S / Style & Fashion by Mamone & Partners

style & fashion Spring/Summer 2012

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/ CONTRIBUTORS

YALE BRESLIN is a freelance fashion and cultural writer who honed his skills in his hometown of Toronto and currently resides in New York. He is the founder and creative director of The Malcolm, a website created to promote emerging talent in the realms of fashion, photography, travel and architecture. The former digital director of V Magazine and VMAN, Breslin has contributed to such internationally recognized media outlets as The New York Times, Wonderland, Man About Town, Paper magazine, ELLE.com and StyleCaster. He is currently participating in Jay Z’s latest media endeavour, Life+Times, and produces digital content for Barneys and Neiman Marcus. HOLLY BRUBACH has served as a journalist and editor on the staffs of The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vogue. She has written extensively for ﬁlm and television, including Balanchine, a two-hour Emmywinning documentary on

the choreographer’s life and work. She is the author of three books: Choura, The Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova; Girlfriend; and A Dedicated Follower of Fashion, a collection of her essays. Specializing in design, art, architecture, music and sports, she continues to write for the Times, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and other publications. She is currently working on two films and a book. Romanian-born photographer MALINA CORPADEAN is one of Canada’s preeminent fashion photographers. Her global appreciation for style and trends, fueled by her constant travelling, is matched only by her keen fashion sensibility. Her finely-tuned aesthetic is also influenced by her academic background and ongoing fascination with art history. She is the creative eye behind campaigns for Jacob Lingerie, Marcelle Skincare and Bloomingdale’s, and her editorial work is regularly published in ELLE Canada, Fashion and Nylon. A New Yorker diverted to Toronto for more than 15 memorable years, JOAN HARTING has tracked style and lifestyle trends as editor-in-chief for Fashion magazine and as senior editor at W, Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE. Now re-based in New York City, she is a freelance writer and editor for several Canadian and U.S. publications. The Toronto Star’s Style Czar, KAREN VON HAHN is one of the country’s preeminent voices on matters of style and lifestyle. A contributing style editor at More Canada, she is also a frequent contributor to such publications as House & Home, Fashion and En Route. As host and producer of the groundbreaking television program The Goods for the Life network, she introduced a whole new way of looking at social trends. A regular commentator on social and lifestyle trends for television and radio, Karen is also the author of The Hip Guide to Toronto.

PUBLISHER Geoffrey Dawe PUBLISHING PARTNER Gerry Mamone EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Christopher Loudon CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ric Little EXECUTIVE PRODUCER & CREATIVE MANAGING DIRECTOR Asha Hodura & newborn Baby Wickens ART DIRECTOR Panos Katsigiannis ASSOCIATE PRODUCER/EDITOR Tammy Leung ASSISTANT EDITOR Christopher Metler FACT CHECKER Andrea Emard CONTRIBUTORS Francisco Alvarez, Glen Baxter, Yale Breslin, Bonnie Brooks, Holly Brubach, Malina Corpadean, Leanne Delap, Joan Harting, Elio Iannacci, Lisa Kisber, Kendon Polak, Sabrina Shim, Karen von Hahn ADVERTISING CONTACTS GD&CO PUBLICATION DIRECTOR Geoffrey Dawe - 416.571.3703, geoffreydawe@gmail.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER, VICE PRESIDENT SALES Donna Murphy - 416.519.8919, murrcomm@gmail.com VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING Heidi Ferris NATIONAL ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Sandy Peltier - 416.509.7963 NEW YORK ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Nicola Clayton - 212.619.6009 MONTRÉAL ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Sharon Dawe - 514.961.2561 PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Maria Musikka 416.878.5373, mariamusikka@gmail.com DIGITAL PRE-PRESS Clarity S Style & Fashion Magazine is published by S Style & Fashion Inc. (SSFI), and is printed and distributed by The Star Media Group. It is circulated via newsstand, select newspaper subscribers and retail partners. No part of S Style & Fashion magazine may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written consent from SSFI. The views expressed by the contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher, editor or staff. S Style & Fashion Magazine does not take any responsibility for any unsolicited manuscripts or photography. For more information, contact SSFI at Mamone & Partners, 400 Eastern Avenue, Suite 201, Toronto, Ontario, M4M 1B9 Canada. 416.466.2522. Printed in Canada.

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Clockwise from top left: Glen Baxter photograph by Chris Nicholls. Joan Harting illustration by Min Gao. Holly Brubach’s A Dedicated Follower Of Fashion image courtesy of Phaidon Press. Yale Breslin photograph by Assaf Friedman.

Montrealborn, Torontobased GLEN BAXTER is the host of CTV’s In Fashion, covering the worlds of fashion, contemporary architecture, interior design and photography. A photographer in his own right, Baxter has travelled extensively with his camera over the last 20 years, traversing more than 50 countries, and has produced a series of exhibitions sponsored by Hugo Boss in support of Right To Play, Canada’s fastest-growing international humanitarian organization. A former CANFAR Junior Committee member, Baxter is currently a Right To Play Board of Champions member and the founder of the annual Right To Play Party.

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/ CONTENTS

style & fashion SPRING/SUMMER 2012

du monde / 39 Scouring world capitals for trendsetting news JEWEL OF THE EAST / 48 Bonnie Brooks’ jet-setting guide to Hong Kong WHY WE LOVE: JORN WEISBRODT / 50 Meet Luminato’s dashing new artistic director

CLOSET CASES / 52 Getting the inside story on celebrity vestiaries

SUDDENLY THIS SUMMER / 56 Cool essentials for soaring temperatures

110

SOLE & INSPIRATION / 66 The vibrant brilliance of Christian Louboutin NEW YORK STATE OF MIND / 70 Clockwise from top left: Image ©Getty Images. Photograph by Malina Corpadean. George Yabu and Glen Pushelberg image by Evan Dion.

Plotting Joe Mimran’s Manhattan invasion

STAYING POWER / 74 The enduring élan of ﬁve fashion icons FRESH AS A DAISY / 80 Carey Mulligan: the new Julie Christie LE JAZZ AGE HAUTE / 84 Spring 2012 collections adopt a 1920s vibe

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT / 90 Sizzling looks for steamy summer evenings

FACING BEAUTY / 100 Must-have mainstays for a stunning summer SIMPLY ADORES / 104 Indulgent luxuries worth splurging on FLIES ON THE WALL / 106 The shock and awe of BritArt’s Damien Hirst PERSONAL SPACE / 110 George Yabu & Glenn Pushelberg in New York ENDURING COOL / 114 Charles and Ray Eames’ timeless aesthetic SHIFTING LUXURY INTO HIGH GEAR / 118 Abu Dhabi’s sensational Yas Viceroy Hotel

BABS SIMPSON, BON VIVEUR / 122 The singular verve of a fashion legend

ON THE COVER: Photography: Malina Corpadean for Judy Inc & 2M2 Styling: Cary Tauben for Folio & Plutino Styling Assistant: Maxine Iannuccelli Hair and make-up: Nicolas Blanchet for Folio Model: Catherine for Folio Digital support: Pipeline Productions Retouching: Nicolas Blanchet On Catherine: dress and leather jacket, Prada (at Holt Renfrew); vintage necklace, Cavalli (at Abosluxe.com); diamond and gold ring, Tiffany & Co. Beauty Notes: Maybelline Eye Studio Color Tattoo 24HR Cream Gel Shadow in Fierce and Tangy 10 and Tenacious Teal 40, One by One Volum’ Express Washable Mascara in Very Black, Super Stay 14HR Lipstick in Ultimate Blush

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Visit us in store today to view the spring 2012 collections.

V I S I T O U R S TO R E S O R H O LT R E N F R E W.C O M

/ LETTER

The Spirit of Maggie Prescott Cinephiles will tell you that Hollywood has served up two iconic fashion magazine editors. These days, the better known is Miranda Priestly, draconian editrix of Runway, played with delectable venom by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. But, nearly a half-century before Miranda began barking orders at Anne Hathaway’s plucky Andy Sachs, there was Maggie Prescott, played with singular vivacity by the inimitable Kay Thompson in Funny Face. Though Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn are the film’s abovethe-title stars, Thompson steals the show with campy élan as the frenetic majordomo of Quality magazine. Like every passionate editor, Maggie’s standards are impeccably high. “A magazine must,” she crows, “have blood, and brains and pizzazz!” (Actually, Thompson says “bazazz,” an effervescent catchword she concocted and tossed around liberally throughout her kaleidoscopic career, and even turned into a song). Our experienced team published the successful and respected Fashion Television Magazine. We’re now proudly expanding our scope to bring you S. As we navigated the transformation, we took Maggie at her word. Our goal was to better acknowledge how informed and cosmopolitan you, our reader, truly is, recognizing that, while your home base may be in Canada, the whole world is your playground. Fashion and beauty are, of course, essential to the mix. In addition to the hottest summer looks and trends, we’re profiling the red-soled magnificence of Christian Louboutin and examining the enduring legacies of industry lions Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Karl Lagerfeld and Roberto Cavalli. Plus, we’re thrilled to have a giant of international fashion journalism, Holly Brubach, anchoring each issue with an up-close and personal view of a fashion icon. But equally vital, we believe, are stories that address (and assess) style in broader terms—from the brilliant avant-gardism of British artist Damien Hirst and groundbreaking design sensibility of Charles and Ray Eames, to the closet-peeking verve of The Coveteur and magical allure of skyrocketing star Carey Mulligan, in anticipation of her portrayal of Daisy to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay in The Great Gatsby. To complete the picture, we’re also taking a look at how the Gatsby influence is already emerging on runways around the globe, even though the film’s opening is still eight months away. Poster for Eames: The Architect and The Painter. Carey Mulligan: ©Getty Images.

In short, lots of brains… and plenty of bazazz. See you in September.

Christopher Loudon, Editorial Director

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

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/ du monde:

Clockwise from top left: Shard of Class image by Sellar Property Group. S On The Street, Claudia image by Lee Oliveira. This Side of Lama image by Paul Winch-Furness. Shakespeare’s Globe image by Marilena Stafylidou.

LONDON BULGARI SILVER London has no shortage of luxe new hotels but given that restorations and conversions are the norm, any new purpose-built boutique bolthole is guaranteed to make waves. The 85-room Bulgari London on Knightsbridge, opening in May, boasts a 25-metre pool and a striking aesthetic by fashionable Milano architect Antonio Citterio (Flos, Vitra, B&B Italia). In salute to Bulgari’s origins as a silversmith, solid silver chandeliers illuminate the ballroom, with marble and woven-to-order Italian silk complementing the underlying silver theme. (bulgarihotels.com)

SHARD OF CLASS

The triumphant rise of the European Union’s tallest skyscraper at London Bridge has been edging its way into the London psyche for two years, as commuters have watched with amusement the triangular, glinting shard of glass shoot skyward. Said to be inspired by the spires of London’s old churches, architect Renzo Piano’s crystalline tower, opening in May, will house the ﬁve-star Shangri-La hotel, residential apartments, offices and an open-air observation deck (opening in 2013) on the 72nd ﬂoor. (the-shard.com)

on the

SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE All of London is a stage this year (just as we like it) and at the heart of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad is the World Shakespeare Festival, featuring 70 productions from around the globe. The jewel in the crown is the Globe to Globe series, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s massive, unprecedented commissioning of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays by 37 international companies in 37 languages at Shakespeare’s Globe in Bankside. The six-week event begins April 21. (worldshakespearefestival.org.uk)

STREET

Claudia, seen at

Somerset House

THIS SIDE OF LIMA

Ceviche’s Martin Morales styleissue.ca

The humble spud has remained probably the only Peruvian inﬂuence on the London restaurant scene for centuries – until recently. London’s Peruvian gastronomic trend takes two steps forward with the highly anticipated opening of Ceviche in Soho, whose pop-up preview last year was a screaming success, and Lima London in Fitzrovia, from top Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez. Citrus-chili seafood, anticuchos and, of course, Pisco Sours ignite London’s burgeoning Andean fever. (cevicheuk.com) 39

BY YALE BRESLIN

/ du monde:

NEW YORK on the

STREET

Chen Ran, snapped on W 65th St.

Scott Morrison, who founded Paper Denim and Cloth and Earnest Sewn, is no stranger to raw denim. His new endeavor, 3x1 (which borrows its name from 3x1 Right Hand Twill denim construction), is a massive 4,000 square-foot space in South SoHo where you can buy off the rack, customize a pair of limited edition jeans or work directly with Morrison to create personalized blues. (3x1.us)

CATCH OF THE DAY Catch, the latest culinary addition to the Meatpacking District, focuses on seafood specialties prepared by Top Chef victor Hung Huynh, whose New American approach is infused with Mediterranean and Asian touches. Start with the raw bar and ﬁnish with the wasabi-rubbed octopus carpaccio. 9th Avenue at 13th Street. (catchnewyorkcity.com)

INTIME,

INDOCHINESTYLE On what was the Great Jones Street site of a down-at-the-heels Cajun joint, the masterminds behind Indochine have crafted the intimately romantic Acme. Chef Mads Refslund’s New Nordic menu includes mouthwatering dishes like chicken and egg and steak with charred onions. Brace yourself, though, for the gin and basil cocktail. 212-203-2121 for reservations. (acmenyc.com)

YOGA VIDA

This no-nonsense University Place studio (one of Manhattan’s two Yoga Vida locations) has everything you need for a sweat-drenched class: rental mats and drop-in rates that start at just $12, set to the pace of Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die. Don’t be surprised if A-listers like Katie Holmes are busting out their best downward dog beside you in yoga Guru Kyle Miller’s class. (yogavida.com)

INSIDE STORIES Photographer Michael Mundy’s new website, An Afternoon With, documents, quite simply, people in their spaces, invading the habitats of notable folk like GQ’s Sean Hotchkiss and set designer Mark Chandler. Should the man in your life need a household update, just direct him here. (anafternoonwith.com) S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Clockwise from top left: Classic Blues image courtesy of 3x1, photographer Ian Allen. S On The Street, Chen Ran image by Lee Oliveira. Intime, Indochine-style image by Joe Schildhorn of BFA. Inside Stories image courtesy of An Afternoon With, Michael Mundy. Yoga Vida image by Dominic Neitz. Catch of the Day image by Gary Landsman.

