the designers

Judy Cornish“I’d never really thought about my future — preferring to spend my high school days making satin tops to wear to Lou Reed, patching my jeans and creating ’stage clothes’ for friends in bands. After a year in University in Peterborough, spending time traveling through Europe and living in Calgary for two years, I returned to Toronto. The early eighties found me sewing clothes for my hairdresser friends who, by night, transformed into new wave poseurs — imagine Human League, Devo, New Order. My pleasure comes from dressing up others and then quietly watching the results. Knowing I would soon need a real job and thinking about costume design, I enrolled in Ryerson in 1980.” Joyce Gunhouse“I always knew I’d be in fashion. When I was six years old, I won a design contest held by “Buster Brown”. My mother (Santa Claus) gave my sister and me a little Singer hand-crank sewing machine that same Christmas. We were constantly whipping up original designs for Barbie and Midge. All through my school years I was sewing and sketching, which eventually led me to attend Ryseron Polytechnic. I packed up my bags, left Victoria and headed to Toronto in the Fall of 1980.”
Joyce Gunhouse and Judy Cornish first met at Ryerson in the Fashion Arts Programme. Judy was working at Larry’s Hide-away (a Punk Club) and would put Joyce on the guest list whenever a good band was playing – R.E.M., Husker-Du, Shriekback. Joyce was also waitressing her way through school.Their busy schedules and similar work ethic – no all-nighters, prioritize assignments, and always have time for boyfriends and secondhand shopping – forced them to work on school projects together. Just before graduation they collaborated on a few outfits that they presented with friends in a mini fashion show at an evening celebrating the first Music Videos at Larry’s Hide-away. Duran Duran and the “eighties” had begun!Owners of a little independent store, Metropolis, saw the show and invited Joyce and Judy to sell their designs on consignment. As an added bonus they shared a studio with the store for only $25 a month! The business kept building: with the money from the sale of two dresses they would sew and sell four dresses, and so on.

That August of 1983, Joyce and Judy presented Comrags for the first time to the press. The response from the press and fashion elite was overwhelming! Comrags continues to be favoured by Flare, Fashion Magazine, Elle Canada, Chatelaine, and the best of Canadian media.