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Women are Showing Up

A Post-International Women's Day Reflection from the Canadian Wholesale Fashion Trade

I'll be honest with you.

I woke up on International Women's Day with a heaviness in my heart.

Not because I don't believe in the day. I do — deeply. But because the world I looked out at felt like a snow globe that someone had picked up, shaken violently, and set back down.

Except instead of snowflakes, it was noise. Loud, aggressive, retrograde noise.

The manosphere is having a moment. Actually, it feels like more than a moment. It feels like a movement.

And I — a woman who has spent over four decades in this industry, who has watched women build careers, companies, and communities from the ground up — find myself equal parts exhausted and furious!

So yes. I'm naming it. Because pretending it isn't there doesn't make it go away.

The manosphere is getting to me! And I am sure many men are also cringing at the manosphere. And bless them, truly!

But here's where I pivot.

I've also spent the last few days thinking about the women in our industry. And what I see — what I know — tells a different story than the one being shouted from certain corners of the internet, and corners around the globe.

Long before it was a hashtag, fashion was how women spoke when they weren't given a microphone.

The suffragettes wore white — deliberately and defiantly to symbolize purity and moral virtue, to counter accusations of being “unwomanly” for speaking up. Women entered the workforce in the 1940s and their shoulders got broader, their silhouettes more commanding. Power dressing in the '80s wasn't accidental. It was armour.

And today? In 2025, in the middle of our own cultural turbulence?

Women are still dressing with intention. With pride, and confidence and … with purpose.

Fashion Has Always Been Female Resistance

Walk any Canadian trade show floor — our AFA markets, any buying week from coast to coast — and look at the women in the room. The buyers. The brand reps. The sales agents. The designers. The entrepreneurs who launched labels out of their basements and are now writing orders with national retailers.

They are dressed. Not for approval. For authority.

There is a difference. And women in this industry understand it instinctively.

The Women Who Built This Industry Aren't in the Headlines

They're on the road.

They're at the airport at 6am with sample bags and a smile that says, I believe in this collection.

They're the retailer who took a chance on a new Canadian brand when it would have been easier to go with an established one from anywhere else.

They're the sales rep who showed up to pitch a new line the day after something hard — a loss, a disappointment, a world that felt unkind — and still closed orders.

They're the buyers who stretch modest budgets into curated, beautiful, community-serving stores in cities and towns across this country.

These women are not waiting to be seen. They already know their value.

What Fashion Teaches Us About This Moment

Here's the truth about the costumes we wear, and about this industry:

It evolves. It absorbs the culture around it and reflects it back — sometimes as a mirror, sometimes as a challenge, sometimes as a quiet act of defiance.

In uncertain times — politically, economically, socially — women have always responded through how they present themselves to the world. Not vanity. Voice.

And right now, in Canada, in our tight-knit wholesale fashion trade, I see women choosing:

Colour when the world feels grey
Structure when things feel unstable
Boldness when they're being told to shrink

That's not fashion. That's philosophy. Expressed through fabric.

To the Women in Our Industry

We see each other!

We’re each familiar with the meetings where our ideas landed differently than our male colleague's identical idea. We understand what it’s like to abruptly reorganize our workday because of a sick child, or an elderly parent who needs us.

We know what it costs to lead with warmth in a world that sometimes mistakes warmth for weakness.

We are not weak.

We are the reason this industry has a heartbeat.

The snow globe will settle. It always does.

And when it does, the women of the Canadian wholesale fashion trade will still be here — layered, intentional, and absolutely, unapologetically dressed for the work. The snow globe will settle. It always does.

michelle@threadstotreads.com