FASHION Magazine

A great designer is one thing. A great designer who can throw a great party? That’s quite another, and something Greta Constantine has become deservedly synonymous with. Despite fall-like temperatures, Toronto’s glitterati took to the Yorkville home of Krystal Koo last night for one last kick at the poolside can—that, and of course, the debut […]

The post Inside Greta Constantine’s annual summer party appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

See the Canfar party images »

On a frigid late fall evening in Toronto, Bloor Street came alive with black ties and ball gowns for Canfar‘s AIDS-fundraising fête, Bloor Street Entertains. The annual event has a way of tempting the shimmery, well-heeled patrons onto the streets and into the street’s various shops which each serve an intimate dinner made by the city’s top chefs.

Before guests shuffled away to Mulberry, Holt Renfrew, Nespresso Café Bar or any of the various chic boutiques participating, they took to the Royal Ontario Museum for a pre-twilight party to get things started. The Gatsby-themed event kicked-off with a can-can dancing drag queen who wasn’t successful in getting the ladies to join in on the high leg-flying number. And with good reason: the dance is quite difficult long dresses. Design Exchange president Shauna Levy wore a slick, floor-length Greta Constantine, while grande dame Catherine Nugent was dressed in a vintage Bob Mackie deco style number.

The freezing temps did wreak havoc on some original wardrobe choices. With her shoulders covered, philanthropist Sylvia Mantella said, “I was going to go strapless, but it’s so cold.” Also overheard from a patron in sparkly Roksanda Ilincic: “I was going to go for Balenciaga—it’s Canfar!—But I went for something more conservative because of the weather.”

See all the Toronto Life Most Influential 2013 party pics »

At first glance, a party where every guest is nose-deep in a magazine may seem like the least social event ever. However, when it’s the launch party for Toronto Life’s annual Most Influential issue, a quick read-through is totally necessary: while everyone who made the list was invited, none of the Most Influential guests knew how they ranked. Hence the frantic-yet-totally-casual flipping of pages upon entry by guests like Robert Deluce and Charles Khabouth. Held in the ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton, deep red lighting and a swanky live band made the space feel like a Swing Era soiree.

While Toronto Life’s editor-in-chief Sarah Fulford was quick to make a few drunken stupor jokes, neither of the issue’s cover subjects—that is, Bill Blair and Rob Ford—joined in for the festivities. Sure, it would have been good for gossip, but they wouldn’t have added to the impressive style that permeated the event.

See the party photos »

The Room at Hudson’s Bay went full Anglo on Tuesday night with its celebration of two Brit shoe designers, Nicholas Kirkwood and Sophia Webster. Held in the store’s palatial new shoe department (seriously, it’s 20,000 square feet), the soiree served as a shoe shopping kick off as well as, well, just another excuse to party. Toronto’s style setters were in fine pre-fashion week form, pulling out all the outfit stops and the Nicholas Kirkwood chevrons to boot.

Kim Tanenbaum modelled her mother-in-law Carole Tanenbaum’s jewels just perfectly overtop an all-black outfit and Kirkwood’s wholesale director Josephine Papasavvas brought the party’s requisite Peter Pilotto factor alongside a stomach-bearing crop top. West end cred was sufficiently represented by Prince Innocence’s Talvi Faustmann and Josh McIntyre, who matched in long black trench coats. Hair statementing was a thing too, especially for a certain top-knotted shoe associate who delighted us with his kabuki-like appearance and definitive newness on the scene. You go girl.

See The Room’s Viktor & Rolf party photos »

Viktor & Rolf’s love affair with Toronto began last night with a fittingly springy fête at Toronto’s Hudson’s Bay Queen Street flagship. In town to celebrate their recent collections as well as to do press spots for their upcoming Dolls retrospective exhibit with Luminato this summer, designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren sported matching embroidered jeans (Horsting’s featured sunglasses while Snoeren’s featured moustaches) and matching thick rimmed frames, making them the ideal models for Toronto’s new eyewear-specific blog, The Spectacled.

In keeping with the Dutch duo’s eccentricities, The Room was transformed with newly papered walls featuring the Fall 2013 runway room’s eerie black and white floral print, a string quartet playing instrumental takes on pop music and strapping waiters, who passed many a prettily-decorated Perrier-Jouët champagne flute while wearing V&R-esque (and maybe even a little Denis Gagnon) glasses.