CLASSIC BLUES

VISIT YOUTUBE.COM/MAYBELLINENYCANADA FOR THE LATEST MAKEUP TRENDS, HOTTEST HOW-TO’S, RUNWAY SHOWS AND MORE

BY SABRINA SHIM

/ du monde:

STOCKHOLM GOURMET MINIMALISM

MADE FOR WALKING

OFFBEAT STORY New to the upmarket Östermalm neighbourhood, Story Hotel is an eclectic, charismatic and fun addition to the Stockholm scene, with a dozen different types of rooms, a stunning restaurant and a curated shop filled with quirky labels. A big hit with locals, too: the bar boasts Norman Cherner chairs, concrete walls and magniﬁcent cocktails, and the “backyard” patio gets positively frenetic in summer – when the city gets up to 20 hours of daylight. (storyhotels.com)

FROM THE DARK SIDE Thanks to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stockholm’s darker side has ﬁnally been revealed to the world. And with it comes the work of up-and-coming jewellery designer Maria Nilsdotter. Bats, spiders, ravens and feathers feature heavily across her range of stunningly beautiful yet delicate pieces (mainly in blackened silver or bronze), each completely handmade. (marianilsdotter.com)

BLK DNM NORTHERN SCENTS The brainchild of Swedish-born, IndianCanadian Ben Gorham, Byredo is a fragrance house that has quickly achieved cult status since its 2006 launch. Found at Barneys, Liberty, Colette and now Holt Renfrew, the perfumes and home fragrances—Baudelaire, Pulp and Ambre Japonais, to name a few—are closely linked to Gorham’s personal memories, usually from his travels. The uncomplicated blends and understated packaging really speak to devotees of the brand. Collaborations with high-fashion creative dynamos M/M (Paris) and the magazine Fantastic Man haven’t hurt either. (byredo.com) 42

After he left his eponymous label in 2007, Johan Lindeberg went on to support Justin Timberlake at William Rast. But it’s the Swede’s current project BLK DNM that is quietly taking the fashion world by storm. Though the new label, with a core in denim and a season-less concept, is inspired by New York City, it’s also very much rooted in Stockholm. For Lindeberg, it’s about providing the best wardrobe staples for both sexes. The cuts are superb, the materials top-notch and the prices never astronomical. Standout item for women: Leather Jacket 1 – a perfectly cropped and buttery soft leather motorcycle jacket. (us.blkdnm.com)

on the

STREET

Beata, in Stortorget

(The Great Square)

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Clockwise from top left: Gourmet Minimalism Gastrologik image by Fredrik Petersson/Ohmy.nu. Off beat Story image courtesy of Story Hotel. S On The Street, Beata image by Daniel Troyse / stockholm-streetstyle.com. BLK DNM image courtesy of BLK DNM. Northern Scents image courtesy of Byredo. From the Dark Side image courtesy of Patriksson Communication.

Parisians swear by their Isabel Marant Dicker boots and Londoners have their Underground Creepers, but Stockholmers are fiercely loyal to their Acne Pistols. These side-zip ankle boots give you height without the hurt and come in several new shades each season, but always in reliable black. (acnestudios.com)

Thirtysomethings Jacob Holmström and Anton Bjuhr, co-chefs and co-owners at the hot new Gastrologik, trust the quality of their raw ingredientss so much that they sometimes make it look too simple. With just one bite, you’ll recognizee the quiet intelligence and minimalism so often associated ted with Swedish design, translated ated to food with resounding success. ccess. (gastrologik.se)

BY KENDON POLAK

/ du monde:

SYDNEY METAL ART Aussie java junkies have fallen hard for the lovingly nicknamed “little guy,” an über-chic stove-top espresso maker called OTTO. This modern-day twist on Giordano Robbiati’s classic Atomic is the brainchild of Sydney roof-tiler Craig Hiron. The hand-polished stainless steel OTTO, with no electronics or moving parts, delivers an authentic brew and top-drawer aesthetics. (ottoespresso.com)

on the

STREET

Zanita, near

Sydney Harbour

ICONIC VISTA

Guzzling champagne as ﬁreworks explode over the Harbour Bridge is every Sydneysider’s birthright. The most stunning vantage point in all of Sydney is the Park Hyatt’s coveted harbour-front location, just reopened in early March. The massive transformation features guest rooms with ﬂoor-to-ceiling glass that open onto private balconies, rooftop suites, and specially-commissioned sculptures, paintings and photographs by renowned Aussie artists. Your champers is on ice. (sydney.park.hyatt.com)

If imitation is the sincerest form of ﬂattery, then Kym Ellery and Graz Mulcahy, two of the hottest young designers in Australia, should be blushing like a berry. Their sleek chic eyewear collaboration has reached cult status amongst Sydney’s cool cats and A-list celebs, leading to a barrage of ripoffs. Their highly coveted classicframe, cat-eye and angular-shaped shades offer a groovy balance between feminine and masculine. Particularly hot are the Quixote (pictured), Cremaster and Don Juan lines. (grazmulcahy.com)

HIGHS AND WHISPERS The aptly named High Highs aren’t famous yet, but having recently released their début EP, it shouldn’t be long. Sydney boys Oli Chang and Jack Milas cleverly straddle the folk/electronica divide with haunting ease. They’ve now decamped to Brooklyn and have teamed up with Long Island drummer Zachary Lipkins. Could this blow it all sky high? (highhighs.com)

TIME AT THE MCA The Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay takes its place among the world’s ﬁnest contemporary galleries after a bold $56m transformation by Sydney architect Sam Marshall. The rooftop café and Sculpture Terrace, added to the existing Art Deco building, offer uninterrupted views over Sydney Harbour. The MCA reopened in late March with Marking Time, a collection of major pieces by 11 international artists who conceptualize the passing of time via sculpture, installation, sound and light. (mca.com.au)

Clockwise from top left: S On The Street, Zanita image by Zanita Morgan, www.zanitazanita.blogspot.com. Time at the MCA image courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

ELLERY ET GRAZ

BY LISA KISBER

/ du monde:

MONTRÉAL CHEZ DANIEL

Celebrated French chef Daniel Boulud—whose reputation extends not only from Manhattan to Beijing but also aboard the Queen Mary 2—arrives in Montreal with Maison Boulud, part of the $150-million restoration of the Ritz-Carlton. Along with Boulud’s culinary magic, guests will be treated to a bit of storybook romance as they’re invited to feed the ducks ﬂoating atop the Ritz pond. (ritzmontreal.com)

WALL-TO-WALL INGENUITY

What would walls say if they could talk? So wondered Antoine Al-Zawahri and his partners when they launched Surface Jalouse, a home collection built around the idea of reinventing the design of ordinary objects. Furnishings blend classic designs with of-the-moment graphics (think dining chairs with luscious lips dripping blood), but the real fun is their series of interchangeable wall decals. Visit www.surfacejalouse.com or their Montreal showroom at 2672 Rue Notre-Dame Ouest.

VELVET UNDERGROUND As you wind through a twisty corridor and descend into the bowels of L’Auberge Saint-Gabriel, you can feel the old-world history seeping through the walls. At journey’s end is Velvet, a cavernous speakeasy pumping with music that, quite literally, deﬁnes the underworld of Old Montreal. (lesaint-gabriel.com)

CHERCHEZ L’HOMME

Everything cool for fashion-forward guys can be found under one roof at Rooney. In addition to the latest looks from emerging designers (including red-hot, Alabama-based Billy Reid, whose Deep South style is earning global accolades), there’s the latest in eyewear, accessories and household gadgets, plus a smattering of must-have books like photographer Leroy Grannis’ homage to SoCal surfers of the ’60s and ’70s. (rooneyshop.com)

on the

STREET Clockwise from top left: Wall to wall ingenuity image courtesy of Surface Jalouse. Chez Daniel image by B. Milne. Cherchez L’Homme image courtesy of Rooney. S On The Street, Spencer image courtesy of Spencer Edwards, www.proprpostur.com, Joe Beef image by Chuck Ortiz. Velvet Underground image by Vadim Daniel.

Spencer, ready for

summer on rue Sainte-Catherine

FRÉDÉRIC, DAVID & JOE The brainchild of restaurateurs David McMillan and Frédéric Morin, and named in tribute to 19thcentury innkeeper Charles “Joe Beef” McKiernan, Montreal’s favourite haute-hipster haunt has a menu that fully merits the hype, and a new, anecdote-ﬁlled cookbook— The Art of Living According to Joe Beef—to boot. (joebeef.ca)

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

When man and machine connect, the extraordinary happens.

NSX CONCEPT

For more of the extraordinary, visit acura.ca

/ ART OF JET SETTING

Jewel A whirlwind, three-day fashion, culinary, club-hopping tour of Hong Kong with BONNIE BROOKS

East of the

Heading to Hong Kong always sends chills down my spine, knowing the exotic scent of jasmine along Queen’s Road Central and the heavy air of spice and incense in the downtown alleys will soon transport me to another world, on the other side of the globe, once I land in paradise.

DAY ONE

Lane Crawford I Bar, designed by Yabu Pushelberg

I will, of course, be staying at the Four Seasons, because of their rooftop spa and pool that has one of the best vantage points on Hong Kong island, but mainly because I know there is a hidden entrance to the Lane Crawford store from their spa elevator on the 3rd floor that leads me directly into the Platinum Suite zone—which, by the way, was designed by superstars George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg of Yabu Pushelberg. (For more on the iconic design duo, see page 110). To prepare for my trip I will be packing a few colourful (and perfect for travelling) things from Thakoon, from The Room in Vancouver or Toronto. A former editor at Harper’s Bazaar, Thakoon Panichgul was born in Thailand and is based in New York. His prints evoke an Asian-modern spirit. I’ll pick up another few pieces in either Lane Crawford or Joyce, the other must stop on my first day in Hong Kong, on Queen’s Road Central, with the world famous On Pedder shoe and accessories boutique now installed on the second floor.

I can wear my Thakoon pieces to the island’s hot spots for my ﬁrst night, at the locals’ favourite club, Volar in Lan Kwai Fong. It’s semi-private like most insider clubs, but the doorman will let me in wearing this designer knockout. Or I can head over to the newest, equally amazing, club across from dragon-i on Wyndham Street called Tazmania Ballroom.

Hutong

S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Lane Crawford images courtesy of Lane Crawford. Hutong image courtesy of Aqua Restaurant Group.

First stop is, of course, Lane Crawford, where I circle the inside racetrack of the store to see the latest fashion and cultural installation featuring a European designer or maybe the latest Chinese stylist’s looks for the iconic star Li Bingbing (featured here in Lane Crawford’s Spring/Summer 2012 campaign).

Clockwise from top left: The Upper House image courtesy of Swire Hotels. Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong photography by Ken Seet. Gagosian Gallery Hong Kong, photograpy by Martin Wong, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

The Upper House hotel

styleissue.ca

Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong

DAY TWO For hitting the shopping streets on the Tsim Sha Tsui side of Hong Kong (Kowloon side), bring along a backpack to fill with all the bobbles from the bead market and the local jade market. For lunch over in Tsim Sha Tsui (pronounced Chim Sha Choy), brave the bustling Spring Deer on Mody Road, where the carts are still in full swing and the noisy crowd is grabbing bamboo baskets off the trolley; and ask for the best dumpling ever, the “Su Lim Bow” with the juices baked inside the rice flour. Yummm dim sum! After shopping at the world’s busiest strip called Harbour City along Canton Road, head over to the famed Peninsula Hotel. Still the city’s most beloved tearoom, by locals and visitors alike, it’s the one place in all of Hong Kong that takes you back to its colonial roots. You feel like you’ve returned to the days when a butler unpacked your steamer trunks and white linens were donned to take tea in the lobby’s palm court. Dinner on the Kowloon side should definitely be at One Peking Road, a high-rise with the best view of Victoria Harbour, via the top floors that house several of the city’s finest restaurants. My favourite is Hutong, an authentic Sichuan style of cooking infused with a modern spirit and an authentic, esthetic interior design saluting Hutongs (ancient alleyways). The laser light show starts at 8pm and lasts only about ten minutes, so it is essential to be on time and to make reservations in advance. Drinks following dinner will be down the road and on the waterfront at the

InterContinental, formerly the Regent, with the glass-walled lobby bar overlooking the Hong Kong skyline from a slightly different perspective, where you feel you are truly immersed in the city. Fashion execs have long favored this hotel in the heart of the garment district.

DAY THREE Back on Hong Kong Island, I head out to the city’s finest contemporary galleries, beginning at Schoeni on Old Bailey Street, owned by Nicole Schoeni whose father started the gallery and was the first contemporary collector in Hong Kong. Next stop, The Cat Street Gallery on Hollywood Road, then on to the more classic Edouard Malingue on Queen’s Road Central and the newer Gagosian Gallery on Pedder Street. Sadly, the famed Shanghai Tang flagship store, with its quirky, dark-wooded interior, has closed (replaced by none other than Abercrombie & Fitch—the globalization of fast fashion, like its fast food predecessor, is inevitable.) But there are still miles of backalley shops full of sights and surprises in the world’s most exotic (and safest) city to allow you to blaze your own trail. Stop in at the new Upper House hotel at Pacific Place for either lunch or a wine tasting, as it’s the hot new ‘after-office bar’ with it’s very thirsty thirtysomething expat crowd. Then back to Lan Kwai Fong for sultrier drinks at the Kee Club, another private club but likely to open the door if you are truly stylish, and a short walk over to Sevva for dinner, in the Prince’s Building in Central.

To get a great table, I’ll tell them I know owner Bonnie Gokson, who is also the sister of Joyce Ma, founder of the famous Joyce stores. And if that doesn’t work, Joel Robuchon is in the building next door (called Landmark), on the 4th ﬂoor. A glass of Château d’Yquem, Bordeaux 2004 is a mere $360 HKD ($46 CDN) and is nicely paired with the Classic Landes foie gras terrine. Ah, heavenly Hong Kong! Bonnie Brooks, former President of the Lane Crawford Joyce Group and expat Hong Kong resident, is President of the Hudson’s Bay Company, including The Bay and Lord & Taylor USA.

Gagosian Gallery

Why We

Love… Jorn Weisbrodt

Jorn Weisbrodt, newly installed artistic director of the vibrant, multi-disciplinary Luminato festival, likes to tell how, when racing from New York to Toronto to interview for the job last August, he and ﬁancé Rufus Wainwright managed to steadily outpace an equally determined, northbound Hurricane Irene. But Irene was nothing compared to the storm of activity that has since engulfed the dashing Weisbrodt as he prepares for what promises to be the most artistically rich and diverse Luminato yet, including everything from K’NAAN and Kathleen Edwards to a new Robert Lepage play and Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’ landmark collaboration, Einstein on the Beach. Even when the 10-day festival wraps on June 17, Weisbrodt still won’t have much time to rest; not with his and Wainwright’s nuptials in Montauk, Long Island slated (according to “save the date” notices circulated to their nearest and dearest) for August 23.

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Photograph by V. Tony Hauser

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Fragrance for women

Megan Fox

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closet CASES

How a trio of canny Canucks carved out a cunning online space one celebrity cupboard at a time BY YALE BRESLIN

Inside the home of Toronto architect Dee Dee Taylor Eustace

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All images courtesy of The Coveteur/Jake Rosenberg. Image of Jake Rosenberg courtesy of Jen Arron.

