The Best New Fashion Stores in Toronto, 2012

The best new fashion stores in Toronto in 2012 reflect a wide variety of tastes, styles, and budgets, with reworked vintage seeing a spike in popularity. There are shops with a tight focus on local, hard-to-find brands, while others cast their net far and wide to source international lines.

Shoe addicts will be pleased to see their vice of choice well represented, while those with an appreciation for the past will find haute labels and no-name brands alike nipped, snipped and otherwise updated into modern silhouettes. And although fashion's long been considered a woman's game, most of the entries below have a generous helping of menswear.

Here's the list of the best new fashion stores in Toronto in 2012.

Contraband

Contraband's name is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to Yorkville's storied past, but the stock is definitely of the moment. Modern streetwear, sportswear, and high fashion menswear brands such as Brooklyn Circus, Thom Browne and Nike clamour for attention in the barebones space that also sports a flat-screen and video game console (for bored female companions). You'll find everything from coats, to pants, to shoes; and even an accessory or two for the ladies in your life.

Gravitypope

Gravitypope might be best-known for its shoes, but its large new two-floor location at the foot of Ossington on West Queen West houses men's and women's footwear, accessories and clothing, all available at a variety of price points. Shoes run the gamut from Comme de Garcons to Vans, to its eponymous and affordable house brand, and you'll also find fragrances and an array of upper-tier (i.e. pricey) label pieces.