Apr 2, 2003 /FWD/ --- For Toronto-born, Portugal-raised Arthur Mendonca, age is just a number. Although the 26-year-old designer recently celebrated only his second show during Toronto Fashion Week, his style and talent is that of a seasoned veteran.

"I don't really have rhyme or reason to how I design each collection," Mendonca said from his studio at the Toronto Fashion Incubator off the city's hip Queen Street.

"I just pick up whatever inspires me at the time and derive something from it."

Mendonca's fall 2003 collection used sumptuous silk for jumpsuits, sophisticated tweeds for high collared, knee length coats and distressed leathers for skirts and trenches.

While the cuts were clean enough for even the most upper crust socialite, his attention to detail added a bit of edgy funk that appeals to trendsetting twenty-somethings.

He wrapped long strips of ribbon around the legs of his silk cargo pants and bolero jackets, and looped ribbon through shiny gold buckles he found during a stroll through one of New York's fabric shops, creating epaulets for a military look.

While most Canadian designers work hard to break into the New York fashion market, Mendonca did just the opposite.

Even before completing his degree in fashion design at Ryerson University, where he received the Fur Council Award for strength and excellence, he was recruited by NY-Based Industries of New York in 1998 to work as an assistant designer for two summers.

After graduating from Ryerson, Mendonca was hired as the menswear designer for Good & Beder, a line of casual clothing in Canada, and then was offered an apprenticeship with prominent Toronto designer David Dixon, where he spent four successful seasons conceptualizing and designing for the men's and women's lines.

And after two years with Dixon, Mendonca ventured out with his own signature line, which have garnered rave reviews.

Using a bit of New York influence, Mendonca said he wanted to create a look for a woman who "lives on the Upper East Side but has the hipness of someone downtown."

Inspired by the Queen Street area, which he feels has the cool factor of New York’s meatpacking district, Mendonca achieves this dual personality by combining fabrics that are almost contradictory – like textured tweeds with buttery leather and drapey Grecian jerseys with fine knit lace -- and cutting the tops of sensible box suits down to the belly button.

And sometimes Mendonca's success comes from his mistakes.

After obsessing over one particular chocolate brown, men's trench coat that stood out for its fine corduroy lining on the inside of the collar, Mendonca sheepishly explained his reasoning for the look.

"Actually I ran out of leather the day before the show," he said. "I didn't have time to get more material, so I just used whatever was laying around to finish up the coat."

Not that anyone noticed the snafu, considering the applause he received at the close of his show.

Held in a dilapidated bar in the even more decrepit Gladstone hotel -- which brought a bit of trendy edge to the stuffy Liberty Grand venue used for the majority of Toronto fashion week shows -- there were actually whoops and cheers from the packed house and the photographers even set their cameras down to clap along.