Inside Chanel’s private shopping suite, Paris

“We wanted to deconstruct the idea and craze of street style and take it one step further—right back to the place where it all begins: the holy closet.” Finding a unique fashion niche in the overcrowded online space is an increasingly tall order. These days, it takes a truly clever idea to break through the clutter. The Coveteur, brainchild of Erin Kleinberg, Stephanie Mark and Jake Rosenberg, is just such a concept. The site quite literally goes where no one else has: inside the closets of the rich, famous and fabulous. Barely a year old, it is a brilliant exercise in voyeurism. Torontonians Kleinberg and Mark met at summer camp when they were 10 and reconnected after both landed internships— Kleinberg at W and Mark at ELLE—in New York. Upon returning to Toronto, Kleinberg established an eponymous clothing line and Mark tried her hand at styling. But both felt unfulﬁlled and, wanting something bigger, decided to join forces. “The Coveteur was conceived after seeing The Social Network,” Kleinberg explains. “We wanted to deconstruct the idea and craze of street style and take it one step further—right back to the place where it all begins: the holy closet.” The quirky name, which can’t be found in any dictionary, is a cunning combination of “covet” and “voyeur.” Teaming with photographer Rosenberg, a fellow Torontonian, they started by calling

The Coveteur cofounders Stephanie Mark (left), Erin Kleinberg and (inset) photographer Jake Rosenberg

in favours from friends on both sides of the border. The ‘ask’ was simple: let us inside your closet and we will showcase, with artistic integrity and creativity, the genesis of your personal style. And their pals threw open their doors. Harper’s Bazaar’s Joanna Hillman let them peek through her collection of PHI; John Gerhardt, Holt Renfrew’s former creative director, allowed them to riﬂe through his Lanvin sweaters; and Keith Pollock, ELLE.com’s editorial director, took them through his East Village pad. Though some might argue the threesome only go after those with plenty of high-end designer gear, Mark instead insists that, “It’s all about personal style and how it relates to the aesthetic of their home. They go hand in hand. The subject doesn’t need to have an endless stash of Louboutin shoes or Fendi bags. They just need to have a unique selection of goods ranging from rare to ridiculous.” In other words, it’s all about digging through an individual’s shelves and ﬁnding the personal gems that create his or her singular sense of style: vintage childhood tee-shirts; heirlooms from their greatgrandmothers; an ex-boyfriend’s leather bomber jacket that they should throw away, but just can’t. From the L.A. closet of designer and entrepeneur Nicky Hilton

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Since peeking in strangers’ closets— especially when the strangers are marquee names—is irresistible, traffic and buzz both built quickly. ELLE was interested in collaborating; Vogue came calling, asking Mark, Kleinberg and Rosenberg to shoot an online editorial; Miami fashion emporium The Webster tapped the Canadian trio for a project during Miami Fashion Week. In fact, the moment they first pressed ‘publish,’ they knew they had a hit. “On day one, when we launched, the site crashed with 20,000 hits,” says Mark. “It was an unbelievable experience, and honestly something unexpected. Soon after, there were write-ups on Style.com, in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and more. It was life altering.” Though The Coveteur is a collective endeavour, each of the three partners has carved out a distinct role. Kleinberg handles overall artistic direction. Mark is responsible for the bulk of their market research. Rosenberg pulls it all together with his stylized photographs (more and more often, magazine editors come knocking, asking him to help fill their pages). They have a strict rule about original content (nothing re-blogged) and, mirroring the fashion magazines they now rival, stick to a rigid publication schedule. As the site’s popularity has increased so, naturally, has the wattage of their guests,

including Lauren Santo Domingo, Nicky Hilton, Gucci Westman, and Rachel Zoe; and they were recently sent to Paris to collaborate on a special project for Chanel. In their back pockets is a hit list of girls and guys whose style they idolize and want to shoot. At the top is Elizabeth Olsen, hidden gem of the Olsen family. “She just exudes cool. She made a name for herself, by herself, and just totally rocks the red carpet every time,” says Mark. ”Of course to be able to raid your twin sisters’ vintage archives helps.” Having passed their first anniversary, the trio can look back on a year of luck, hard work and, above all else, ingenuity, and celebrate the singularity of their success. “We now know that we’re very resourceful,” says Kleinberg. “Being an entrepreneur is all about being on the ball and staying productive, relying on past connections, experiences, and skills while transitioning them to fit modern demands. These days everyone is a voyeur. We always want to see what’s happening behind the scenes and beneath the surface to find out what culminates one’s style. We’ve always been inquisitive and fashion obsessed. Now, luckily, we get to spend our days checking off both those boxes.” /

All images courtesy of The Coveteur/Jake Rosenberg.

Clockwise from top left, inside the closets of: Aaron Bakalar, founder of The Collaborative Agency; Adrienne Shoom, senior director, style, Joe Fresh; fashion editor and veepost.com founder Virginie Dhello; and Jeff Halmos and Lisa Mayock, cofounders of Shipley & Halmos and Vena Cava

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BY JOAN HARTING

/ TRENDS

Suddenly fun’s back in fashion This Summer… 21st CENTURY PIN-UP Throwback rufﬂes and pleats, sweetheart necklines, bandeau bikini tops and retro prints give bathing suits a sexy girlishness.

Clockwise from top left: Marc by Marc Jacobs; Betsey Johnson Collection; Seafolly; Peter Som; Laura Biagiotti; J. Crew.

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Clockwise form top left: Marc by Marc Jacobs © Getty Images. Betsey Johnson Collection courtesy of Betsey Johnson. Seafolly courtesy of Seafolly, voce enterprises ltd. Peter Som courtesy of Peter Som, KCD Worldwide. Laura Biagiotti ©Getty Images. J. Crew courtesy of J. Crew, Jane Gill & Associates.

This sun season is all about cheery brights, peppy prints, simple silhouettes and vintage details.

Clockwise from top left: Marni, Jill Stuart ÂŠGetty images. 3.1 Phillip Lim image courtesy of 3.1 Phillip Lim. Valentino ÂŠGetty Images. Pink Tartan courtesy of The Bay. MANGO courtesy of MANGO PR. Melanie Lyne courtesy of Laura Canada PR.

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EASY A The sundress of choice is a ladylike Audrey A-line in sweet florals, bold, splashy graphics or mod colour blocks.

Clockwise from top left: Marni; Jill Stuart; 3.1 Phillip Lim (available at www.31philliplim.com); Valentino; Pink Tartan (available at The Bay); MANGO; Melanie Lyne (available at select Melanie Lyne stores).

Shorts go everywhere skirts used to go. Neat, tailored thigh-length versions work at the office. Shorter shorts, shot with metallics or in luxe prints, party after dark.

Clockwise from top left: Thakoon; Diane Von Furstenberg; Le Château; H&M; Balenciaga; Diesel Black Gold; Topshop (available at The Bay, www.thebay.com/topshop).

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Clockwise from top left: Thakoon, Diane Von Furstenberg ©Getty Images. Le Château courtesy of Le Château Inc. PR. H&M courtesy of H&M Press. Balenciaga, Diesel Black Gold ©Getty Images. Topshop courtesy of Topshop.

DRESS SHORTS

YOUNGER-LOOKING EYES IN 3 HOURS*. The future of age-defying technology has arrived. RoC® SUBLIME ENERGY® harnesses the power of bioelectricity** to produce unprecedented age-defying results. Within 3 hours, the appearance of ﬁne lines will diminish. And with continued use of this revolutionary two-step system, the eye area will be visibly transformed. We’re so conﬁdent in the results that we 100% guarantee them†. Ask your drug store beauty advisor about RoC® SUBLIME ENERGY®.

* Clinically proven to deliver the same age-defying results in 3 hours that our traditional eye creams provide in 4 weeks ** In the upper layer of the epidermis †For money-back guarantee please call 1-800-762-1964. UPCs must be submitted within 60 days of purchase. ©Johnson & Johnson Inc. 2012

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Clockwise from top left: Prada, Proenza Schouler ©Getty Images. SABRE courtesy of SABRE. Stella McCartney, Erdem ©Getty Images. Karen Walker courtesy of Karen Walker, Bradbury Lewis. MANGO courtesy of MANGO PR.

GETTING AROUND Nouveau sunnies make a statement with inflated cat-eye and round shapes. Wear them in white trimmed with a pop colour if you dare.

Clockwise from top left: Prada; Proenza Schouler; SABRE (availble at www.sabre.fm); Stella McCartney; Erdem; Karen Walker; MANGO.

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Barrie – Brampton – Brossard – Burlington – Calgary - Cambridge – Dartmouth – Edmonton – Erin Mills - Etobicoke - Gatineau – Halifax Hamilton - Kelowna - Kirkland – Laval – London - Markham - Mississauga – Montreal – Nepean – Oakville – Orleans – Oshawa – Ottawa – Pointe-Claire Quebec City – Richmond Hill – Rocky View – Rosemère – Saanich – Scarborough – St-Bruno – St. Catharines – St-Sauveur – Surrey – Thornhill – Toronto Trois-Rivières – Vancouver – Vaughan – Victoria – Ville d’Anjou – Waterloo – Willowdale - Windsor – Winnipeg

Wedge sandals in bold brights ghts or cool nudes are e the perfect summerr pedal props. summ

Clockwise from top left: Nine West courtesy of Nine West, Sherson Group. BCBG Paris courtesy of Town Shoes x The Shoe Co Company PR. Mulberry ©Getty Images. Town Shoes courtesy of Town Shoes x The Shoe Company PR. Gucci courtesy of Gucci. DKNY ©Getty Images. ALD ALDO courtesy of ALDO GROUP PR.

FOOTLOOSE

Clockwise from top left: Nine West; BCBG Paris (availabel at The Shoe Company); Mulberry; Town Shoes; Gucci (available at www.gucci.com); DKNY; ALDO.

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D I E S E L TO R O N TO F L A G S H I P S TO R E 9 2 YO R K V I L L E

Basta with the handbag bling. Simple shapes in juicy colours carry the day now.

Clockwise from ttop left: Joe Fresh; Victoria Beckham; Dorothy Perkinss (available at The Bay, select stores); Michael Kors; L.A.M.B. Sonia Rykiel; MICHAEL MI

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Clockwise from top left: Joe Fresh courtesy of Joe Fresh. Victoria Beckham ©Getty Images. Dorothy Perkins courtesy of The Bay. Sonia Rykiel ©Getty Images. MICHAEL Michael Kors courtesy of Michael Kors PR. L.A.M.B. ©Getty Images.

BAG IT

WATERCOLOURS

Clockwise from top left: Ralph Lauren ©Getty Images. Maryam Keyhani courtesy of Holt Renfrew PR. Rolex courtesy of Rolex Canada Ltd. Ohne Titel ©Getty Images. Tiffany & Co. courtesy of Tiffany & Co., MacKay & Co. Swarovski courtesy of Swarovski, Edelman Digital.

Girly pastels make jewellery and dw watches elegantly playful.

Clockwise from top left: Ralph Lauren; Maryam Keyhani (available at Holt Renfrew); Rolex (to locate an official Rolex jeweller visit www.rolex.com); Ohne Titel; Tiffany & Co.; Swarovski (available only at www.swarovski.com and select Swarovski Gallery Stores);

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S LE INSPIRATION

Two decades into his singularly vivid career, footwear artiste Christian Louboutin ďŹ nds muses everywhere from French history to Hollywood BY ELIO IANNACCI

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images courtesy of © CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN, by Christian Louboutin, Rizzoli New York, 2011.

Louboutin’s Engin Spikes 120 (left) and limited-edition peep toe pumps inspired by Marie Antoinette (above).

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It must have been fate that led a teenaged Christian Louboutin into Paris’ fabled music hall, the Folies Bergère. Expelled from school in 1980 at the age of 16, the celebrated shoe designer’s first job was working as a behind-the-footlights theatrical apprentice on the same stage where Josephine Baker banana-danced. Supporting troops of showgirls during various productions, Louboutin quickly became enthralled with everything from wardrobe to set design. It didn’t take long for him to start sketching what he saw night after night: women kicking up their legs and stomping their feet. These early drawings are now considered a critical part of the Louboutin brand’s DNA and a catalyst for the success of the multi-million dollar luxury shoe company best known for it’s fire-red soles. Recently celebrating his 20th anniversary, Louboutin, age 49 and proprietor of 43 boutiques in 20 countries, continues to benefit from his obsession with jumping showgirls. The lavish book Christian Louboutin, published last year by Rizzoli, chronicles his vast archive of designs and his longstanding love of female performers. Although Louboutin’s definition of “showgirl” has changed significantly—his list of influencers

have expanded to include women who have made their marks in the worlds of art, film and music—his desire to pay tribute to his favourites has not. One of his earlier designs, a flat shoe named “Barbare” from his 1995 Spring/ Summer collection—made of black velvet and PVC leather—was inspired by one of the most vibrant figures in European history, Gabrielle d’Estrées. A mistress to King Henry IV of France, d’Estrées controversial and dramatic place in the French court has been well documented. Her fierce demeanor and supposed erotic authority in the palace bedrooms became the basis of one of the Louvre’s most sexually charged acquisitions, Gabrielle d’Estrées et une de ses soeurs. To pay homage to d’Estrées, Louboutin had a replica of the painting embossed onto the tongue of his “Barbare” shoe. But flats aren’t really what Louboutin is beloved for. His heels are truly the basis of the frenzy he’s ignited. The luxury shoe market, long cornered by such champion brands as Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik and the house of Ferragamo, was shaken to the core when fashion trendsters of the Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell variety and A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and

Madonna started swaying the public with their own Christian beliefs in the late 1990s. Ten years later, in 2008, the gold rush hit when Oprah introduced Louboutin to her eight-million viewers. He continued to salute strong, successful women in his Fall/Winter 2004-2005 Pigalle collection, which he has called, “an evocation of [the ﬁlm] Irma la Douce.” The movie, released in 1963, is about a too-sexy-for-her-times, larger-than-life call girl played by Shirley MacLaine. Capturing the essence of MacLaine’s raucous portrayal, Louboutin’s Pigalle designs contain an elongated tip and a razor-sharp heel,

“The core of my work is dedicated not to pleasing women but to pleasing men. Men are like bulls – they cannot resist the red sole.”

