Party pics: Voguing at Toronto’s wildest art party–the Power Ball

Selling out is déclassé among art types, until it comes to fundraisers. And a whole week before Power Ball 12, the city’s wildest (read: only wild) art party was most emphatically sold out. Which meant everyone wanted to be there last Thursday night. Which, in turn, made the night feel like the sum of all Fears of Missing Out (FOMO).

So did you? Add together voguing (Fritz Helder’s main room act, accompanied by a flurry of boas for all) and fetishizing (a freaky-cool performance by Jess Dobkin and Keith Cole, in a red-lit district) and noshing (the sweetest thing, an all-you-can-fit-in-your-handbag candy bar) and mingling (the sad “Panda Singles Bar”) and smoking (the raucous, gawking patio). Subtract dress code: No pants? No problem. Multiply by the ratio of vodka to soda in hand, and there was a hot mess afoot.

Anyway! The outfits! Come on, if you wanted to see art, you would—and should, absolutely—go to the Power Plant on a Sunday afternoon. If you were there on Thursday, you were dressed for a good time. The girls wore metallics and embellished things, surreally cool hairpieces or necklaces, and they were higher on heels than ever (oh, hi, Celine wedges! Givenchy stiletto booties, where have you been all my life?). Gents took it easier. They wore trousers cuffed with scuffed oxfords, if they wore trousers at all. Otherwise, they wore fishnets. That takes powerballs.

Above all, one sartorial observation was a thrill to make. For every Canadian designer in the house—Jeremy Laing (who was on this year’s Powerball committee), Evan Biddell, Rita Liefhebber,  the Greta Constantine guys, and more—there was at least one reveller repping their wears. “Is that a Laing?” guessed MTV’s Jessi Cruickshank, swathed tightly in white. I nodded, rapped back: “Is that a Wang?”

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