Visit one of Rosedale’s lunch capitals, café-pâtisserie Patachou, say, for a mid-week rendezvous, and chances are you’ll behold a roomful of ladies grazing on salades niçoises, discussing debacles with their contractors and why they love Nevis more than St. Barts, and wearing Toronto label Tevrow & Chase. Designer Paul Sinclaire’s collections have a simplicity and feminine polish destined for light luncheons or smart cocktails at the club. Since he moved to Toronto from Paris eight years ago and launched T&C five years later, Sinclaire has swiftly made his way into the city’s rarefied Clicquot-and-cashmere circles, casting himself as the designer laureate of the local socialite. He lavishes his covey of devotees with the royal treatment, to the point of naming many of his clothes after them—a neat way to maintain ties.

You can see why discerning jet-setters might like having him around. Talking with him is like reading an issue of Paris Match, with its vivid spotlight on the fashionable and flush. Sinclaire adorns conversations with the (first) names of barons, countesses, fashion designers and editors, embroidering them through his sentences like he might French lace on a little black dress. When we meet at his downtown showroom, he talks about Kate (Moss), Anna (Wintour), Grace (Mirabella), Ralph (Lauren), Vera (Wang), Jasper (Conran) and Dries (Van Noten). Born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, he’s earned his place in the diamond-crusted beau monde, working as a fashion editor at a triumvirate of Vogues: American, Italian and L’Uomo. He was also creative director at House & Garden and a consultant for Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino and Van Noten.

He met Club Monaco founder Joseph Mimran over dinner at New York’s Café Luxembourg in 1994, and they instantly hit it off. Six years later, Sinclaire had moved to Toronto, where he and his partner, Eric Berthold, now a senior VP at Indigo, eventually bought a splendid pile in Forest Hill. Sinclaire was creative director of CM until 2002, when Mimran proposed they work together on another project: the relaunch of Holt Renfrew’s private label. And by 2005, they’d launched Tevrow & Chase (Mimran is T&C’s chairman). Sinclaire’s goal is to create clothes for what he describes as “the completely style-driven woman who has a modern simplicity about her.”

His designs are as subdued as he is vivid. All of T&C’s collections have a soigné, refined femininity. “They’re always about the good life,” he explains, adding that spring 2008’s line was inspired by such coastal getaways as Palm Beach and Malibu. “It’s a modern take on Babe Paley. Perfect for a little lunch!” Pairing a white pleated skirt with a black-and-white-striped viscose tank, he declares, “Perfect for a game of tennis, right?”

With its elegant silhouettes and elitist allure, T&C aspires to share a certain je ne sais quoi with Chanel. The way Coco Chanel revolutionized fashion, eschewing corseted shapes in favour of lean lines, wooing mondaines with her tidy classicism, Sinclaire seduces with snobbish simplicity, dismissing fussier fashions as déclassé.

His clothing is also heavily inspired by the Toronto women he loves—heiresses, charity board members, air kissers, fundraisers, gala committee members, party throwers and canapé nibblers—and they love him right back. “I always leave with huge shopping bags of stuff,” says one of Sinclaire’s muses, socialite Sara Handreke. “I live in Tevrow & Chase. And he’ll custom design anything for you. I’ll say, ‘I love this. It would be great in royal blue,’ and he says, ‘You’ll have it!’ He’s never said no. He’s so cute!”