View the Fashion Cares performance and party photos »

The 25th annual M.A.C Fashion Cares gala set off with a bang on Sunday night, with a sequin-suited Elton John performing alongside Janelle Monae, Scissor Sisters, Chantal Kreviazuk and others in support of the the AIDS Committee of Toronto and Elton John AIDS Foundation. Co-chaired by Michael King and Elton John’s husband David Furnish, the show, aptly billed as a night of glitter and light, also featured speeches (and even a little runway work-out) by Linda Evangelista and Dean and Dan Caten of Dsquared.

See the TIFF party photos »

You better be ready for this jelly because the celebrity meet-cute heavens opened wide at last night’s Hudson Bay Company party for A Place Beyond the Pines at AME. Between myself and editor-in-chief Bernadette Morra, we had Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and Kristen Wiig in our clutches and the world could not have felt more balanced.

But let’s get acquainted with the soiree particulars: As waiters in Hudson Bay striped T-shirts passed hors d’oeuvres and bubbly, the stars (which also included Bradley Cooper, no big deal), the Bay’s big wigs Bonnie Brooks and Suzanne Timmins and a tight-knit group of editors and gossip experts—which included National Post’s Shinan Govani and Nathalie Atkinson, eTalk’s Elaine Lui and the Toronto Star’s Derrick Chetty—held court at the back of the lavish club.

Eva Mendes sat perched, looking truly resplendent in a black and grey lace-y Dolce & Gabbana dress, chandelier earrings and pointed black heels. Complete with half-turban headpiece, the actress looked as if to be plucked straight from the duo’s Sicilian-inspired Fall 2012 collection. After ordering a cocktail/Red Bull/water with one breath, Eva Mendes and I shared our love for the collection, turbans, and Ryan Gosling (okay, that last one never happened).

Today, we’re taking a look back at the year that was by counting down the top 10 beauty moments, developments, trends, and more. From Topshop to Tom Ford, they’re all inside!

View our top 10 »

View the photo gallery »

For as long as I can remember, my mother’s vanity held curvy glass bottles of Oscar de la Renta’s namesake eau de toilette. The elegant black signature on the bottle stood out, and I remember asking her more than once, “Who is Oscar de la Renta? Two decades later at the Bay’s Queen Street flagship in Toronto, I finally got a chance to see the man himself, in town to promote Live in Love, his newest addition to the fragrance world. Accompanied by the Bay’s CEO Bonnie Brooks on his left arm and Fashion Television’s Jeanne Beker on his right (he’s always been popular with the ladies), the navy suit­–clad de la Renta was the very picture of living in love.

View the photo gallery»

A black carpet, sprinkled with male models in white tuxes, beckoned guests to the second floor of the Bay Downtown Vancouver for the Thursday night grand opening of The Room, the department store’s second den of high fashion. Erdem Moralioglu and Brian Atwood—both on their first visit to Vancouver—Jason Matlo, Monika Deol, and Jessica Stam (to name a few) were among the crowd of well-dressed revellers air kissing, clinking glasses, and noshing on Hawksworth Restaurant–made canapés.

We’re barely halfway into 2011 and the fashion world has already seen our fair share of industry shake-ups: the Galliano scandal, Carine Roitfeld’s exit at Vogue Paris, Christophe Decarnin’s mysterious mental illness/ousting at Balmain, and now Patrick Robinson has been booted from the Gap.

While most of the recent switch ups seem to make sense⎯Galliano’s anti-Semitic outburst couldn’t very well go un-reprehended and Decarnin’s health issues were clearly in need of medical attention⎯we found ourselves puzzled upon hearing the news that Robinson had been presented with a pink slip due to lackluster sales in the first quarter of this year. We’ve seen many a powerhouse figure reinstate retail dinosaurs (Bonnie Brooks at The Bay , Jenna Lyons at J.Crew), so why not Robinson at the Gap?

By Randi Bergman and Meagan Wilson

Bonnie Brooks’ reinvigoration of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the flagship’s St. Regis Room in particular (now simply called The Room), has brought hot design names like Proenza Schouler, Thakoon and Erdem well south of Bloor Street. Factor in buzzy in-store appearances—with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, virtually every British designer worth mentioning, and Anna Dello Russo (who will descend with street-style phenom Tommy Ton on April 20)—and Toronto officially has a new nexus of chic.