Celebrities and their Louboutins (clockwise from upper left): Oprah Winfrey; Beyoncé; Dita Von Teese with Louboutin; Natalia Vodianova with the designer; Amber Heard working the red carpet. 68

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All images © Getty Images

which reaches five inches high to reflect Irma’s tough, smart and spicy demeanour. During his spring-summer collection that same year, Louboutin decided to honour another Hollywood legend. This time, he named a smoldering strawberry-red heel “Gilda” to commemorate Rita Hayworth’s celebrated role in the 1946 film of the same name, where she played a double-crossing temptress with a shady past. Designed in red satin with a delicate velvet ankle clasp, the shoe is built to tightly hold a woman’s foot into place in much the same way that the film’s Parisian costumer—Jean Louis— shaped Gilda’s waist-cinching dresses to Hayworth’s body. In addition to his fixations with film stars, Louboutin has drawn significant inspiration from pop stars. While designing boots for his Fall/Winter 2008-2009 collection, he was driven by the notion of iconic divas. “Tina Turner inspired many models for me,” he said of his ankle-length boots, which are crafted with fringe and made of soft suede. “She never ceases to impress me with her showstopper quality.” To complement the shorter length boot, Louboutin also created the knee-height “Dolly Forever,” a thoroughly modern take on the footwear country star Dolly Parton wore during her 1974 promotional tours in support of two of her biggest hits, “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You.” While conjuring his Fall/Winter 20082009 line, Louboutin also returned to both cinema and the French court to capture a distinct Marie Antoinette aesthetic. “I didn’t want it to be the [18th-century French painter] Hubert Robert kind of Marie Antoinette nor the colourless evocation of the period,” he said of his design scheme. “I had in mind the Sofia Coppola version with stronger, vibrant colours.” The shoe, which Louboutin daringly called the “Marie Antoinette,” mirrored Coppola’s opulent vision in many ways. Replete with beads and a fine heel, each had a small bunch of ribbons sitting delicately above a porcelain cameo, giving the effect of a tiny firework erupting over each ankle. Louboutin went in an entirely different direction for his Fall/Winter 2009-2010 collection. Instead of royals and monarchs, he tipped his hat to two of his most sensual muses: Bettie Page and Dita Von Teese. While Von Teese toured the world with her highly successful nü-burlesque shows and partnered with MAC cosmetics as its Viva Glam campaign spokesperson, Louboutin was busy sketching and taking notes. Also referencing photos of ’50s pinup Bettie Page, he turned out an exquisite collection called Lady Page that seemed to peek inside Von Teese’s and Page’s lingerie drawer, using fabrics reminiscent of animal-print undies, vintage negligees, fishnet stockings and satin teddies. According to a recent profile in The New Yorker, there is a reason why he feels so connected to anything that titillates. “The core of my work,” he said, “is dedicated not to

pleasing women but to pleasing men. Men are like bulls – they cannot resist the red sole.” Apparently, neither can a competitive design house. Recently Louboutin filed a lawsuit against Yves Saint Laurent over its creation of a shoe with red soles, a signature that has, thus far, been widely perceived as exclusively his. He first turned soles red in 1993, during his third year in business. As legend has it, Louboutin was terribly displeased with how one of his design prototypes (for his now popular “Pansies” series) came back to him after assembly. Instead of rejecting the shoe, he looked around his atelier in hopes of fi nding a solution to his problem—he wanted a ‘finer’ looking heel. To experiment, he borrowed his assistant’s nail polish and began to paint the soles red, claiming it was a “revelation.” Louboutin’s wrath was ignited by YSL’s inclusion of a red suede shoe with a red sole in its Spring 2011 collection (which also included purple and green shoes with matching soles). After Louboutin filed suit,

YSL rationalized in court papers that, “Red outsoles are a commonly used ornamental design feature in footwear, dating as far back as the red shoes worn by King Louis XIV in the 1600s and the ruby red shoes that carried Dorothy home in The Wizard of Oz.” (YSL also argued that it had been producing red-soled shoes as early as the 1970s). The battle between the iconic brands continues, with Louboutin countering, in an interview with the French newspaper Libération earlier this year, that his is “a red in a speciﬁc context [in the way that], there is Ferrari red [and] Hermès orange. Even in the food industry, Cadbury recently won a lawsuit against Nestlé for using purple packaging. All this proves that the colours play a part in a brand’s identity. I’m not saying that red usually belongs to me—I repeat that this is about a precise red, used in a precise location.” The ironic twist is that Louboutin agreed to a rare collaboration in 2002, designing a shoe for the ﬁnale of Saint Laurent’s farewell couture show.

Aside from Saint Laurent, Louboutin’s most talked-about collaborator has been acclaimed director David Lynch. Known for his groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks as well as surrealistic films ranging from 1990’s Wild at Heart to 2006’s Inland Empire, Lynch was commissioned by Louboutin to photograph his shoes for an art exhibit (the show has, to date, traveled from Paris to London). Evoking the nouveau noir style of Lynch’s most popular film, 1986’s Blue Velvet—specifically the movie’s main character, Dorothy Vallens, played by Isabella Rossellini—the group of photos frame Louboutin’s shoes in a nightmare-ish narrative. Never one to shy away from unconventional approaches, Louboutin’s history in the fashion business has been all about freeing himself from the flock, not flying with it. And, in many ways, he treats his shoes as mini-stages. Judging by the joy and drama he has incited thus far, there’s no predicting what kind of show he will put on next; but it is sure to be dazzling. /

Images courtesy of © CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN, by Christian Louboutin, Rizzoli New York, 2011.

“The luxury shoe market was shaken to the core when fashion trendsters of the Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell variety and A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna started swaying the public with their own Christian beliefs in the late 1990s.”

Christian Louboutin, by Christian Louboutin (Rizzoli, New York, 2011)

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Christian Louboutin footwear is available in Canada at Holt Renfrew and The Room at The Bay.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND / RETAIL

Firmly established as Canada’s king of affordable chic, Joe Mimran plans stage one of a potentially global Joe Fresh invasion by storming Manhattan

BY YALE BRESLIN

A quarter-century into what is arguably the most influential career in Canadian fashion, Joe Mimran is the genius who helped make Alfred Sung a household name, then elevated the Club Monaco and Caban brands to iconic status (before both were sold to Ralph Lauren). Yet past successes, wild as they were, pale in comparison to the escalating popularity of his eponymous Joe Fresh line. The brilliantly simple, affordable-chic concept has taken Canada by storm. But Joe’s no longer content keeping his irresistible Fresh-ness a beloved Canadian secret. After dabbling with a string of pop-up stores in and around New York, he opened his first two permanent U.S. locations last fall, inside malls in Garden City, NY and Bridgewater, NJ. Next, Joe invaded Manhattan, opening a 9,800-square-foot store in the historic Flatiron district. Now he has added a massive, 18,000-foot flagship location at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street, transforming a classic, Gordon Bunshaft-designed building into an emporium of fashionable economy. Yale Breslin, caught up with Mimran just prior to the flagship’s grand opening.

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Yale Breslin: You tested the U.S. waters last summer with a pop-up in East Hampton. Looking back, what did you learn about the shopping habits of New Yorkers? Joe Mimran: We did this as a way to seed the marketplace. A certain section of the inﬂuencers are in that market, the more uptown segment, and we just thought it was a neat way of introducing the brand to New Yorkers. We got a great response and it was a really incredible experience. Our team was out there tracking the process, and they were ﬁltering the comments back on a weekly basis. People couldn’t believe the price/value ratio that we offered. It’s style at ridiculous prices. A woman was looking at the prices of the products and asked, “Are these the sizes?” She couldn’t believe it. We wanted to connect with various neighbourhoods in New York. We wanted our entry to be real and to make it feel like we are a part of the city. I’ve lived there before and I didn’t want it to feel like we were an international brand that was parachuting into the marketplace without any connection. That’s been our strategy every since.

YB: What did you learn from that process?

The Joe Fresh store in Manhattan’s Flatiron district (left and above)

JM: It certainly gave us a little boost. No matter how many times you’ve done it, it’s a bit like stage acting. There is always that sense of being frightened when you are opening a new show – which is essentially what we do every season. It’s even more intimidating when you are opening a new market. It was nice because it gave us a dry run – sort of like offBroadway. It gave us the opportunity to take the temperature of the consumer. Luckily, they loved us. It felt really good.

YB: And it prepared you for your Madison Avenue pop-up shop. JM: Deﬁnitely, especially in the sense that the Madison Avenue shopper is a fairly well-heeled customer. There is a style sensibility to the uptown demographic, and it’s interesting because we cater to both a downtown and uptown style.

All images courtesy of Joe Fresh

YB: Was it always part of the Joe Fresh strategy to expand into the U.S.?

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JM: For me, it’s always about building a brand ﬁrst. When I think about a brand, I think about building something that resonates. A great brand can transcend both cultural and geographical barriers and, most importantly, a great brand can travel. The fact that we have extended in Canada to the extent that we have, it has always been important to have Joe Fresh ‘travel.’ And, New York was the ﬁrst step.

Joe Mimran in East Hampton

Highlights from the Spring/Summer 2012 Joe Fresh Collection

JM: We’ve been developing a lot more product as we [continue to open] freestanding stores. The amount of fashion has increased, and I think the standalone shops need a slightly different assortment, so we are building on that. This will evolve as we learn more about the market. We have a very strong design sense, so we are very much New Yorkers, as much as we are Canadians.

YB: Do you see any differences between the sartorial choices of Americans versus Canadians?

YB: What was the moment you decided ‘Now it’s time to take Joe Fresh stateside’?

YB: What aesthetic experience are you anticipating?

JM: It’s an evolution to me. You pick your moments based on momentum, and there is a certain level of conﬁdence behind a brand. We were approaching our 5th anniversary in Canada, and we really felt that we had achieved so much. It just felt like it was time to grow. Plus, there are so many international brands coming into Canada and we were competing against them very effectively. It felt time to take the ﬁght outside of Canada as well.

JM: It’s a historically protected building – both the interior and exterior. So, any changes that we make have to resonate with the original aesthetic. There has been a lot written about our entry into 510 Fifth Avenue, speciﬁcally about how the move will be handled. And, when it’s all said and done, I think we’ve done the city very proud in terms of how we’ve restored the building and how we have inserted ourselves inside but have still maintained the location’s integrity. But most importantly, we are able to speak to our brand’s essence.

YB: You chose Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street for your ﬂ agship. Why that particular location?

YB: The space has a very intriguing history. JM: For us, real estate is a bit opportunistic. You can’t always choose the exact location you want to be in. When a space like this came up, it made the most sense. We had been looking around town, in all neighbourhoods, but the physical space itself was the most attractive. It is a building with such pedigree that we just felt like it would showcase the brand most effectively. There is a big migration downwards from 50th Street, and when you look at the space and see the presence that it has, it just feels completely right.

JM: It’s interesting to note that it was the ﬁrst glass bank where all the tellers were out in the open. It was the ﬁrst bank where people could actually see the safe on display. When you drive down Fifth Avenue, the visibility is just beautiful.

YB: Will the product assortment vary from what’s being sold in Canada?

YB: What do you consider the keys to the brand’s success? JM: I think it has been successful because of both product and design integrity. You also have to understand where the markets are moving and how you’re a value player, and that is the strategic platform of the brand. But then, how do you play within that realm and how do you resonate and connect with the consumer?

YB: How has Joe Fresh achieved that? JM: It’s all about communication of the brand and presentation. When product has integrity and is touched in a real way, then I think the consumer can feel it and they respond. I think that’s what it’s about. I also think you have to view yourself as being a winner in order to get there. And that’s what we are trying to do as we grow beyond Canada.

YB: So you consider yourself successful? JM: (laughing) Not yet. Not even close.

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Rendering courtesy of Burdiﬁlek. All runway images by George Pimentel.

An architectural rendering of the Joe Fresh ﬂagship store in Manhattan

JM: I don’t think it’s about Canadians versus Americans. I think it is more about urban markets. High urban markets tend to behave in a certain way. I think there is more similarity between [Toronto’s] Queen Street and Chelsea as opposed to Queen Street and the suburbs. So, I always think about urban compared to suburban; and I feel that high-energy urban markets have a unique style sensibility. I don’t look at it from a nationalistic standpoint.

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Staying Power Fashion is a perennially slippery slope, but ﬁve masters have continued their climbs unabated. What are their secrets (and who’s hot on their heels)? BY LEANNE DELAP

Ralph Lauren in the 1970s

Fashion is the most ﬁckle of businesses: the economy sucks with predictable regularity, reviewers bitch, bloggers effuse, and the internet chews through trends long before clothes hit a rack. Consumers have a dizzying array of choices: every supermodel and her sister has a clothing line. Plus, the designer market goes head-to-head with the fast-fashion juggernauts, which can knock off ideas fast as a tweet, at the cost of dryer-lint change. So what are the secrets of staying at the top of the game? First off, a living legend will have created an only-onename-required brand so crystallized it can be summarized in a single word: Armani equals class. Lauren is America. Cavalli is sex. Lagerfeld is money. And de la Renta is society. Five men—yes, all white men of a certain age—whose brands and empires are unassailable. The body behind the brand needs a creation myth. As far as bootstraps go, Ralph Lauren is the estate-crashing, self-made American dreamer. Now 72, he was born in the Bronx with the name Ralph Lifshitz. (As he famously told Oprah, you can imagine the teasing that came along with having the “s” word in one’s name). He never went to design school, instead learning on the ﬂoor at Brooks Brothers about east-coast mannerly, aspirational style. He began with a line of ties, seizing the name Polo with its elitist twang. The iconic collared shirt, crafted in gazillion crisp colours, hit with a smash in 1972 and remains iconic today. The Ralph Lauren brand is a fully articulated vision of that boy from the wrong side of the tracks transformed into the epitome of the establishment: a blue-blooded equestrian fantasy of tartan plaids, jodhpurs, pinstripes and posh country estates. Giorgio Armani, now 77, also skipped school for an apprenticeship at retail, famously starting out in window dressing at La Rinascente department store in Milan. After a spell in menswear design at Nino Cerruti, Armani launched S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Giorgio Armani, circa 1993

All images ©Getty Images.

Giorgio Armani with his models at the conclusion of the presentation of the Emporio Armani Fall/Winter 2012-13 menswear collection at Milan Fashion Week

Oscar de la Renta at the 1963 Blue Grass Ball with Anita Colby, New York

Oscar de la Renta, at New York’s 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week

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his own line in 1975, with business and life partner, the late Sergio Galeotti. This is the second rule of empire building: the creative genius must have a dedicated and loyal partner nearby. Pierre Bergé, who took care of real-world details for the fragile Yves Saint Laurent, pioneered the spouse system. It was Bergé who bottled the YSL mystique with the perfume Paris, selling a piece of couture glamour to the ladies who lunch in Milwaukee. Giancarlo Giammetti pulled Valentino’s ﬁrst couture business out of bankruptcy before launching the master of red-on-the-red-carpet onto the international scene. It is seen later in the relationships of Miuccia Prada and husband Patrizio Bertelli, and in Gianni and then sister Donatella doing creative, with brother Santo Versace handling the numbers. Another lesson we learn at the feet of Armani is how to harness Hollywood. The ’80s, of course, became the Armani decade, as emblemized by the unlined, soft-shouldered jacket the maestro designed for Richard Gere in American Gigolo. His signature touches—a shade of grey/beige he dubbed “greige,” beading and elegant simple silhouettes—read instantly as sophisticated, and a unique brand of covered-up sexy elegance. An early player at this game was Oscar de la Renta, who turns 80 this year. He tied his kite to power: ﬁrst rising to public acclaim as dressmaker to Jacqueline Kennedy. Born in the Dominican Republic (where he still maintains a lavish residence), he trained the old-fashioned way, at Balenciaga and Lanvin in Paris. He launched his own label (the company is still private) in 1965, and spent nearly a decade doing double-duty as the designer for Balmain couture. This is in keeping with his reputation as the go-to red carpet designer, his lace and chiffon creations seen on the royalty of Hollywood and international society: every Oscar season is, well, Oscar’s season. 75

What makes a brand endure is “fantastic images,” says Bronwyn Cosgrave, the London-based fashion writer and author of Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards, “advertising campaigns or cleverly manipulated images of a designer photographed in a particular situation, be that Armani with his celebrity friends or Cavalli on his yacht during the Cannes film festival.” Roberto Cavalli grew up in Florence, born 71 years ago into a noted family of artists. He began studying painting, but took a detour when his floral knitwear became a mod hit. He began designing his own name collection in 1970, and opened his first boutique in Saint-Tropez two years later. His style was always skintight sexy, and his experimentations with patchwork leathers are something he continues to this day. But it was his sandblasted (and spray-painted on) jeans in the early ’90s that made the Cavalli name world famous. As for the hardest-working man in fashion, there is no one who produces more than Karl Lagerfeld. At 78, he still designs collections for Chanel, the house he revived above and way beyond its original iteration when he took the creative direction reins in 1983. Lagerfeld, who grew up the son of a wealthy businessman in Hamburg, trained at Balmain, then designed couture at Jean Patou, ready-to-wear at Chloé and a fur line at Fendi. He now does his own line, as well as much of his own photography. Lagerfeld’s own image—he ditched the fan when he dropped 100 pounds a decade ago, but keeps to a strict uniform of white paste ponytail and slim black suit with crisp white shirt—is a lesson in itself. Staying within the lines is the point of Lagerfeld’s wild success at Chanel, says Cosgrave. “Definitely with a heritable label–one established in the early 20th century like Chanel for example or Dior–a design archive helps propel that type of brand forward because it is a reference point. If you think about Chanel, the designs she conceived in her late 1920s heyday—suits, costume jewels and dresses—are still referenced by Karl Lagerfeld nearly a century later.” This fealty to classics is what keeps consumers coming back. “These legends are beyond fashion,” says Susie Sheffman, who left her longtime post as fashion director at Fashion magazine for the same title at Canadian online retailer Dealuxe. “What they are selling is an image of luxury that is easy for the consumer to understand. An Armani pantsuit will have little tweaks each season, but the piece will endure. It is an aspirational investment. Real people understand and respond with their wallets to that, better than they do to challenging or revolutionary fashion ideas.”

