Caesy Oney is trying to change the conversation around Portland’s fashion industry.

As the home of athleisure titans like Nike, Adidas and Under Armor, Portland is often thought of in the apparel world as the Silicon Valley of tactical fleece and astronaut jogging pant innovation.

But with Last Heavy, the new line he created with Los Angeles designer Thed Jewel and creative agency Kamp Grizzly, the 33-year-old designer rejects the sparkling Space Age textiles of the big athletic brands, aiming for an aesthetic more closely related to the city’s long-standing vintage scene.

“Ours is one of the few companies of its kind based here that doesn’t have anything to do with athletics,” he says. “We made this line considering the Portland palette and style.”

Last Heavy is currently sending its inaugural Autumn-Winter 2018 line to the market. The lookbook resembles a disposable camera roll of skate rats from some small rural Oregon town: tropical “sexy shirts,” trucker jackets, heavy wool long-sleeves, roomy hoodies, art-kid graphic tees. While the clothes are likely to be snatched up by Parliament-smoking punk kids, it’s not hard to imagine many of the pieces being worn by the more fashion-conservative—”like my Montana family,” says Oney, a native of Whitefish.

In his Industrial Southeast studio, a VHS of The Fifth Element plays on an enormous new flat-screen TV. On the stereo, Chance the Rapper bumps loud enough to make conversation difficult, while Oney chain smokes cigarettes into a glass of white wine.

A primarily self-taught maker who used to sew prototype sneakers for Converse, Oney describes the Last Heavy as a “unisex uniform,” like something you’d find on a factory floor. His first official voyage into apparel came with Draught Dry Goods, a collection he launched after graduating from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2008. Once his full-time gig, the work of designing, marketing and sewing almost every piece himself eventually caught up with him, and the project is now more of a side hustle.

Draught Dry Goods is more obviously high fashion than Last Heavy, and it quickly garnered a cult following. The most recent Draught Dry Goods line pays respect to sex workers—it was inspired by Oney’s two years working at Fantasy Adult Video. The line includes a backpack that looks vaguely like a sex dungeon mask and a clear, plasticine wallet that could hold a healthy stack of a dancer’s end-of-night singles. A recent lookbook he published celebrated legendary Portland stripper Viva Las Vegas, who was celebrating her 20th anniversary dancing at Mary’s Club.

“It just aligns with my politics,” he says. “You need to support sex workers. It’s a pretty shit-on group of people.”

Last Heavy tones down the overt sexuality, but like Draught Dry Goods, it fits into an increasingly non-gendered apparel landscape. In Portland, especially, the kids aren’t clamoring to announce their gender through their business suits or pencil skirts.

“I think these wide-legged chinos are going to be styled very femininely,” Oney says. “This one feels like a Western shirt, but works in New York. We sold the shit out of that in New York.”

Last Heavy will be available nationally at Barney’s New York and Ron Herman Los Angeles, and internationally in Japan and Paris. But Oney hopes the line will still feel rooted in Portland. Part of that is making clothes that can last long enough to earn their timeless appeal, the way Pacific Northwest companies like Filson, Pendleton and Settlemier’s have. Like the majority of those brands, Last Heavy is made entirely in the United States, where Oney and Jewel can achieve a higher level of quality by monitoring the manufacturing processes themselves.

“No one wants to spend $400 on a jacket and have it fall apart and go out of style,” he says. “I expect everything in this collection to be worn for years and years.”

The one problem with living in the Southern Hemisphere (proximity to Europe aside)? The agonising wait we always endure before we can dabble in the new season fashion trends everyone else on Instagram has been wearing for months. But spring is finally here – and with it, the chance to try our hand at the envy-inducing outfits the street style set at Copenhagen Fashion Week have been pulling off with such aplomb.

In case you missed the memo: Paris has officially been dethroned as the world’s cool-girl capital, and instead of coveting French fashion, we’re craving the effortless style seen on the Danish It-girls that are blowing up our Instagram feeds. Taking our sartorial cues from the likes of Pernille Teisbaek and Amanda Norgaard, we’ve rounded up the top trends to emerge from the Nordic summer – just in time for the Australian spring.

1/ Wrap dresses and tops

Every season brings us a fresh dress trend: last year, it was all about the off-the-shoulder silhouette: this spring/summer, it’s the reign of the wrap dress. Floaty printed dresses and tops, cinched at the waist with wrap ties for a universally flattering fit, were everywhere at Copenhagen Fashion Week: buy yours from under-the-radar Danish fashion label VERO MODA.

2/ Breezy separates

One of the defining trends of the new season? Loose tailoring, given a decidedly un-business-like twist by way of look-at-me brights and pastel hues. From breezy silk two-pieces in all the colours of the rainbow (think everything from vivid green to peach to purple), to block-colour dresses and billowing balloon sleeves, coordinating separates were just as popular as dresses at Europe’s most recent fashion weeks.

3/ Check mate

Looking for something that’s a little more office apropos? Checked suiting is everywhere right now, from chic check blazers (we love this check blazer with a slight ‘80s edge by VERO MODA) pared back with boyfriend jeans for weekends and tailored black pants (or even matching check trousers) for work. You can take embrace the check trend beyond the blazer and incorporate it into summery outfits too – try Danish brand Cecilie Copenhagen for sweet embroidered check dresses and separates, or Swedish label Anine Bing.

