the simple life; Tevrow & Chase is a brand-new line of chic basics for working women.

Byline: Robert Sullivan

We will now hear what one fashionable Torontonian thinks about the skirt-black, silk taffeta, cut on the bias-that she is about to wear on a typical fashion-conscious night out in Canada. This typical Torontonian is Alexandra Weston, a native of Toronto who, like many Torontonians of her age, 25, went from college to New York City, and has now-after, in Weston's case, working for Calvin Klein for a few years-returned, re-embraced her Canadian homeland and province and provincial capital, where, as it happens, a new clothing line has just been launched.

For the record, the new clothing line is Tevrow & Chase, Chase being the middle name of the daughter of Joseph Mimran, the Torontonian who brought you Club Monaco before Club Monaco was bought by Ralph Lauren, before reasonably priced high fashion-esque items like those spawned by Club Monaco were everywhere.

Tevrow, meanwhile, is the middle name of a fashion insider who is inside no matter what town he is in, a designer and creative director who was doing fashion editorial work for Uomo Vogue and The Face, among others, and simultaneously working as a creative at Dries Van Noten while living in Paris-i.e., Paul Sinclaire. About four years ago, Mimran flew to Paris for breakfast with Sinclaire to persuade him to move to New York to design full-time for Club Monaco, at which point Sinclaire said, almost out of the blue, almost as if he'd been planning in the back of his mind on moving to Canada and experimenting with a new kind of fashion line for years: "Why don't I move to Canada?"

Breakfast continued, and the idea got better. "I thought, You know what? It's a perfect idea!," Sinclaire says. "How about if we create it as a kind of lab for this idea that I've always wanted to do about women, about modern women living a kind of really cool, nifty style?"

Tevrow & Chase is the lab, and the lab, as fashionable Torontonians such as Alexandra Weston know, is now open, the result being a fashion company that is the next step for the former Club Monaco customer, for people who don't need to buy the least expensive thing at H&M but still don't necessarily want to have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars for everything. It's basics that are special, the opposite of fast fashion. In fact, Tevrow & Chase is slow fashion-singular pieces that are completely trend-aware, that are intended to be folded in seamlessly with wardrobes of the highest order and that are, like some fine but reasonably priced little-known bottle of California wine, less expensive, relatively speaking. The bubble skirt that Alexandra Weston will wear this evening will sell for about $495.

"Take East Hampton," Sinclaire says. "Take an attractive, good-looking girl; she's going to a dinner, and you know what? She just doesn't want to wear a pair of jeans, and she really doesn't want to wear one more cropped pant. Part of the conversation was with my friends who are designer-buyers. They all mix it, and they're the ones that always say, 'Isn't there ...