Why This Cult Favourite Canadian Fashion Brand Is Shutting Down

Horses Atelier has been praised in Vogue for its “unfailingly cool” made-in-Toronto designs, which have been worn by a cross-section of celebrities—including Leslie Feist, Jerry Hall and Margaret Atwood—and non-celebrities alike. Its slouchy Alchemical clutch coat, in particular, is the hero of many women's winter uniforms.

The news that the independent design house is shutting down has broken the hearts of its devoted customer base—including a not insignificant number of Chatelaine editors.

Co-founders and co-designers Claudia Dey and Heidi Sopinka laid out the factors behind the brand's demise in a provocative press release that detailed the challenges the ethically-minded label faced in a fast-fashion climate that favours offshore production and exploitative business models.

“Horses has been priced out of conscious production in downtown Toronto,” the duo wrote. “Horses has been priced out of the algorithm. Horses has been priced out of legacy media.”

Horses Atelier co-founders and co-designers Claudia Dey and Heidi Sopinka (photo: Courtesy Horses Atelier).

“After COVID, our costs went up, some of them 100 percent and across every single part of our supply chain,” Dey told Chatelaine over the phone. “As a small, independent business that’s essentially run by four women, we got priced out.”

“There’s also a person called Trump that wreaked havoc,” Sopinka adds, referring to both the economic chaos around tariffs specifically and the precarious global financial outlook in general.

The combination of increased costs and market chaos has chilled customers, suppliers and investors they say, adding additional layers of stress to the challenges of running a business that aims to deliver investment-worthy goods and pay its garment workers fairly.

The overarching cultural impact lack of investment in Canadian crafts workers shouldn’t be underestimated, they say.

“There’s been so much government talk about saving the auto industry, but sewers have these incredible rare skills that are going to be completely lost if there’s no investment in Canada,” says Sopinka.

Without protections and investment, the lifespan of other businesses like theirs will be cut short—if they can get off the ground in future at all, they say.

“A designer friend of ours recently said clothing made in Canada is soon going to be made in a museum,” says Sopinka.

The costs of a digital presence have “skyrocketed,” too, they add.

“We pay more digitally than we do for our brick-and-mortar shop [in downtown Toronto],” Dey says, referring to fees associated with running their online storefront.

Both women have seen a seismic shift in how brands are discovered, too. Their Vogue debut was the result of one fashion editor’s emotional connection to their work. Today, they say, that discovery model is mostly absent.

A recent “catastrophic” flood in their studio and contractor issues didn't helped matters either.

Both women joke about the convergence of drama: “if someone put a hex on us, it’s working,” says Dey.

As the duo look back on the last dozen or so years, they’re mostly grateful for the connection they forged with their loyal following.

“One of our biggest heartaches is losing that contact with them through clothing,” says Sopinka. “We’ve always liked to say fashion is a form of autobiography and we really got to help people write theirs for some time and we don’t take that lightly.”

For now, Horses is selling off its remaining inventory, including its workhorse jumpsuits and wear-with-anything bolero jackets. But while it’s the end of the production line for this beloved label—as well as a warning sign that a lack of investment in Canadian talent comes at a significant cost—it may not be the end of Horses' story.  

“This will make killer television," says Dey, who is also an author. "So we’ve been working on a script."