4/ Whimsical florals

Florals, for spring? The phrase has become almost as over-used as the trend itself, but trust us: neither are going anywhere. Delicate florals, printed onto bold colour, are being seen predominantly on statement dresses and skirts to take you from early spring.

5/ Denim done differently

From the ubiquitous cropped boyfriend jean to denim culottes and high-waisted shorts, denim is essential to anchor the season’s floaty florals and silk separates. But it can also be worn all on its own: take the VERO MODA denim dress (available November), a versatile piece vital to any woman’s spring/summer wardrobe, or the MSGM denim trench.

Five years ago, Emma Stone was asked if she’d use a two-week break in the middle of shooting The Amazing Spider-Man 2 to play a role in Birdman. She accepted, but with misgivings.

“I wanted to [do it] very badly but was nervous about what that would be [like],” she told an audience at the Telluride Film Festival on Saturday, shortly before a screening of her new movie, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite. “My nerves were confirmed because it was so hard and so technical and challenging and I felt like I was going crazy.”

One night, she said, “My character doesn’t smoke, but they gave me these herbal cigarettes, and I had reached a breaking point and I went to the dressing room for my lunch break at midnight and chain-smoked these fake herbal cigarettes that give you nothing except for a sore throat. Then we went out to do the scene and I was spitting angry with myself — and Alejandro [Inarritu] just looked at me like, ‘There it is!’ I was like, ‘OK!’ ”

The revelation that she could use her own anger, she said, “changed something for me, not to be afraid to let parts of myself break open, in a way that I was afraid [before]. I was 24. I’m 29 and still learning. Since that [movie] I have found joy and challenge in such a new way. All I ever want to do now is reach that breaking-point, because the other side of it is so incredible.”

Stone, who was presented with one of the festival’s Silver Medallion Awards, said her role in The Favourite had its own challenges — perhaps not with any such breaking points, but being the only American actor among a British cast, and coping with being strapped into a corset.

“It’s 1705, which was about 300 years before any period I had ever done. It was pretty daunting on a few levels — having to be British and not stick out like a sore thumb; and [b] to breathe!” she said to laughter. “After about a month, my organs shifted and I realized my whole body-shape had changed — and not for the better. But it all goes back. And that’s the great thing about human bodies!”

The movie tells the fictionalized story of England’s Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and her favorite courtier, Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), whose relationship is interrupted by the arrival of an ambitious newcomer in court, Abigail Masham, a servant played by Stone, who becomes the queen’s new favorite. Much of the film, said Stone, was lit with natural light, including night scenes illuminated by “trays of candles.”

During the shoot, Stone kept a low profile, as is her wont. She added that she avoids social media at all costs. Even after an Oscar win, she said: “I’m essentially a bundle of nerves that are outside my body a lot of the time. Doing interviews [is] insane to me because any opinion you have can be reverberated back – that scares the shit out of me. Two a.m. tweeting, that’s not for me. But I respect anyone who doesn’t [have] this level of self-doubt.”

The Venice Film Festival took flight yesterday with two high-profile pictures destined for year-end awards competition.

“The Favourite” is a glam, sexually outrageous English period piece about warring women (Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz) seeking power and position from an often infantile and seriously ill Queen Anne (Olivia Colman).

“Roma” jumps back to 1970 as Mexico’s Oscar-winning Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”) replays his childhood with a new understanding of the maid who was like a foster mother.

“Favourite,” said director Yorgis Lanthimos (“The Lobster”), “is an interesting story in its own right and was the opportunity to create three very complex, complicated female characters. It’s something you rarely see on film and it was what immediately drew me to explore this story.”

Asked about her scheming character, a woman of lost privilege climbing up from the dung heap, a buoyant Stone, 29, said, “I loved every element of getting to play her. The challenges included being the only American in the (British) cast. That was a little bit daunting in terms of making sure the accent made sense. And the corsets were a challenge just because you can’t breathe all day.”

Colman (“The Night Manager”) will now play two queens consecutively — she’s Queen Elizabeth in seasons three and four of Netflix’s “The Crown.”

“They’re not very similar — that’s good. I can’t compare the two queens. I don’t think,” she added slyly, “Queen Elizabeth learned anything from Queen Anne.”

How was Alfonso Cuaron able to make “Roma” in black and white, big screen 65 millimeter, with 110 shooting days, casting two indigenous Mexican women who had never acted as his stars, and film with a semi-spontaneous approach that meant few ever saw a complete script? And with a Spanish-language picture?

Netflix.

“We know full well a Spanish film in black and white that’s a drama will have difficulty to find space and room to be shown. That’s why it’s important to have Netflix because they allowed me to make this film this way, the filmmaker explained, adding that “Roma” will be in theaters as well as available for streaming.

“When,” he concluded with a question, “was the last time you saw a (Ingmar) Bergman or (Michelangelo) Antoniono film in a theater? Or at home?

“There’s not a clash between formats but finding something that works.”