Roberto Cavalli in 2011, at the GQ Man of the Year award ceremony in Berlin

Ralph Lauren walks the runway at his Spring 2011 show

All images © Getty Images

Karl Lagerfeld with Linda Evangelista and Anna Wintour in 1990

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Karl Lagerfeld during Paris Fashion Week, 2012

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Maintaining an essential brand DNA is essential, adds Nathalie Atkinson, style editor and columnist at the National Post, “so that over time you build customers for what you do well and consistently over the years. You can’t change lanes with every trend, you have to stand for something.” Once the look is locked down, the next step is licensing. The money has always been in perfume and lipstick, and these labels have tentacles everywhere, from underwear and sunglasses to table linens and branded hotels. As Atkinson points out, the ready-to-wear segment drives the glamour, but represents only twenty percent of the bottom line. “It’s no coincidence that Armani, de la Renta and Lauren have some of the top 10 fragrances and colognes in the world at any one time. Armani for instance has at least one scent in the top 5 globally (Acqua di Gio, usually), often more than one. Oscar de la Renta’s original 1977 perfume is still selling strong. And Ralph Lauren’s Polo and Big Pony collection have endured.” Advertising is what makes big labels bigger. “It is sheer in-your-face volume,” says Sheffman. “Putting a name and easy-to-digest images of the luxe lifestyle a label represents in your face over and over. Chanel is unavoidable. Everyone knows that name.” And advertising also buys editorial exposure. It is simple power math, says Atkinson. “Not a day seems to go by without at least one or two full-page colour Ralph Lauren ads in The New York Times, or ads by those [legends’] brands among the first few pages of any fashion or general interest women’s magazine. That not only buys them consumer eyeballs for the ads themselves but, to a degree and far more tacitly, their brand products’ continued placement in editorial.” Keeping current is another key element: successful brands keep things stoked with energetic young teams. These houses scour the top design schools—Parsons, FIT, Central Saint Martins, Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale—and send topranked graduates out to search the world for inspiration. The old couture system, wherein de la Renta and Lagerfeld toiled for big names before they struck out on their own, brings freshness to old houses. The trend now is to promote from within: think Sarah Burton taking over after McQueen’s death, or Frida Giannini climbing the ladder at Gucci. Sometimes the trend is to promote family. Roberta Armani, Giorgio’s niece, worked her way up to become his head of public (and all-important celebrity) relations. She is now often the face of the company as her uncle slows down his own commitments beyond the design board. As for de la Renta, his stepdaughter and her husband, Eliza Reed Bolen and Alexander Bolen, now run the business side. “A design team helps,” says Cosgrave. “If you think of Marc Jacobs, it is all about his team—Katie Grand, Venetia Scott, Juergen Teller and so on. But he gets the final say. Think of Angela Missoni and how she is working with her daughter and responding to what Margherita’s entourage wants to wear. Karl Lagerfeld has a coterie of young people around him. Likewise Galliano when he was going strong at Dior. This keeps a brand relevant and young.” The modern woman who stands as their inheritor is Miuccia Prada. Born into a wealthy family of Italian leather goods manufacturers, she first pursued a PhD in political science and, while a student, flirted with Communism. The only reason not to include her among the list of living legends is that, at 62, she is still in the prime of her design career. Think of her innovations, particularly the simple and revolutionary nylon bag she introduced in 1985, ushering in the era of the logo

Miuccia Prada with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli

bag with a modern, minimalist twist and clearly enunciating what the Prada brand is about: smart, clean-lined, daring. The inheritor designation also goes to the two men who defined fashion in the ’90s: Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs. Theirs may be a new vision of success, one played out on a broader cultural stage beyond the runway. Ford, now 50, smashed onto the scene in 1995, reinventing Gucci with his velvet pants and slashed-low satin blouses. He then tore up the blueprint at YSL before departing—at the height of his creative powers—to make movies. When he came back to fashion it was his way, going back to a couture model with private showings and custom appointments—the provocateur flipping progress on its head. For his part, Jacobs, 49, laid down the smack with his 1992 grunge collection. Though critically acclaimed, his collections had production problems. It was only when he kicked a serious drug habit and got down to work doing his own line while filling an influential post at Louis Vuitton that Jacobs found the discipline to deliver. Two names of a more commercial tenor—and strong capitalization—are Michael Kors and the resurrected Diane von Furstenberg. The princess learned her lesson straying too far from her core business with beauty and licensing disasters in the ’80s, but (with the help of her daughter-inlaw) the renewed label has offerings across multiple price and product sectors. Names come and go in fashion, and perhaps in this era where labels trade on their heritage the real lesson is in sticking it out. Fashion does eat its young, and like sea turtles struggling to the ocean, very few survive the full ride. /

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Image © Getty Images

Designers Marc Jacobs (left) and Michael Kors at the 2010 CFDA Fashion Awards in New York

/ CAREY MULLIGAN

Fresh as

a Daisy This page image © Getty Images.

She wowed us in An Education and showed her raw side in Shame. Now Carey Mulligan faces her biggest career challenge as the ﬂapper-era heroine of The Great Gatsby BY CHRISTOPHER LOUDON

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This page: TOBEY MAGUIRE, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, CAREY MULLIGAN and JOEL EDGERTON in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ drama “THE GREAT GATSBY,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Carey Mulligan at the 82nd annual Academy Awards, 2010 (far left), and with (L-R) Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio and Joel Edgerton in The Great Gatsby.

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When, a scant three years ago, Carey Mulligan burst onto the scene with her Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated portrayal of Jenny Mellor, the sheltered schoolgirl whose heart is won, then crushed, by a dashing older man, in the Sundance-blessed indie An Education, the delightful British lass ignited endless comparisons to another gamine charmer who had taken Hollywood by storm more than a half-century earlier. As the trade bible Variety enthused, commenting on a pivotal scene in which young Jenny is swept off to Paris by her rakish paramour, “you could almost swear you’re watching Audrey Hepburn skipping through the same streets 50 years ago.” Yes, Mulligan shares Hepburn’s quiet grace and her tomboy-turned-ingénue demeanor. But if comparisons must be made, a far more apt role model is Julie Christie. Like Christie, Mulligan earned her ﬁrst wave of recognition at

age 20, when cast opposite Keira Knightley in director Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. And, just as Christie was 25 when she scored an upset victory at the 1965 Academy Awards, besting Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music for her performance as amoral London model and social climber Diana Scott in director John Schlesinger’s Darling, so too was Mulligan when An Education elevated her to Oscar-nominee status. But what makes the Christie link most valid is that Mulligan possesses the precise same heady blend of breathtaking beauty and immense talent. Not that the latter was given much chance to shine in the projects that immediately followed An Education. There were small roles in potentially big (though ultimately disappointing) ﬁlms like Brothers and Public Enemies. Mulligan got top billing, and solid reviews, for her portrayal of Kathy, the tortured “carer” 81

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Carey at the 15th annual Hollywood Film Awards Gala, 2011 ©Getty Images. LEONARDO DiCAPRIO as Jay Gatsby and CAREY MULLIGAN as Daisy Buchanan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ drama “THE GREAT GATSBY,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Carey at Orange British Academy Film Awards, 2010 ©Getty Images.

“In Shame, Mulligan scored deserved kudos as kid sister Sissy, a ticking time bomb of neuroses and self-destructive impulses, paramount among them a near-incestuous ﬁxation with her brother.”

in director Mark Romanek’s adaptation of novelist Kazuo Ishiguro’s sci-fi bestseller Never Let Me Go, but the bleak film proved box-office poison, earning less than $3-million during its North American release. Another disappointment, the sequel Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, cast her in the largely thankless role of Gordon Gekko’s idealistically greed-averse daughter. (The film did, however, spark a romance with costar Shia LaBeouf, which burned hot for about a year. Mulligan is currently engaged to Marcus Mumford, lead singer of the British band Mumford & Sons.) An equally underwhelming role in a far better film followed, with Mulligan playing Irene, the victimized young mother befriended and aided by Ryan Gosling’s nameless stunt driver in Drive. Then, last year, a juicy part that Mulligan could, quite literally, sink her teeth into, finally came her way. Though costar Michael Fassbender corralled most of the attention for his stark performance as bedeviled sex addict Brandon in Shame, Mulligan scored deserved kudos as kid sister Sissy, a ticking time bomb of neuroses and self-destructive impulses, paramount among them a nearincestuous fixation with her brother. After Shame, Mulligan stepped into her biggest, and potentially riskiest, role yet, beating out Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Michelle Williams, Blake Lively and her Pride & Prejudice and Never Let Me Go costar, Keira Knightley, to play Daisy Buchanan in director Baz Luhrmann’s lavish (current estimates place the Australian-filmed project’s budget above $125-million) interpretation of The Great Gatsby, costarring Leonardo DiCaprio. With as gifted as storyteller as Luhrmann at the helm, hopes are high that the classic Jazz Age story of a self-made millionaire and his doomed infatuation with a lovely, if vacuous, married socialite might finally be properly captured. The F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, acknowledged as one of the greatest works in all of American fiction, has previously been filmed four times: a silent 1926 version (of which no copies survive); a solid, though little-seen 1949 version starring Alan Ladd; a dreadful, made-for-TV adaptation in 2000 (with Mira Sorvino and Paul Rudd); and, most famously, the muchmaligned 1974 treatment, written by Francis Ford Coppola, that teamed Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

The challenge (best met by Ladd and Betty Field in the ’49 version) is that Gatsby and Daisy are intentionally derisory figures. He is comprised entirely of surface gloss; there is no substance beneath the luxe patina. She is vain, selfish and conniving. To present Gatsby as a noble hero, as Redford did, is to undermine Fitzgerald’s intent. As for Farrow, her Daisy emerged as more mousey than witlessly hedonistic. If Luhrmann remains strictly loyal to the book, Mulligan and DiCaprio have more than the necessary chops to deliver stunning, perhaps even Oscar-worthy, portraits of these two uniquely flawed figures. If nothing else, early on-set photos confirm that the film, scheduled for release on Christmas Day, will look appropriately opulent. Mulligan will be seen sporting vintage gowns and dresses contributed by Ashley Olsen from her own private collection and dripping in diamonds and pearls supplied by Tiffany. And, as happened in 1974, the movie’s celebration of 1920s style is already being felt on runways around the world (for details about the global Gatsby influence, turn to Le Jazz Age Haute on page 84). Next up for Mulligan is another American period piece, costarring Justin Timberlake, as screenwriter/director brothers Joel and Ethan Coen investigate the folk music scene of the 1960s in Inside Llewyn Davis. Then, the Hepburn comparisons will start anew if rumours are accurate that Mulligan will headline a remake, scripted by Emma Thompson, of My Fair Lady, with Colin Firth filling the Henry Higgins role that earned Rex Harrison both a Tony and an Oscar. It is, of course, as easy to picture Mulligan as the impeccably poised swan that emerges at story’s end as it was to envision the flawlessly elegant Hepburn. But Mulligan as the ear-bruising Cockney guttersnipe Higgins plucks from the Covent Garden pavement will truly be something to savour. /

Clockwise from top, centre: Carey Mulligan with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby; as Sissy in Shame; named Best Actress for An Education at the Orange British Academy Film Awards 2010; at the 15th annual Hollywood Film Awards Gala in 2011. styleissue.ca

e L Jazz Age Haute

Though The Great Gatsby doesn’t arrive on screen for another eight months, its effect is already being felt on runways around the globe BY LEANNE DELAP

All images © Getty Images

Gucci

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Zac Posen Ralph Lauren Etro

Julien Macdonald

The runways for spring 2012 were indeed a full-on flapper party. Lest we forget, the original fashions of the Twenties were nothing short of a revolution: American women, heady with their newly minted suffrage and stewed in Jazz Age libertinism fuelled by sex, cigarettes and bathtubs full of gin, chopped off their hair, ripped off their corsets and hiked up their full skirts—the better to dance the night away. A generation battered by war and a flu pandemic put on their glad rags. The ’20s saw a uniform movement to what is called a “tubular” shape: a bound-breasted, slim-hipped androgynous silhouette that persisted through the decade, surviving even the stock market crash. Women adopted T-strap and Mary Jane heels, skirts rose first to mid-calf then to a scandalous high of just below the knee. It was a trend that began on the runways, with Coco Chanel and her tomboy chic. Her French compatriot Madeleine Vionnet, inventor of the bias-cut gown, took the shape to the masses: the looks caught on like wildfire because what appeared at couture, embroidered in beading and dripping with pearls and diamante Deco geometrics, could be copied by home seamstresses sans gewgaw. The point was the dead simple shapelessness, not the icing. Which is why the look had such impact and staying power. So why are we gaga for Gatsby now? The past few years have been no picnic, and fashion has not shown such exuberance since the days before 9/11: remember the Gucci gas masks? Edges have been hard, shoulders braced, we have all been Wang warriors for a long time. What is most remarkable about the current resurgence of a softer ’20s vibe is its pervasiveness: references appear across continents, at labels lofty and upstart. Seldom do fashion designers all come to the same conclusion at the same time. Even more important is that, except in a few red-carpet cases, this trend is not costumey. The smartest designers have taken the hallmarks that hearken to that dizzying, razzle-dazzle decade and made the looks modern and relevant. styleissue.ca

Ralph Lauren Christian Dior

Marc Jacobs

Marchesa

The next most obvious signal is the ﬂapper fringe. This was most evident at Marchesa, where models shimmied down the runway swooshing white or copper dangles; and the power duo of Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig fell even harder for the trend in their fall 2012 collection just presented in New York. Where Marchesa goes, the stars will follow. London’s Julien Macdonald, who started his career as a knitwear maestro, has hewn heavily to embellishment of late and some of his collection featured lavish dancehall bugling and fringe. At Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs added some feathered trim to some of his vision-in-white shapeless shifts. And at Dior, there were very sophisticated Twenties touches, such as a see-through gown with jet beading arranged to look like a fringed skirt. 86

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It is, of course, the cloche hat that rings the quickest trend bells—and it appeared on Dior runways as well as at Ralph Lauren. At Emporio Armani they were low-browed short brimmed boaters. But the king of this castle is Marc Jacobs, whose clever hats are an intellectual riddle. He has taken sport-style material—the kind tennis-style headbands are traditionally made from, and fashioned a kind of tube cloche. Thus he is using modern technical sports fabrications to make a play on the headbands and signature bell-shaped cloches of the ﬂapper era. His collection nods to the Twenties themselves in silhouette, without any obvious references.

