Philip Sparks is a professor in the Fashion Arts advanced diploma program. He has been working as a tailor and designer for more than two decades, incorporating an art practice focused on textiles, photography and installations into the production and exhibition of his collections. After graduating from Seneca in 2003, he worked in-house in the wardrobe and design departments at the National Ballet of Canada, The Canadian Opera Company, the Stratford Festival and Soulpepper Theatre. He launched his eponymous fashion company in 2007 and his clothing and accessories have been carried at retailers including Holt Renfrew, Hudson’s Bay and La Maison Simons. Sparks continues to operate his own tailoring practice, producing custom garments from his Toronto studio.
Sparks completed his masters in design at OCAD University in 2019. He was awarded the prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship, OCAD University Medal and President’s Award.
Since 2011, Sparks has been part of Seneca’s School of Fashion. As a researcher and educator, he takes an interdisciplinary approach that has led him to collaborate with his colleagues in other schools at Seneca, most notably the School of Health Sciences. Sparks’s current research is focused on domestic and sustainable textile production. His teaching of tailoring addresses a range of body types and aims to be open minded to individual experiences of dress.
Sparks has been published in Toronto Metropolitan University’s Fashion Studies Journal and he has been a featured speaker at Design TO’s In Conversation conference in collaboration with OCAD University and the University of the Arts London.