Nearly a month after the tents packed up and the crowds disbanded at David Pecault Square, Toronto's other fashion week gets ready to kick off with runway shows, live performances, music, photography exhibits, video screenings and installations. On April 24th, |FAT| Arts & Fashion Week will launch its 7th annual alternative arts fashion week showcasing work from 200 artists across the globe including fashion designers, visual artists, live bands and performers. With a reputation for blurring lines and pushing boundaries between avant-garde and fashionable, this unique event presents an unconventional perspective of fashion and art.

This year's theme is fashionSCAPES and each night will focus on one of the subcategories - land, city, body or future. Though the official events run from April 24th to 28th at the 15,000 square foot industrial warehouse at 213 Sterling Road an offsite exhibition at the Drake Lab opened on April 16th and will run through the 28th.

Here are 5 things to check out at this year's Toronto Arts & Fashion Week [FAT].

Runway shows
Canadian designers from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary as well as international designers from The Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, Mexico, the Philippines and the USA are expected to show at FAT's new home on Sterling Road where models will stomp down an 80 foot-long runway. With FAT's reputation for discovering cool new talent - Wesley Badanjak, Heidi Ackerman, Martin Lim and Jasper Garvida were discovered here - there's no telling what the runways may hold this year.

Films on Fashion
A dozen films from Paris, London, New York, Berlin, Istanbul, Florence, Wroclaw, Baar and Montreal will explore the latest trend in fashion - fashion films. Popularized by mainstream designers like Longchamp, DVF and Vanessa Bruno, film has become the latest and most innovative medium for showcasing new collections.

The Dressing Room Project
A virtual and onsite exhibit featuring 12 different artists will put on a variety of live performances, installations and video projections. Highlights include an anatomical replica of the human heart made with wedding dress scraps, a kaleidoscope of familiar fashion images and a woman battling with a second skin made of feathers.

|FAT| Focus Germany
Teaming up with the Goethe-Institut Toronto, FAT puts the focus on Germany and its longstanding reputation for being a driving force in the creative industries of film, art and fashion. A photography exhibit, series of fashion films, multi-media exhibit and the F/W collection from Berlin-based designers Esther Perbandt & Von Bardonitz will round out the presentation.

|FAT| Drake Lab Offsite Exhibition
Taking place from April 16th to 28th, the Drake lab will host an offsite exhibition of photography, installations and film screenings. Highlights include the photo-cube portraits which are shot, printed and assembled live using FAT attendees as models and "Broadcast People", a live and interactive installation where FAT attendees can log in online to participate in a collection of compiled video clips.

View the full |FAT| Arts & Fashion Week schedule here

Writing by Simone Olivero. Photo via Heidi Ackerman's web site.