Preface

I know what it is like to be brought up with unconditional love. In my life, that came from my grandmother.

-André Leon Talley

1555 Dundas Street West, Mississauga, Ontario

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in a tailor shop. My parents were middle class and worked full time, so I spent many evenings after school with my Nonna (Italian for "grandmother") and Bunka (not Italian for anything, but a name we all affectionately adopted after my younger cousin couldn't pronounce "Grandpa").

My grandparents' tailor shop was in the basement of a two-story stucco building on Dundas Street West, just outside Toronto (Figure I.1). They purchased the property in the 1970s, almost two decades before I was born. The building was originally a bank, but they converted it into their small business and built an apartment on top.

Bunka was a tailor, and Nonna was a seamstress. Nonna immigrated to Canada from Italy after World War II, and my grandpa was born in a small northern Ontario town called Sioux Lookout. They met at the Tip Top Tailor Building in Toronto's fashion district in the 1950s when the city was a busy manufacturing hub. Tip Top Tailors still stands today, but the building is now luxury lofts-a sign of the city's gentrification over the years.

Figure I.1 Frank Cosco's at 1555 Dundas Street West-my grandparents' store and home.Painting by Paul Mack.

My grandfather worked for Simpsons' flagship department store at Queen and Young, managing their made-to-measure department. Nonna worked from home making dresses for wealthier neighbors, until they'd saved enough money to open their store. My grandfather's specialty was men's suits, and he was known as a master fitter. At Simpsons, he made suits for the Toronto Maple Leafs. After opening his shop, his claim to fame was that he made hockey personality Don Cherry's suits. Mr. Cherry was known for his loud personality and even louder taste in patterns. He'd visit the tailor shop with yards of fabric he'd picked out at the upholstery store or Fabricland and commission my grandparents to create custom suits to wear on Coach's Corner during Hockey Night in Canada. Everyone would see Don on TV and talk about his suits.

The tailor shop had a large green table for cutting patterns in the middle of the room. At each end of the table were large cardboard boxes for collecting fabric scraps. My cousin and I would sift through the leftover fabric and make clothes for our Barbies and stuffed animals. Around the perimeter of the tailor shop were four sewing machines and two industrial irons. All day long, the mechanical whirring of the sewing machines and the hissing of the irons created a familiar rhythm that became the soundtrack of my childhood.

Adjacent to the tailor shop was an office where my aunts worked. One had her own business, and the other handled the accounting and paperwork for the family business. Two computers could connect to the internet if you knew exactly how to work the modem and endure the sound of dial-up. I mostly used them to play with Microsoft Paint, an early computer program for making digital drawings.

The retail part of the business was on the main floor of the building. The shop had two display windows that faced the street, which my grandfather would merchandise with the latest men's fashions. Inside the store, there were five mannequins dressed in different suiting styles. They all had brown hair and features that were so lifelike they gave me nightmares. Several bookcases lined the store's perimeter, their shelves filled with thick books that contained swatches of fabric samples. There were three changing rooms with gray fabric walls for customers, and an Interac machine for accepting debit and credit card payments.

A side door led out of the store toward a garage and the upstairs entrance to my grandparents' self-contained apartment. The twenty-second walk from the store to their apartment was the only work-life separation they knew. The apartment had high ceilings, an open-concept kitchen, and a living room perfect for hosting large family gatherings. I fondly remember Christmases, Thanksgivings, and July BBQs playing card games and Bingo with cousins, aunts and uncles, and second cousins twice removed. Everyone was welcome in Nonna and Bunka's house.

It was here at 1555 Dundas Street West where I first came to understand the world of fashion: the scrappy underworld of the tailor shop, the polished front of the store, and a life built on top of that.

My father worked for the family business until 1990, when he got a job at Harry Rosen, a Canadian luxury men's retailer where he'd work for the next thirty years. He carved out a position for himself as the National Director of Tailored Clothing, where he managed the tailor shops and implemented custom suiting into the business.

My mom sold advertising for print media, first for the local newspaper Abbey Oaks News, and later for a glossy publication called West of the City Magazine, which Metroland Media owned. Before working in media, my mom worked for Lipton's, another well-known Canadian fashion retailer for women. I still have one of her navy suit jackets from Lipton's. It has oversized gold hardware and shoulder pads, a signature of the late 1980s and early 1990s. My parents were-and still are to this day-the most stylish people I know.

You might think that a girl raised in a family like mine was destined to work in fashion, but that was never my plan. Growing up, I cared less about fashion and more about horses and books. I spent weekends and summers at an equestrian horse farm on Oakville's outskirts, teaching horseback riding and running the stable's summer camp program.

After receiving the English award at my high school graduation, I studied English literature at York University. I took several elective writing courses that I enjoyed so much that by my third year I applied-and was accepted-for an honors program in English and professional writing. At that moment, I knew I didn't just want to read stories-I also wanted to write them.

I earned my master's degree in English literature from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). In true Canadian fashion, I wrote my thesis on Margaret Atwood. Specifically, I examined the metaphor of hunger in her seminal novel The Edible Woman.

When I graduated from my master's program, I was trying to work in the world of ideas. I knew I wanted to write but wasn't sure what to write about. I spent countless hours attending cultural events in the city-from gallery previews to live music performances-trying to find my entry point into what was becoming a very noisy conversation. It was the 2010s, and everything about the media industry was getting confusing. Newspapers I'd dreamed of writing for were shuttering, and influencer culture was on the rise. I'd moved away from home to live with one of my best friends in Toronto.

While trying to find my path, I earned a living copywriting, designing websites, and helping brands launch on social media. By this time hotels, restaurants, and other companies were beginning to recognize the importance of having a Facebook page and a Twitter presence. (Instagram had just launched, and many companies weren't sure of how to use it yet.)

In the spring of 2014, I was working on a freelance copywriting assignment for a media company called Newsrooms when I stumbled upon a story that would lead to my first big break as a journalist and change my career trajectory forever.

A Cyborg Comes to Town

I was researching the attendees of the Mesh Conference, an upcoming tech and media event, when I first learned about a self-identified cyborg who was coming to Toronto.

Neil Harbisson is an artist and the founder of the Cyborg Institute in Barcelona, an organization that helps people become transhuman. Harbisson is a self-identified cyborg. An antenna is osseointegrated into his head (meaning it's attached to the bone) so that he can hear color. You read that right-so he can hear color.

Every color gives off a sound frequency, and Neil's antenna picks up that frequency and delivers this information to him via bone conduction. The antenna is permanent. He doesn't remove it to shower or sleep, and he appears with it in his passport.

QR Code 2 Scan to see a picture of Neil Harbisson, the self-identified cyborg I interviewed for The Globe and Mail.

Now, you may be thinking, why would anyone want an antenna attached to their skull? Well, it's interesting, considering that Neil was born with a rare visual condition called achromatopsia-total color blindness. He sees everything in grayscale. Imagine being an artist but not being able to see color!

I didn't know all this about Neil then, but I would eventually learn this and much more when I wrote my first national story about him for The Globe and Mail. I emailed the technology editor my pitch with the subject line "A cyborg is coming to town." With a subject line like that, I knew he would have to open the email. Within minutes, he got back to me to greenlight the story. It would be my first article for a major news organization.

I interviewed Neil over Zoom before his appearance in Toronto to learn more about his story. I discovered...