All images © Getty Images

Geometric patterns that suggested Deco furnishings were everywhere, most notably at Gucci and Etro. Both those Milan shows featured midcalf gowns that looked heavy with striped, square and chevron embellishment, as though they would make that distinctive Twenties costume-party clacking sound as beading crunched to the beat. This look was found at Emporio Armani and at BCBG and Alberta Ferreti. It reaches its apex at Tory Burch where the dresses could walk straight onto the Gatsby ﬁlm set. Permalinked to the Twenties, and to the emergence of women’s pantsuits, is the image of Jordan Baker, Gatsby’s enigmatic whippet who brazenly cheated at golf. The epitome of sophisticated ennui, Baker called the shots, the very literal embodiment of ‘wearing the pants’ in the fast company she kept. Remember, it took a double-barreled iconoclast to pull off trousers in that era. Both Emporio Armani and Ralph Lauren showed gorgeous, ﬂowy and creamy Twenties-styled pantsuits that play up the juxtaposition of soft and strong.

Etro

Ralph Lauren Emporio Armani Tory Burch

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Calvin Klein

3.1 Phillip Lim

Vionnet

The Vionnet label has recently been revived, under the direction of Italian twin sisters Barbara and Lucia Croce. In the spirit of the founder of the house, there are some lovely, swooshy, bias-cut silk-satin embroidered dresses, including this Oscar-worthy citrine number. The body-skimming look, with a bit more va-va-voom than the flapper flat-bodies, was originally a celebration of freedom from restrictive undergarments. The look was taken up by a young Joan Crawford who, before her ’40s shoulder pad period, was an ingénue in softer, bias-cut looks. And it is Crawford channeled by L’Wren Scott, who was showing sexy, silent-star worthy cream silk gowns for spring. A similar mood surfaced on the Zac Posen runway. If you extend the logic of the simple Twenties shape to the masters of minimalism, you get a thoroughly modern version of the same at Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani Privé and at 3.1 Phillip Lim. Those gowns, in soft nudes or liquid golds, are for the ultimate, unfettered flapper girl of 2012. /

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L’Wren Scott

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sing & SHINE

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in the heat of the night photos by malina corpadean styled by cary tauben

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On Catherine: Fantasy tweed dress, Chanel; gold and diamond ring, Tiffany & Co.; diamond earrings and bracelet, Birks. On Timor: suit, shirt and shoes, Dior (at boutique Duo in MontrĂŠal) Beauty Notes: Dior 5-Couleurs Designer Artistry Palette in Smoky Design (eyeliner and four eye shadows); Smashbox Limitless Lip Stain & Color Seal Balm in Sangria Fragrance Notes: For Catherine: Daisy by Marc Jacobs. For Timor: Emporio Armani Diamonds Black Carat by Giorgio Armani

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On Catherine: skirt and jacket, Burberry; earrings and ring, Tiffany & Co.; sunglasses, The Row (at TNT). On Timor: pants and shoes, Dior Beauty Notes: Estée Lauder Mad Men Collection Lipstick in Cherry, Crème Rouge blush in Evening Rose Fragrance Notes: For Catherine: Chloé Rose by Chloé. For Timor: Bleu de Chanel by Chanel

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On Catherine: dress, Matthew Williamson (at TNT); diamond earrings, Birks. On Timor: suit, shirt, shoes, Dior Beauty Note: Essie nail color in Demure Vix Fragrance Note: For Catherine: Burberry Body by Burberry

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On Catherine: leopard dress, Michael Kors; vintage earrings, Chanel (at Absoluxe.com); shoes, Christian Louboutin (at Holt Renfrew); earrings, Melanie Lyne; ring, Le Ch창teau. On Timor: suit, shirt, and shoes, Dior Beauty Note: Elizabeth Arden Pure Finish Mineral Tinted Moisturizer SPF15 and Rose Aurora make-up collection; Maybelline SuperStay 10HR Stain Gloss and Great Lash Washable Mascara in Blackest Black Fragrance Notes: For Catherine: Serpentine by Roberto Cavalli. For Timor: Gucci Guilty Intense by Gucci

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On Catherine: red dress, Azzedine AlaĂŻa (at Holt Renfrew); vintage earrings, Chanel (at Absoluxe.com); shoes, Christian Louboutin (at Holt Renfrew). On Timor: pants, Dior Beauty Note: Dior Brow Styler in Universal Brown Fragrance Notes: For Catherine: Jâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;adore by Dior. For Timor: Dolce & Gabbana The One for Men by Dolce & Gabbana

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On Catherine: dress, Gucci; bracelet and ring, Gucci (at Birks); shoes, Christian Louboutin (at Holt Renfrew). On Timor: silk robe, stylistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own Beauty Note: For Catherine: Dior DiorSkin Forever Flawless Perfection Wear Makeup in 010 Ivory Grooming Note: Clinique Skin Supplies for Men 3-Step Skin Care System; Moroccan Oil lightweight Hydrating Styling Cream Fragrance Notes: For Catherine: Flora by Gucci. For Timor: Brit For Men by Burberry

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On Catherine: dress, BCBG; bracelet, HermĂ¨s; earrings, Isabel Canovas (at Absoluxe.com); shoes, Giussepe Zanotti (at Browns). On Timor: shirt, Tom Ford (at Harry Rosen); pants, Diesel; watch Rolex Beauty Note: Smashbox Camera Ready 5-in-1 Beauty Balm SPF 35 (exclusively at Sephora), Limitless 15 Hour Wear Cream eye shadow in Fern, in stores April 8 Grooming Note: Biotherm Homme Force Supreme Lotion Fragrance Notes: On Catherine: Valentina by Valentino. On Timor: OBESSION for Men by Calvin Klein

Photographer: Malina Corpadean for Judy Inc & 2M2 Styling: Cary Tauben for Folio & Plutino Styling Assistant: Maxine Iannucelli Hair and make-up: Nicolas Blanchet for Folio Models: Catherine & Timor for Folio Digital support: Pipeline Productions Retouching: Nicolas Blanchet

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facing beauty BY JOAN HARTING

Effortlessness is the essence of summer beauty.

The unfussed-over look so desirable during the sun season actually requires more than a little effort. To simplify things as much as possible, we’ve mapped the best route through the trends and pinpointed the tools you’ll need to get there. The best news may be that hair-wise, impeccable is out. Today’s taste for deconstructed waves, simple ponytails and messy knots, up-twists and braids makes the transition from the lake/pool to nightclub a whole lot less time-consuming. In terms of makeup, the runway dictates an even, all-over glowing complexion—often unaccented with blush. Borrow that look; it’s a great backdrop for the power brows and lush lashes that are so important now. However, startling swaths of red and orange eye shadow should probably be left on the catwalk in favour of lids tinted pearly white or light grey and accented with a dark liner. When you’re feeling frisky, add a cat’s eye ﬂick of liner at the outer corners of the eyes. And while this summer’s prettiest mouth is sensuously nude and glossy, there are plenty of places to park your appetite for daring colour. Twenty of them, to be exact. The latest nail lacquers let you indulge your inner Picasso with everything from oceanic blues to sea-foam greens to chocolaty browns. It goes without saying (almost) that sun-protection is a must, and you can now get your daily dose of UVA and UVB defense from a host of treatment and cosmetic products as well as from traditional sun blocks and screens.

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Photographer: Christoph Strube; Model: Adrianne Ho for Ford Models; Hair and make up: Wendy Rorong for Plutino group.

But we all know the reality is slightly more complicated.

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Head Case Bathing caps may have gone one out with E Esther Williams, but that doesn’t mean your hair can’t use some sun-and-swim season protection. Aveda Sun Care Protective Hair Veil ($34) is a handy lightweight, water-resistant UV-defense spray that defends wet or dry hair from colour fading, damage and dryness.

Bronze Goddess Why risk the long-term damage of a real tan when faking it is so easy? For instance, you can sweep on the look of a naturally glowing, sun-kissed face with Dior Nude Tan Sun Powder in 002 Amber ($53). Or get golden all over, indoors or out, with Clarins Self Tanning Milk SPF 6 ($35). It’s simple to use, pleasantly scented, offers UVA and UVB sun protection and moisturizes in the bargain.

The e View V When it comes omes to eye makeup now now, everything starts with the brows. They’re strong, full and d demand attention. Anyone can achieve commanding brows with M•A•C Penultimate Brow Marker ($22). It’s a quick-drying liquid in a miraculously self-adapting universal shade that yields precise, natural, feathery strokes. The prettiest summer eyes are shadowed in gentle cloud colours, pearly blues, greys and whites, with an intense shade—inky navy, for example—providing definition and accent along the lash line. Happily, Giorgio Armani Écailles Classic Eye Palette ($70) collects all the aforementioned in one sleek black “paintbox.” The finishing touch? A flirtatious fringe of impossibly long lashes via Maybelline Illegal Length Fiber Extensions ($9.99) in one of two waterproof black shades.

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Shhh! Right now, it’s all about the neutral mouth. Which is not to suggest that lips should cede anything in terms of notice-me voluptuousness. The Buff shade of Smashbox Reflection High Shine Lip Gloss ($22) combines filler spheres for smooth volume and light-reflective pearls for a luscious, notice-me finish.

Digitally Daring If not now, when? Summer’s the timee to indulge ind your wildest colour cravings. And your nails ails are the place to do it. Drench your digits in YSL Laa Laq Laque Couture in No. 18 Bleu Majorelle ($27). Or hint at your darkest yearnings with toenails smouldering in Estée Lauder Pure Color Nail Lacquer in Molten Lava ($25).

Eau De De Seduction Italians rreally know how to make a woman feel desirable. What man could resist the deliciously subtle blend of white trufﬂe, orange blossom, wild strawberry and jasmine in Valentino’s alluring new Valentina fragrance (80 mL EDP Spray, $125)? The 3D bouquet on the bottle is a delightful tribute to femininity, too. Then there’s the piquant pink peppercorn note that introduces designer Roberto Cavalli’s new signature scent. This man who clearly loves women offers a sensual, come-hither combo of orange blossom, amber-y benzoin resin and vanilla (50 mL EDP Spray, $80).

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F. B.

D. E.

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Simply Adores… BY CHRIS METLER & CHRISTOPHER LOUDON

A. CREED VIRGIN ISLAND WATER COLOGNE New from sixth-generation master perfumer Olivier Creed, inspired by a family sailing adventure, this tropical, unisex scent blends copra, Antilles lime, white bergamot and Sicilian mandarin (with a delectable bottom note of sugar cane) to capture the very essence of a leeward breeze off Cruz Bay. $165 (30ml travel size); $275 (75ml spray); $330 (120ml ﬂask). At select Holt Renfrew locations. (creedboutique.com) —CM

B. NICHOLAS KIRKWOOD POP OUT FLOWER PLATFORM With these colourful, ﬂoral-patterned pumps, it seems visionary style guru Nicholas Kirkwood is boldly presenting you with the opportunity to literally put spring in your step. (And fashion-forward guys are due for some fancy footwork, too. The quirky Kirkwood says he’s launching a men’s line next year). $1,195. At select Holt Renfrew locations. (nicholaskirkwood.com) —CM

C. ELA BY ELA M.I.L.C.K. CLUTCH The M.I.L.C.K. (an acronym for essential cargo: money, I.D., lipstick, cell phone, keys) tops the list of Ela Kowalewska’s must-have bags. The asymmetrical ﬂap clutch, minimalist bohemianism at its best, comes in a spectrum of shades, but the in-demand colours for spring are cool sky blue and crisp cobalt. $295. At The Narwhal boutique in Toronto or online at The Code (thecode.ca) —CM

D. HERMÈS ARCEAU LE TEMPS SUSPENDU As stunning as it is groundbreaking, this singular timepiece can make time stand still. A simple press of a button makes the date indicator vanish and, as if by magic, time freezes. Press again, and real time returns. Unorthodox opulence, Hermès-style. $16,515. At all Hermès Canada locations. (hermes.com) —CM

E. LE LABO VINTAGE CANDLES The ne plus ultra of luxury candles, ideal accompaniment to an indulgent soak, they’re hand-poured, 100% soy, burn up to 50 hours and are available in ﬁve scents (we’re partial to the Calone 17, its crisp marine notes mixed with amber and geranium). $63. Exclusively in Canada at 6 By Gee Beauty. (lelabofragrances.com) —CM

F. THEODORA & CALLUM TIE ALL SCARF The ultimate in versatility, this multi-purpose, linen-viscose kerchief can be worn as a shawl, a skirt, a strapless dress, a head scarf or even used as a beach blanket. Available in a variety of patterns, the Serengeti perhaps best speaks to the spirit of the season, with its organic palate of olive, citrine, sienna and earth-toned lines, arranged in a diamond pattern that echoes African baskets. $200. (theodoraandcallum.com) —CM

G. TRUNKS FOR TRUNKS Move over Vilebrequin, there’s a new player in the pool’s fast lane. Love Brand & Co., launched last year by Oliver Tomalin, specializes in luxury swimwear for men and boys, with a heart-tugging twist. For each pair sold—available in an assortment of solid, stripes and patterns, complete with tusk-shaped aglets on the drawstring—ﬁve percent of the proﬁts go to Elephant Family, dedicated to saving the Asian elephant from extinction. £78 for boys’ styles; £128 for men’s. (lovebrand.com) —CL

H. LEDBURY SHIRTS Though conceived in back of a Notting Hill pub on Ledbury Road, these shirts—masterfully styled and tailored from the finest materials—hail from Richmond, Virginia. The assortment is kept intentionally lean, with a smattering of additions each season, augmented by limited-run special editions. Available exclusively online, most in regular and slim fit, they rival any other shirt-maker for fit, quality and class. $115US and up. (ledbury.com) —CL

I. COACH SHOULDER PURSE Just in time for summer, the return of a classic that’s big on style but ideally compact for those sun-drenched days when you want to travel light. A hit with celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, this Coach gem is also setting the fashion blogosphere abuzz, ﬁnding favour with such trendsetters as Hanneli Mustaparta and Emily Weiss. Available in red, white, British tan, black, lime and navy. $198. (coach.com) —CL

J. EDDIE BORGO PYRAMID CUFF Jewelry designer Eddie Borgo is a master at marrying high-end luxe and street savvy, as skillfully demonstrated in this provocative piece, a hexagonal cuff of silver-plated brass with pyramid studs adorning top and underside of the fold-over clasp. $355. At select Holt Renfrew locations. (eddieborgo.com) —CM

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Flies on the Wall / ART

At London’s Tate Modern, a 25th-anniversary retrospective celebrates the cunning vulgarity—and sharp-edged social commentary—of BritArt bad boy Damien Hirst

Stepping into a Damien Hirst exhibit, the first thing you clock is the multitude of blacksuited security guards standing at attention, evenly posted amongst the artwork with the precision of a military operation. Running the risk of outnumbering the canvases, the platoon’s poker-faced presence makes for an arresting welcome – and a potent statement of Hirst’s stature in the art world. One doubts if the Crown Jewels would warrant such ordnance. Or perhaps this deadpan armada is actually performance art – and the intimidated spectator an unwitting bit player. Have I just been lassoed onto Hirst’s stage? The theatre of Hirst has always carried the fascination of a freak show, the surrounding media circus bolstering the carnival air. Maggots devouring carcasses and dead animals pickled in formaldehyde may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Hirst is as much a household name in Britain as Tetley. The BritArt bad boy remains one of the most influential artists of his generation, eternally challenging, shocking, taking the mickey and shedding light on British art. The massive 25th anniversary Hirst retrospective at the Tate Modern (until September 9) is the first substantial survey of his career ever mounted in the UK, and includes key installations not seen since 1991. The 70-piece survey is an opportunity for visitors to set aside the hype and judge Hirst’s work with fresh eyes, to follow the unravelling of his extravagant career, the roots of his trademark themes and the route

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of his spectacular stardom. The Tate Modern, after all, is not an auction house. The monetization of Hirst’s artwork rocked the art market in equal measure to Hirst’s general disruption of sensibilities. When his famous diamond-encrusted skull, For the Love of God, fetched £50 million in 2007, it became the world’s most expensive piece of contemporary art. That Hirst was part of the consortium who purchased the breathtaking bling serves to fuel his reputation as a mediasavvy self-promoter. If the controversial skull is the embodiment of modern materialism, then Hirst himself is both puppet and puppeteer of his own masterful “media art performance.” Even critics who can’t get past the “vulgarity” of Hirst’s artwork end up taking their hats off to his astute mechanics (lest they be accused of sour grapes). Any discussion of Hirst inevitably leads to the dirty subject of money. While Hirst cunningly points the finger at the vulgarity of the fine art of moneymaking – just as his subject matter forces us to acknowledge the unpleasant realities of death and decay – he is utterly complicit in the economic capitalist wheel. His flagrant acknowledgement of commodity culture, and his gleeful participation in the celebrity machine, works in symphony with the blatancy and literalness of his artwork to reinforce his position as the consummate 21st-century artist: a snake oil salesman who exquisitely captures the spirit of the times, the profound emptiness. Hirst’s Warholian cunning took him to the top of the modern art food chain.

