Timed to drop during LG Fashion Week, Dress to Kill held its Toronto launch party last night. The magazine is distributing 15,000 free copies of its fall issue to upscale boutiques in the Toronto downtown core.

The quarterly fashion book launched in Montreal last year and was distributed for free in boutiques across the city until the Fall ’09 issue, says editorial director Sylvain Blais. “We distribute it now for $4.50 at the newsstand,” he says. “There is also a small portion that is distributed for free in cool Montreal stores, hot spots.”

With a successful first year in Montreal, Blais, who started the magazine with publisher Kathia Cambron and art director Ewa Bilinski thought, “why not” launch a Toronto book. He says the fashion spreads are the same in both versions but there is some difference in editorial content. “We want to break barriers for designers,” he says. “If there is a designer in Quebec that is not known in Toronto we will put them in the Toronto magazine. That’s why we’re called Kill. We want to break the old ways of always talking about the same people.”

The magazine is aimed at people 20 to 40 with a personal income over $60,000 and those who dream about fashion like Blais did as a child. “I always had a fantasy about working at a fashion magazine,” he says. “I grew up in Sherbrooke, Que., where there was one copy of Italian Vogue. I discovered there weren’t enough places to publish avant-garde photography like that in Canada.”

Blais says Dress to Kill wants to blend the artfulness of European fashion glossies with the need to sell clothes. He says it is a difficult balance but respects competitor Flare for getting it right. “They are commercial but up-to-date and edgy at the same time,” he says. 

The 50-page Toronto launch issue, which features ads from Puma, Ben Sherman and Birks is just the beginning, says Blais. He hopes to be on newsstands in the city within the next year and launch in Mexico, Europe and New York City in the future.