What would you do if a doctor told you your seven-year old child was obese? Would you shrug it off, hoping your kid would eventually just grow out of the problem, and that the excess weight would somehow magically disappear? Or would you take charge of the situation, enforce a strict diet, and mercilessly police your child’s food intake …
Survivors Senior Prom
Prom season has wound down for the high school hordes, but for one local group of spirited souls who’ve been to hell and back, the party’s just gearing up. Excitement is mounting for approximately 400 of Toronto’s Holocaust survivors this week, as they plan their wardrobes and practice their dance steps for the 4th annual Senior Prom, to be held …
ROM’s BIG Exhibit
The allure of fashion exhibits has been making big news at museums around the world, so it’s no wonder that our own Royal Ontario Museum wants to get in on the action, in a big way. Last year, the ROM boldly commissioned a magnificent haute couture creation from Dior—a dramatic coat-dress from John Galliano’s final couture collection for the house, …
Roger Vivier
The question of form over function frequently inspires lively dialogue, especially in the shoe department, where comfort can come a distant second to creativity, and we splurge on that “to-die-for” footwear knowing full well it’ll kill our feet. But that’s fashion for you—an enigmatic world fuelled by fantasies and driven by dreams, where the pursuit of beauty keeps us on …
New York Fashion Week – Spring / Summer 2012
NEW YORK It used to be said in style circles that less was more. But that’s a dying notion these days. With so many labels, so much fashion information, and all the incessant celebrity style hype, it seems that we all can’t get enough of the scene and all it’s material trappings. And while some insiders are saying that the …
NY Fall Winter 2011
NEW YORK Minutes before show time at the big Lincoln Centre tent, a posse of celebrities, including Bette Midler, Anjelica Huston, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas, and Debra Messing, emerge from Michael Kors’ backstage, and the throngs of photographers dutifully snap away. As she’s whisked to her front row seat, Midler sings her friend praises. “These aren’t just clothes that …
Missing Beau
I’m not sure what I’m already missing the most. Lying in bed this morning, in the still of the early dawn, I longed for his snoring—the soft and steady, raspy rhythm of his breathing as he slept, comforting me in the quiet of my house, reminding me I wasn’t alone—would never be alone—as long as I had my Beau beside …
Izzy Camilleri
There’s lots of talk about the democratization of fashion these days. But making great style accessible to everyone usually has more to do with affordable price points than anything else. And while more and more designers are warming up to the idea of dressing all body types, the furthest they consider venturing is into the plus size realm. That’s why …
IMG Fashion Week Takeover
Fashion may not make the world go round, but when a fashion story makes front-page news, it makes my personal planet spin a little faster. Last week’s announcement that international management giant IMG had bought Toronto’s ‘World Master Card Fashion Week’ was boldly announced on page one of The Star, and it was a business writer that had the privilege …
Home for Christmas
Like a kid with a chocolate advent calendar, I’m counting the days. December has always been filled with anticipation for me, but this time it’s different. Except for my shaggy dog and sweet cat, I’ve been rambling around this big old house on my own for months now, seeing the world through a wobbly new lens. It’s not one I’m …
High School Hair
The great American satirist Fran Liebowitz once told me that the trouble with the personal style of some people is that they got locked into the images they had of themselves in high school, and never moved beyond them. She said this was most evident in the way people wear their hair. You may have looked good with Farah Fawcett …
Jean Paul Gaultier
I’ve had the joy of meeting countless designers these past 25 years, but the most impishly charming has to be Jean Paul Gaultier, the one-time “enfant terrible” of fashion. The genius French couturier, who put men in skirts, Madonna in conical bras and Dita Von Teese in corsets, presented his first ready-to-wear collection back in 1976. Today, Gaultier remains wonderfully …
Filming on The Rock!
My life is filled with fantasies, and every so often I pinch myself over the sheer poetry of what comes to pass—how the universe never fails to send me what I need to get me through the night. Losing my beloved dog earlier this month had put me in an emotional place, one in which I’ve been feeling sad, vulnerable, …
Fashionable Dialogue!
Like the William Blake poem about being able “to see the world in a grain of sand”, I always maintain that the microcosmic fashion world offers a great reflection of life’s bigger picture. So there I was, on a photo shoot in Montreal for my fall EDIT look book, being torn by that ageless head/heart dilemma of form over function. …
Fashion Cares
It’s long been said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Such was the case with Toronto’s fashion community in those early days of the AIDS epidemic, when friends and brothers and lovers succumbed to the dreaded disease on a horrifyingly regular basis. We looked into the frightened eyes and held the emaciated hands of so many we loved. …
Daphne Guinness
“She didn’t design any of these clothes, dear. She just wears them.” I had to chuckle when I overheard that succinct explanation coming from a woman who was taking her husband through the treasure trove of sartorial artifacts on display at The Museum at FIT in New York. The gentleman, clearly bedazzled by the range of spectacular outfits, was immediately …
Crazy Rich Asians
Plunging headlong into summer usually demands some juicy reading material. If you’re the sort who loves being swept away by jet set stories of the fabulous life, complete with larger-than-life characters, fantastic fashion and plenty of inter-generational strife, Kevin Kwan’s satirical “Crazy Rich Asians” might deliver for you. It’s packed with the kind of outrageous, over-the-top imagery and that’s bound …
Couture Spring 2011
PARIS Inside a courtyard off Place Vendome, fashion fans have gathered, compact cameras and cell phones in hand, poised to capture every last bit of the inevitable glamour. Giorgio Armani’s guests have started to arrive for the red carpet master’s spring couture offering, and there’s bound to be at least a couple of major celebrities on his list. The fans …
Stephan Caras and Matthew Gallagher
With eclecticism the operative word in fashion today, Toronto’s World Master Card Fashion Week promises to be right on trend. Some 27 disparate labels will be vying for the attention of media and buyers, each designer eager to make an indelible mark on the burgeoning Canadian fashion landscape. And while some of this country’s brightest fashion lights may not be …
Boot Camp
Despite the glamour inherent in the fashion world, those of us who work in its trenches are aware of the arena’s gritty underbelly: It’s a tough-as-nails business that sees countless beautiful young people clamour to climb on board its beastly bandwagon, hoping for a quick ride to fame and fortune. Most don’t get very far. But every once in a …
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