Damien Hirst, Beautiful, childish, expressive, tasteless, not art, over simplistic, throw away, kid’s stuff, lacking integrity, rotating, nothing but visual candy, celebrating, sensational, inarguably beautiful painting (for over the sofa) 1996. © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved. DACS 2011. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates.

BY KENDON POLAK

“The monetization of Hirst’s artwork rocked the art market in equal measure to Hirst’s general disruption of sensibilities.”

Opposite page: Hirst’s Beautiful, childish, expressive, tasteless, not art, over simplistic, throw away, kid’s stuff, lacking integrity, rotating, nothing but visual candy, celebrating, sensational, inarguably beautiful painting (for over the sofa), from 1996

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Bursting onto the art scene in 1988 while still at college, Hirst was the ringleader of what later became known as the YBAs, the young British artists of the late ’80s and ’90s who revitalized the UK art scene with shock tactics, entrepreneurial smarts and youthful bravado, and was instrumental in defining Cool Britannia pop culture during the Tony Blair years. Hirst’s fame was cemented the moment multimillionaire advertising mogul and art collector Charles Saatchi purchased the artist’s first major work, A Thousand Years, in 1990, which featured a rotting cow’s head being devoured by maggots and flies that were subsequently zapped to death by an Insect-O-Cutor. At its heart, in setting forth the lifecycle of a fly (from hatching out of an egg to feeding off a carcass, mating and dying), the sordid spectacle asks whether or not humans are able to feel sympathy for a fly. We purport to value life and love animals but routinely swat flies without compunction and install insect zappers in our restaurants. But is the life cycle of a fly any less meaningless than a human’s? What are we doing aside from eating, having sex and dying? In Hirst’s work, we see our own lives flash before us. More to the point, we see our decay. On the one hand, he is a shocking showman and a joker, but his themes can be deadly serious. And even Hirst admitted to feeling a bit like Frankenstein after having

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created A Thousand Years. (By Jove, he’s human!) He doesn’t only address death and decay; he physically shows it, literally. Should we be offended? While the subject matter might offend the sensibilities of some, it’s the obviousness of Hirst’s artmaking that offends others more deeply. Does placing an object in a glass box and displaying it as artwork tell us anything more than what the object literally is? Old Masters used motifs like wilting flowers, black scythes, broken pitchers and flags at half mast; Hirst gives us the actual dead animal and human skull. His most iconic work is probably the dead 17-foot tiger shark suspended and preserved in formaldehyde, which ended up symbolising BritArt globally during the Cool Britannia era. So what’s the difference between that and something you might find in the Natural History Museum? Our first clue, of course, is the title that Hirst ascribed to this 1992 installation – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. The colourless formaldehyde resembles water, a dramatic device that appears to give life to the dead creature. At first glance, the shark appears quite alive, pristine, ruthlessly staring at the spectator, stirring our fears and threatening death. Here is an animal that could easily kill us or at least devour a limb for lunch. Hirst’s shark is disconcerting, and dares to wreak havoc with our assumed human supremacy over the animal kingdom,

with our right to kill and consume other living beings. Humans = meat. Is our position in the food chain any more sacred than the fly’s? The shark tank is a massive installation, but the idea is larger than the event itself. The popular accusation, even among fellow artists, that Hirst employs a team of assistants to construct his artworks, is easily defended. Who built St Paul’s Cathedral? Everyone knows that Sir Christopher Wren did, of course. An architect isn’t expected to load up the cement mixer and install the plumbing. At the end of the day, Hirst thought of it; we didn’t. Hirst had the guts to take it to the market place and sell it for shedloads of money; we didn’t. The rest of us are merely commentating on Hirst’s brazen conceit. Not giving a fig about people’s opinions has afforded Hirst enormous freedom. Notoriety, disgust and hate mail have fanned the flame of celebrity. His “crass” and “tasteless” installations serve to make the art world ponder “how on earth is he going to top this?” in much the same way as Hirst’s mother inadvertently provided the title for Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull by asking her son, “‘For the love of God, what are you going to do next?” Well might you ask. Hirst’s latest exhibit, The Complete Spot Paintings, takes the art of excess to a new level. All 11 of the Gagosian Galleries around the world were recently taken over simultaneously by Hirst’s career-spanning obsession with polka

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Damien Hirst with his Mother and Child Divided (left) and Argininosuccinic Acid (right) at Tate Britain’s 2007/08 exhibit Turner Prize: A Retrospective 1984-2006

ESSENTIAL VIEWING A TRIO OF NOT-TO-BE-MISSED CANADIAN EXHIBITS BY FRANCISCO ALVAREZ

Rendering of installation within Canada pavilion

Architecture fans won’t want to miss Migrating Landscapes at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (March 15 to April 29), an exhibition to select the architectural team that will represent Canada at the Venice Architecture Biennale later this year. A distinguished jury will select from seven regional winners across the country, all of whom have designed innovative dwellings inspired by the theme of immigration.

dots, exhibiting a selection of 300+ highlights from Hirst’s mind-boggling 1,500 spot canvases. Remarkably, and arrogantly, most of them look much the same. One assumes, and indeed hopes, that Hirst’s tongue is planted firmly in cheek. The dizzying exhibit was a cleverly timed springboard to the current Tate retrospective. Hirst’s infamous “symbol of excess,” For the Love of God, is free to view at the Tate’s Turbine Hall for the fi rst 12 weeks. One room is devoted to Hirst’s self-curated two-day Sotheby’s auction in 2008, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever, which raised £111 million concurrent with the Lehman Brothers collapse. That sobering coincidence remains a poetic counterpoint, not unlike the current timing of the Tate retrospective, mounted in the sober light of recession-battered, austerity-era Britain. The signature shark is present and accounted for, along with the maggots, the carcasses, oodles of butterflies and cigarette butts, and walls of pharmaceuticals. Pondering the pill paradox – panacea or poison? – leads us inextricably back to Hirst’s splendid preoccupation: media vita in morte sumus. In the midst of life we are in death, grinning at the grim reaper, mocking mortality, with Hirst rubbing our noses in it, laughing in the face of our shared fear—and sticking diamonds in it. /

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Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) Deux femmes courant sur la plage (La Course) (Two Women Running on the Beach [The Race]), 1922 Gouache on plywood, 32.5 x 41.1 cm, Pablo Picasso gift-in-lieu, 1979, MP78 Musée National Picasso, Paris © Picasso Estate SODRAC (2012) © RMN/Jean-Gilles Berizzi. Migrating Landscaps image by MLO.

For the Love of God, 2007

Two Women Running on the Beach [The Race], 1922

Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario has snagged spring’s biggest show, presenting Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris from May 1 through August 26. The exhibit will feature more than 150 important works ranging from drawings to sculpture. The show is currently making a limited-time world tour while its permanent home inside Paris’ sumptuous, 17th-century Hôtel Salé is undergoing extensive renovations.

Come early fall, Toronto’s Power Plant will present last year’s most celebrated contemporary art piece—Christian Marclay’s brilliant The Clock (September 21 to November 25), a 24-hour-ﬁlm and sound collage made up of extracts from world cinema and screened in real time.

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/ DESIGN

The dynamic design duo of George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg bring their talents home to create their breathtaking Manhattan apartment BY KAREN VON HAHN 110

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There is an interesting interplay of contrasting effects as one steps into the newly completed New York digs of internationally acclaimed designers George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg. The entry is dark with dramatically lit surfaces; the mood is portentous, mysterious–as if one had stepped into the ancient doorway of a dimly lit Zen temple. And then the 4,000 square-foot space with a wraparound view of the Hudson river reveals itself as a light-ﬁlled oasis of pale Scandinavian greys and lilacs punctuated by the kind of bold choices in furniture and art that these two landmark designers—partners in work and life—have come to develop as a joint style signature. Physically, the pair present a similarly complex picture. Glenn is tall, blond and Nordic looking. George is ﬁne-boned, dark-haired and of Asian descent. More than three decades ago, they met as students in the same class of Interior Design studies at Toronto’s Ryerson University. At graduation, the two were merely casual acquaintances. “I remember thinking, I don’t have the skin for this, I’ve got to start getting a business together,” recalls George. “And Glenn already had three jobs on the go that he was working on from his car.” A year later, after a chance meeting, the former classmates decided to share studio

space. “We were both sick of working from our homes or our cars,” says Glenn. “So we rented a small space [in Toronto] at King and Parliament and decided to try out working together.” In 1980, the two young, inexperienced designers opened a ﬁrm they decided to call Yabu Pushelberg. “It was a bit challenging when we started,” says George. “As designers with big egos, I was worried about the constraints of working with someone. I was like, ‘do I have to like everything Glenn does’?” “We were just terrible businessmen for the ﬁrst 10 years,” says Glenn. “We would work at our drawing boards from 10am ’til midnight and then party all night and be back at our desks at 10 the next morning.” “Hey, it was the ‘80s,” laughs George. “As designers, we didn’t really know what the rules were,” adds Glenn. “We just had a passion for doing things.” But then something magical happened. A creative synergy began to develop between them that made their creative collaboration something better than the sum of its parts. “George would be working at his drawing board on one side of the room and I would be at mine on the other, and honestly, when you stepped back it was like you were looking at

George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg

Y&P NYC Apartment, images by Richard Powers. George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg, image by Evan Dion.

“As designers, we didn’t really know what the rules were… We just had a passion for doing things.”

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one big drawing that met in the middle,” says Glenn, who calls what happened to the two of them in both work and in life, a form of “psychic convergence.” It is fascinating to observe that since Charles and Ray Eames (see story on their design partnership, page 114), the field of architects and designers who are involved on both a creative and romantic level seems to be one that is growing. In New York, Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, and Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi in Philadelphia are two notable examples. In Toronto, Ralph Giannone and Pina Petricone and Meg Graham and Andre D’Elia are also partners in work and life. Is it possible that when it comes to design and architecture, two very connected heads are better than one? According to Glenn, “George’s designs are typically more unusual and more thoughtful than mine. He is amazing at throwing in that something extra, a perfect little twist.” In the words of George, “Glenn is like the Pied Piper. He’s the ears, eyes, nose and mouth of clients. He is very pragmatic—he knows when to pull back and just how much to push.” Adding, “Glenn has this ability, this lively antennae on trends. He will see a cool little thing in a coffee shop in Marrakech and turn that into a design idea for a project we’re working on.” Each brings something different to the project, yet each has learned something from working beside the other. “I’m a broad strokes person,” says Glenn. “I like immediacy, things to move quickly. George has taught me to understand and to listen to people. He’s taught me patience.” “I tend to be a little obsessive, fixated on having everything perfect,” admits George. “Glenn has taught me to let go a little and realize that if you can’t reach perfection you can still get to a point where you and the client are pleased with the result.” As to the results of their latest collaboration on their own New York apartment, both are extremely enthusiastic. Says George, “It’s amazing, because here we are in crazy downtown New York with all the action, and when you enter the space, it’s just very calm, very serene.” Part of this calming effect Glenn attributes to the apartment’s abundance of natural light. “It faces the Hudson river with these beautiful wraparound views,” says Glenn. “The light is very special here in the afternoon.” As to the interior decoration, well, the design duo recently inducted into the Interior Design magazine “Hall of Fame” and named “Designer of the Year” by Contract magazine has managed to create with their own living space a tourde-force of timelessly elegant and restrained 21st-century style that is also a highly personal reflection of their combined tastes. “The spaces are very refined and simple,” says Glenn. “Everything has been placed in a very methodical way.” Part of keeping it so simple was an attempt at a stylish understatement–one that aims to be more of a slow burn than a big in-your-face ‘wow.’ Says Glenn, “it’s more of a subtle reveal, where you can’t take it in all in one glance. Slowly you turn a corner, look again, and there’s 112

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Y&P NYC Apartment, images by Richard Powers.

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something there to surprise you. Something you didn’t see.” For the ﬁrst time in ages, the two global warriors who estimate they spend more than 300 of 365 days on planes, have found somewhere not only to hang their hats but to showcase their collection. “For years, as we’ve been travelling, we’ve been collecting all of these fabulous pieces, but they’ve been sitting in a warehouse,” says George. “We didn’t really have a home for them.” Amazingly, all these pieces, which were simply gathered along the way and never purpose-bought for the space just seemed to ﬁt when they brought them all out of storage. “It’s like our own museum,” Glenn laughs, “but without the serious austerity. And we are very pleased with the way it worked out, that everything has a sense of space around it so you can really see and appreciate each object.” The pair have already started entertaining. “We had a few people over here for lunch the other day and a charity event for 200 a couple of weeks ago,” says Glenn. “For big groups or small, the space proved just ideal.” Sometimes on their own, the couple will just order takeout from the restaurant downstairs, which just happens to be the NY outpost of celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. “It’s great, the guys come right upstairs with all the food and all the linens and serve us just like it was our private restaurant.” Lest it all sound too unbearably blissful, such creature comfort has been hard won. Over the past three decades, Yabu and Pushelberg have

“We are still so into each other and share such a passion for what we do,” says Glenn.

produced style-setting, award-winning interiors for the likes of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, the St. Regis and Mandarin Oriental hotels, Louis Vuitton, Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany & Co. The ﬁrm is now so busy juggling top-drawer projects that it has 100 employees in two offices in New York and Toronto. And Glenn and George are now working on their dream getaway, a modern beach house in The Hamptons. Quips Glenn, “it’s going so well, we can barely hold onto the bicycle, it’s moving so fast.” And yet the two are clearly happier in their personal and professional lives than ever. “We are still so into each other and share such a passion for what we do,” says Glenn. “We don’t mind working seven days a week and living on a plane, “says George. “We live who we are.” After a beat, Glenn adds, “George and I live a very lucky life. We have been blessed.” Given their luck in ﬁnding each other and the calibre of the work they have been able to create together, one would be hard-pressed to disagree. / 113

/ ARCHITECTURE

Enduring Cool The incomparable modernist legacy of Charles and Ray Eames: embraced by architects, designers, collectors, documentariansâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and Ice Cube BY KAREN VON HAHN

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Charles and Ray Eames, 1948

Opposite Page: Poster for Eames: The Architect and The Painter. Above from left: Charles and Ray Eames posing on a Velocette motorcycle, 1948, as seen in Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s documentary EAMES: The Architect and the Painter. © 2011 Eames Offi ce, LLC. All images courtesy of FaulhaberPR.

