A funny little ‘scandal’ is unwinding in the land of Toronto fashionistas today. It started at 1:45am (contributor Courtney Shea, you’re working too hard!) when Toronto Life published its daily ‘best dressed’ post in its Style section and featured local developer Deena Pantalone discussing her ‘vintage’ dress that she ‘sort of designed’. A small blurb about being a recessionista by reworking old clothes followed.

Within hours comments started pouring in about the fact that this dress was in fact the recent and completely original work of local designer Caroline Lim, owner of the Queen St.W store Champagne & Cupcakes.

And naturally, local twitterati starting talking about it too:

Now I’ve never met Caroline (great name though) but she is obviously not only a talented designer but one smart entrepreneurial cookie as well as shortly after being notified (and writing a strongly worded comment to the subject herself), she posted this comment:

What a great way to take advantage of the local interest in your story and drive traffic to your store. Many more comments have come in about people’s interest being sparked in the dress and the store and I imagine this is not going to be the only blog post about it either. Perhaps Toronto Life will even follow up on it and feature Caroline in its piece. Now while I still firmly believe that claiming to have ‘sort of’ designed a dress that you ‘completely didn’t’ is wrong, by the time this all blows over I think Caroline may be sending Deena a thank-you note for all of the great publicity she has received as a result of her misrepresentation of her design!

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