tipping point in making me think, "Screw it, 2008 is the year I wear exactly what I like, and if it happens to be on trend, so be it." Over the holidays, I happened upon a U.K. blog by someone who had resolved not to buy clothes all last year.

Try buying a cozy sweater in March or tank tops in August–in your dreams. The fashion world and the real world have never marched in lock step, but the fact that they're increasingly out of sync does mean sales offer deals you can wear right away. If you braved the Boxing Day crowds, give yourself a plastic medal. If not, relax. Early birds may have creamed off some of the deals, but there's still lots to love out there.