Mirror Ball 2014: Canada’s beauty industry raises half a million for cancer charities

by Sarah Daniel November 28, 2014

This past weekend, the glitzy Mirror Ball hit Toronto’s Liberty Grand. The annual fundraiser brings out some of the biggest names in the Canadian beauty industry and benefits women with cancer, this year raising $500,000 for programs like Look Good Feel Better and Facing Cancer Together.

Brand managers and media types were buzzing about the silent auction items they had their sights on—one PR maven revealed that her husband was aggressively bidding on the Bimmer, which he later won—and the fact that ‘80s band Platinum Blonde was booked to play at the after-party. I had no idea until I arrived at my table that I would be sitting with Mark Holmes and Sergio Galli, the lead singer and guitarist. Eeek! All night long women—including the evening’s host, CBC’s Jessica Holmes—descended on the table to ask for photos and recount personal stories about how the first concert they ever attended was Platinum Blonde. Galli was easy to spot, with his tinted glasses and choppy, platinum-with-a-side-of-salt-pepper hair, while Holmes could have easily passed for a financier, perfectly coiffed and dressed in a tux.

Over dinner, the best ’80s intel came from Galli, who shared that M.A.C sponsored the band, back when the now-monolithic cosmetics brand was just a fledgling company with a tiny office at Carlton and Parliament in Toronto. “We felt sorry for them,” said Holmes. And so they let M.A.C’s artists do the makeup for videos and photo shoots. For the cover of their album, Alien Shores, “it was their makeup that gave us our tans.” And it was Holmes who was behind their massive blonde manes—he had trained to be a hairstylist, so he cut and coloured his bandmates’ lids. “My mother wanted me to have a fall-back plan.”