Filmmaker Jason Cohn with Eames’ grandson, Eames Demetrios

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If Ray Eames were still alive she would be celebrating her 100th birthday this year. Her husband Charles Eames would be a ripe old 105. Interesting, then, that the two famed American modernists still seem so of-the-moment. In December, the rapper Ice Cube released a video on YouTube about the Eames House that went viral: turns out the hip hop-star, who studied architectural drafting, happens to be a big fan. Since then, almost half a million viewers have watched Ice Cube tour them through the couple’s landmark 1949 Case Study House #8, and opine, from the cool comfort of a classic Eames chaise in the living room that “in a world full of McMansions… the Eames made structure and nature one.” A new film, the first documentary ever made about the couple, Eames: The Architect and The Painter, which enjoyed its Canadian premiere at Toronto’s Interior Design Show in January, is drawing design types at film festivals across the globe. A vintage rosewood Eames chair and ottoman in mint condition—the same model that is part of the MoMA’s permanent collection—is a “get” at its current asking price of $6,900 on 1stdibs.com. Meanwhile, close to fifty of their original furniture designs, some dating back almost five decades, are still in production today. “Charles and Ray Eames essentially created the definition of what we see as ‘design’ today,” says LA-based filmmaker Jason Cohn, who marks his directorial debut with Eames: The Architect and The Painter. “They defined a set of criteria for design that is still in use. What’s good today is what they decided was good 60 years ago. Virtually everything we call ‘modern’ even now is still in some way a tip of the hat to the Eames.”

In the opinion of University of Waterloo School of Architecture professor Donald McKay, what distinguishes Charles and Ray Eames from other 20th-century architects and designers is that “the work spans a huge range, from some architecture, films, books and exhibitions and lots and lots of furniture.” Toronto-based architect Meg Graham— part of a modern-day husband-wife design firm called superkül inc with her partner in work and life Andre D’Elia, who just happens to be talking to me while sitting in an Eames aluminum group chair—concurs. “Not only do their fabrics and furniture still get specified, their ability to look at the world on a variety of scales, across a bunch of different media and communicate universal concepts is still accessible and relevant,” says Graham. What’s more, in McKay’s opinion, the charismatic aura of the pair, their innovative design studio and unique collaboration “establishes this romantic idea of a couple engaged in a sort of liberal intellectual probe into all the artifacts of modern life.” Charles Eames was born in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri. As the story goes, he was kicked out of the architecture program at Washington University because of his passion for the radical ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1929, he married his first wife, Catherine Woermann, with whom he had a daughter, Lucia. After starting his own architecture firm in 1930, he received a fellowship to Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he became head of the design department; and where he met a fetching young art student named Ray Kaiser. Contrary to unschooled opinion, Charles and Ray Eames were not brothers. Ray Bernice

“Not only do their fabrics and furniture still get speciﬁed, their ability to look at the world on a variety of scales, across a bunch of different media and communicate universal concepts is still accessible and relevant.”

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The celebrated Eames House in Paciﬁc Palisades, California

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century.” It launched a decades-long collaboration with the Herman Miller company, which took over the production of the Eames’ vast catalogue of furniture designs. “The furniture is incredibly well crafted and so smart,” says McKay. “When you look at their legacy with furniture alone, it shows a lot of spirit. They didn’t create anything weighty, anything that was going to be a burden in your life.” And then there was the Eames House. Originally designed as Case Study House #8 in collaboration with Saarinen, the pair scrapped the plans and opted to build, with the simplest off-the-shelf, prefabricated materials, a oneof-a-kind architectural artifact that expressed itself as their gesamtkunstwerk. “They made a house with building components they bought for a different design, reconﬁguring it on the ﬂy as if it was a Meccano set,” says McKay, who calls the Eames House “a great act of imagination.” “Sometimes architecture is something only an architect could love,” says Graham. “But they had such a sense of wonder at the beauty of existence, such a special and optimistic way of looking at things.” In Cohn’s opinion, while the Eames came out of the great European modernist tradition, “to them there was something cold, austere and machine-oriented about the Bauhaus. It didn’t have a lot of colour or warmth or humanism.” Something in the Eames’ post-war American optimism, their easy California coolness, demanded a more full-blooded kind of approach. “Of course form followed function,” adds Cohn, “but why stop there? Shouldn’t delight be a function?” Which is where Ray came in. Trained as an abstract expressionist, Ray had the ability to read and transmit emotion through colour,

Ray and Charles Eames, with a model of their exhibition Mathematica: A World of Numbers… and Beyond, 1960

shape and form. A famous packrat, her office was a terrifying hoard of found objects, from stones and seashells to old industrial parts and toys. “The things they collected and had in their home—Mexican folk art, children’s toys, a bit of tumbleweed hanging from the ceiling—weren’t important objects, they were just things they liked,” says McKay. “They made an argument with their taste that refined design was an affordable proposition. If there is any status manifest here it isn’t one of money or power but one of insight and of the heart.” In one of the most amusing moments in Eames: The Architect and The Painter, a friend of the couple describes dining at the Eames House. After dinner, which he has eaten lightly in anticipation of dessert, the final course is served and it’s a simple clay vase placed in front of each guest that is filled with red flowers. True to Eamesian form, what we are left with—the dessert—is a visual treat. /

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Above from left: The Eames House in Paciﬁc Palisades, Cal., as seen in Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s documentary EAMES: The Architect and the Painter, courtesy of First Run Features. Ray and Charles Eames photographing an early model of the exhibition “Mathematica: A World of Numbers…and Beyond”, 1960, as seen in Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey’s documentary EAMES: The Architect and the Painter. © 2011 Eames Office, LLC. All images courtesy of FaulhaberPR.

Alexandra Kaiser was born in Sacramento, California in 1912. A talented disciple of the famed abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann (one of her paintings is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art), she was a founder of the American Abstract Artists group. In September 1940, Ray met Charles at Cranbrook while preparing drawings and models for the Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition and the pair fell madly in love. The following year they were married and moved to Los Angeles. The painter and the architect had a shared vision: in Ray’s words, “to make the best for the most for the least.” And what’s more, according to the couple’s grandson, Eames Demetrios, to build a life “where life and work and love and work were all together.” The Eames’ first efforts were not all that successful. A sensuous moulded armchair designed in collaboration with Eero Saarinen won acclaim for its originality; unfortunately it couldn’t be put into production because they designed the look of the chair first before working out how to make it. This was a lesson to the engineering-minded Charles who, from then on, rigorously sweated every facet of their designs, from an ergonomic angle to the quality of its manufacture. During the Second World War, the duo was commissioned by the U.S. Navy to design and produce moulded plywood splints and stretchers. The technology they developed in this effort at their now-famous studio at 901 Washington Blvd. (affectionately known as “the Eamery”), became the key to unlocking the secret of moulded plywood furniture that would be inexpensive to produce and would not require an excess of old-fashioned upholstery. Their first chair of moulded plywood, designed in 1946, was rightly dubbed “the chair of the

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/ TRAVEL

Shifting Luxury Into High Gear

Even when passed at 300 km/hr, there’s no missing the unique beauty of the UAE’s brightest new gem, the Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi Hotel BY GLEN BAXTER

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Photography by Glen Baxter

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In a country where you’ll ﬁnd the world’s tallest building, the most luxurious hotel and quite possibly more ‘starchitect’ projects per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world, you would think that standing out in the United Arab Emirates would be a near impossible feat for any building. But The Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi Hotel, which sits predominately over the Formula One raceway circuit, is not just any building. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a huge fan of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa with its Armani Hotel and world’s highest restaurant, At.mosphere on the 122nd ﬂoor, offering horizon-bending views. And I could stare at the so-called

‘7-star,’ sail-shaped Burj Al Arab Hotel all day, not to mention the imposing Jumeirah Emirates Towers and quirky O-14 Tower. The Yas Viceroy Abu Dhabi Hotel is not the tallest, biggest or most expensive, it’s simply the most breathtaking “architectural piece of poetry” in the UAE. Inspired by speed and movement, the 499-room, 85,000 square metre structure built over the F1 track is the work of Canada’s New Yorkbased Hani Rashid of Asymptote, who also happens to be the brother of industrial design superstar Karim Rashid. I spoke to Rashid at the Design Exchange’s Black & White Gala in Toronto about his

award-winning project. “The building really started as a kind of statement,” he explains, “trying to understand what it’s like to build a large structure over a raceway.” Comprised of two 12-storey towers connected by a pedestrian walkway and covered by a shimmering glass and steel canopy that reﬂects the sky, the Yas looks like a mirage on the horizon. “We looked at desert tents from the Bedouin culture,” says Rashid, “We looked at Islamic patterns and the mathematics used in Arabic architecture. We looked at the environment and we realized that we are working in a very hot and climactically

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Photography by Glen Baxter

hostile place. So we designed a very efficient environmental skin, which draws hot air up through the building and out the building. It’s an environmental statement that talks about the poetry of speed and movement.” The Yas is best appreciated on race day. Last November, I attended my first F1 race in Abu Dhabi as a guest of Hugo Boss, a McLaren team sponsor. I had a great seat with the best track sight lines, but spent the full two hours starring at the Yas, with cars barreling underneath it, at speeds of over 300 km/hr. If by day the Yas is a desert mirage, by night it slowly transforms into a futuristic glowing pod. The entire building illuminates gradually, thanks to an extensive system of LED lights attached to 5,096 diamondshaped glass panels. “We feed video into the LED type projectors,” says Rashid. “They hit the glass and the glass starts to transform into a kind of animated surface and then that gets more and more active as it gets darker outside. By nightfall, the building kind of moves at its own speed with animated sequences that we created to flow over the hotel.” The interior of the hotel feels like a desert oasis, even on race day, when the roar of the engines causes the body to shake and the eardrums to pierce. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls are built to reduce the high decibel noise to a low hum. The design is contemporary and calming, dominated by curved walls. A dozen restaurants, bars and lounges can be found throughout the hotel.

The crown jewels of the interior spaces are the $5,500 a night, two-storey Presidential Suites. These guest rooms come with a private lap-pool, which double as a privacy wall for the open, spacious bathroom equipped with steam room, sauna and standalone bathtub. Other luxurious features include Bang & Olufsen televisions, a lounge, private bar and chef’s kitchen with a dining room accommodating up to 16. And, of course, each Presidential Suite boasts an outdoor terrace overlooking the F1 racetrack. The next Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is slated for November 4th, 2012. But visitors can fulﬁll their need for speed year ’round at Ferrari World next door, switch gears completely at the world class Yas Links Golf Course or keep it in neutral aboard one of the multimillion-dollar yachts docked at the Yas Marina. /

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/ JE NE SAIS QUOI

Bon Viveur BY HOLLY BRUBACH

Babs Simpson, née Beatrice Crosby de Menocal, was born in 1913 in Peking, to a Cuban father and an American mother, and carried in a laundry basket aboard the trans-Siberian railway en route to the U.S. Her childhood was spent abroad, wherever her father’s career in international banking took the family. When she was ten, they settled in Boston, where Babs was sent to private schools and later met her husband, William Simpson, a student at Harvard. They moved to New York and after seven years divorced, in 1941. At which point, Babs enrolled in secretarial school. “Because, needless to say, I knew nothing.” Syrie Maugham suggested that Babs go see about a job with Plucer, a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. He hired her to run his studio; his assistant was the young Francesco Scavullo. Fulco di Verdura—jewellery designer, man about town, friend and prankster—used to call impersonating famous people. One day the voice at the other end of the phone claimed to be Carmel Snow, the Bazaar’s editor. “Oh, fuck off, Fulco, I’m busy,” Babs replied. In fact, it was Carmel Snow, who, apparently undeterred, recruited her as a junior fashion editor under Diana Vreeland. Gridlock at the top of the masthead eventually prompted Babs to move on to Vogue. Among the photographers she worked with over her long career: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, Erwin Blumenfeld, John Rawlings. It was Rawlings’ wife who persuaded Babs to adopt Tico, her pet troupial (pictured above, atop Babs’ head). He took it upon himself to ward off male admirers. “One night in Jamaica, I put him in a drawer. With his strong beak, he got out and attacked the poor man I was in bed with until he drew blood through the sheet.” In time, Babs lost interest in fashion and transferred to House & Garden, where she remained until the magazine closed in 1993. She now resides in a chic retirement home in Rye, New York, where this conversation took place. 122

Any regrets?

Not really. I just wish I’d been a nicer person. What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self?

When I was twenty, I wasn’t interested in advice. Everybody was raising hell. I celebrated the end of Prohibition with six boys I knew, and after a few drinks, we went to Scollay Square, where there were tattoo parlors. The idea was that each of them would have a letter tattooed on his hand, spelling R-E-P-E-A-L, and I would have the date tattooed on my knee. Thank God I came to my senses when the moment arrived. Last year I was in the hospital. Can you imagine having to explain the date on my knee to the surgeon? Is there a gene for style?

Some people are born with it, and others learn. Vreeland had naturally great style. Very elegant. “Elegant” is a word people don’t use anymore.

Because they’re not. They’re not interested in elegance, either. I think what’s happened to feet is so ghastly. You know how it all started? Gogo Schiaparelli, Elsa’s daughter, had polio when she was little, and one leg was a tiny bit shorter than the other. Her mother didn’t want her to feel ashamed, so she designed some platform shoes—one of them was built up on the inside. So platform shoes as we all know became very fashionable, and look what they’ve turned into. Today they all look like prosthetics. What is the cure for a broken heart?

The next man. Some people seem young for their years, others grow old prematurely. How do you account for age?

It’s the age you are in your mind that matters. In my mind, I’m in my forties or ﬁ fties, the time when I was working. Any unﬁnished business?

A whole lot of things I want to read. I don’t feel that I’ve come to the end of my interest, so it’s just a question of how long the body will last. Finish this sentence: “If I had it to do all over again, I would…”

Do it all over again. S / Style & Fashion Magazine

Babs Simpson,

“Ask me anything,” Babs says. “I have no shame.”

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