The silk taffeta dress comes in Bright yellow, the colour of a rain slicker, or silvery green with a wash of polka dots. Belted high on the waist, it has these amazing things—what are they? wings?—that sweep to a point at each of the shoulder blades. It’s sleeveless with a lovely knee-length skirt that has twin points at the hip, recalling the shape and angles of origami. Turn sideways and—well how about that?—those hip wings connect right up to the wings at the back. Jeremy Laing spent months at work in his studio—a third-floor apartment above a Queen West storefront in Parkdale—inventing the way such angles can shape the silhouette, calibrating them, redrafting them, reining in the proportions until they were just so.

He named the silhouette Volant, “flying” in French, and it became the signature shape for the breakthrough spring 2006 collection of this avant-garde boy wonder from Peterborough (he’s only 26). Laing applied it to a blanched corrugated-silk belted coat with stiffened peaks on the upper back. Then he made it soft and floppy for a vest made of parachute silk.

It was a truly uncommon shape. But then again its creator is, and has always been, an uncommon creature. Laing is a cerebral guy with a beguiling combination of intellectual purpose and style. He has the thought processes of “great artists and great designers,” to quote Barbara Atkin, the influential and career-making fashion director at Holt Renfrew. “They all have pure mathematical minds. They approach a project as a solution to a puzzle.” She sees that in Laing.

But don’t all designers approach a collection this way? If it were only so. Many loosely sketch an idea and pass it off to a technician to deconstruct into a workable pattern. Others cling closely to simple, familiar shapes and only modify the forms they know best: a blazer, a skirt, a shift made “trend-right” so that it can compete on store shelves.

Laing, who is only just showing his fourth collection this September, is different. Using geometric principles, the best tailoring techniques and a flash of artistry, he invents his very own sartorial architecture. Seldom in this modest city does someone so young come along who’s so dedicated to following such a high-concept pursuit.

“The way I create the pattern, often things are holistically intertwined,” says Laing, “where the waist is directly related to the length of the piece, which is linked to the hem circumference. A change to one impacts all three.”

You say, cute dress. Jeremy Laing says, problem solved.