The Red Carpet Room

The purpose of this interview was to delve into The Red Carpet Room and find out how it compliments Amanda Brugel’s career as a Canadian actress. It’s purpose was also to provide a general understanding of the Canadian fashion industry and how it has reached high profile personalities in the entertainment world.
Of the many films and TV series Brugel has done, you might have seen her in Da kink in my hair, Splice, and Paradise Falls. She has worked very hard to come this far being involved with acting from a young age. Acting brings with it entertainment, fashion, and all the glitz and glam. Brugel saw the opportunity to expand her horizons by conquering the fashion world using Toronto as her stronghold.
A wealthy handful of talented Canadian designers come from Toronto such as Lida Biday, Pink Tartan, Shawn Hewson, and Sunny Choi from Project Runway Canada just to name a few. Supporting the Canadian fashion industry, actress Amanda Brugel has opened up a boutique called The Red Carpet Room. It’s Canada’s “exclusive and comprehensive style showroom,” which allows actors, musicians, TV hosts, and high-profile personalities access to a wardrobe of entirely Canadian designers.
After continually being asked “who are you wearing?” at 2009’s Emmy awards, it finally hit her as Brugel realized “I HAVE to wear a Canadian tailored garment next time I walk the red carpet to help promote Canadian designers.” Brugel and so many other Canadian entertainment personalities never knew where to locate hot, quality Canadian clothing and accessories, so she created a space that answered the call.
Brugel got into bed with the fashion industry when she obliged invites to shows, and made a relationship out of it through the showroom. She claims that it is “now my sister career.” She will soon be the face and spokeswoman for Jessica Biffi’s (Project Runway Canada) new accessory line. Brugel strongly believes it’s important to promote our own designers from Canada. This helps create a little self-promotional machine and teaches influential personalities to bring other artists with them on their rise to the top. Brugel has appeared on dozen’s of “Best Dressed” lists and has been admired for her loyal support to her fellow Canadian designers.
Balancing acting as well as a successful business can be hard for anyone. Brugel states that “one always overshadows the other and it is a constant game of balance”. Lately she has been dedicating endless hours to one or the other which has enabled her to move forward with both. For someone just starting out in the fashion industry it’s a fair amount of responsibilities. If the drive, passion, and love for fashion is there to pursue this particular career than there should be no problem succeeding. Brugel needs a lot of inspiration to be able to get up and do this everyday. She claims that she “loves when a client looks in the mirror and has that moment when they feel truly beautiful. They light up the room and immediately she feels their contagious high.”
Already being in the Canadian show business, Brugel understands how important fashion is and how little exposure Canadian designers get; “I would not have been able to recognize the lack of support between the two worlds without having been so heavily immersed in the entertainment business” adds Brugel. She would be at parties and noticed that the “fashion crowd” and “music/entertainment crowd” barely acknowledged one another. This was not due to an unspoken rift between the worlds; it was just the fact that certain crowds tend to stick with what they are familiar with. Brugel noticed while working in L.A. how virtually everyone would intermingle and cross-promote one another, and since then she saw a massive opportunity to teach out communities to do the same.
With exposure such as Entertainment Tonight Canada, Brugel finds that it definitely boosts her business. After every appearance she receives emails, calls and texts mentioning the company or inquiring about the service. Usually high profile personalities and people in the entertainment industry watch ET Canada to see what’s hot and what’s not. Being on ET Canada is the best method of advertising for Brugel as she discovered that any publicity is good publicity.
Some of Brugel’s biggest clients that have used The Red Carpet Room’s service are Grace Park (The Cleaner, The Border), Wendy Crewson (24, Air Force One), and Measha Brueggergossman (Opera Singer) to name a few. Brugel also just recently finished dressing fifty actors for the Actra Awards, including all of the female nominees. This was a huge step for Brugel’s The Red Carpet Room, and with complete success the business is booming with popularity. As nice as this all sounds, The Red Carpet Room is unfortunately not available to just anyone attending nice events, it is strictly exclusive as the designers use images of the celebrities in their designs to promote their label and brand.
With the Canadian entertainment industry expanding and bursting buttons off, The Red Carpet Room continues to grow as well. Brugel’s future plans may include opening up a showroom in Vancouver and Montreal to further her conquest as Canada’s fashion ambassador.