FASHION Magazine

Spanning three floors and 50,000 square feet, Eataly Toronto is home to four restaurants, three bars, a coffee shop, a brewery and a sprawling supermarket.

The post What to Expect When Eataly Toronto Finally Opens Its Doors This Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

“This is an incredible achievement that fills us with joy," says the restaurant's chef.

The post Gucci Osteria in Florence Was Just Awarded Its First Michelin Star appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Miuccia Prada isn’t exactly known for being all that press-friendly, and a rare interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica may shed some light on why the legendary designer hasn’t warmed to the media in the same way chatterboxes Karl Lagerfeld and Roberto Cavalli have.

In a translation by WWD, Prada’s feature in La Repubblica details all her concerns about the flagging Italian fashion industry. More than any other nation, Italy has the most family-owned luxury fashion houses: Prada, Gucci, Missoni and Fendi are just a few brands that still have an active voice from the founding designers’ families. But with more and more Italian fashion houses looking to sell (Valentino sold to Qatar’s royal family for over $850 million) or to expand by going public with IPOs, Prada is worried Italian fashion may become “second league.”

“[…] If our brands cross our borders, the credit, glamour, fame and decision making is in the hands of others, and we are abandoned, downgraded,” she cautioned.

Prada doesn’t fault the designers themselves; after all, she shows Miu Miu in Paris because of the city’s “attraction that is called glamour,” and Raf Simons’ move from Jil Sander (which shows in Milan) to Parisian fashion house Dior will mean “his value will further be emphasized.”

According to Prada, the real culprits are the Italian media and left-leaning intellectuals. Journalists’ treatment of their nation’s fashion industry as “frivolous” instead of a relevant industry contributes to the view that Italy is seen as a place with “less resources, culture, protagonists, ideas, vitality and money,” meaning that like Simons, “fashion goes elsewhere, looking for the best.”

In 1953, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a show that treated the automobile as an aesthetic achievement. In a Talk of the Town bit published in The New Yorker, the writer Brendan Gill played the Philistine, thinking old-fashioned thoughts about function and price as he was led through the exhibition by a curator from the museum’s department of architecture and design. The punchline of the piece occurred when, stopping by a Siata, the cool—Steve McQueen owned one—Italian sports car, Gill asked, “Handle nicely, does it?” The curator answered, “I don’t drive.”

Bill Blass, the American fashion designer, told a similar kind of joke in his memoir, Bare Blass. He confessed that “for eighteen years, beginning in the mid-seventies, I endorsed a line of Lincoln Continentals for the Ford Motor Company without knowing how to operate one.”

After reading those things, I—a non-driver for whom torque is something that happens on an ill-fitting T-shirt—felt less like a poseur going off to interview Max Wolff (page 78), a car designer now relishing his opportunity to reimagine the Lincoln.

By Randi Bergman and Jordan Porter

Fellini’s in Toronto (at least in spirit), and we can’t get the 8 ½ director out of our heads. Although he experimented with quite a few styles during his 30-year career, it’s his signature drama, seductiveness and extravagance that are on display at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in the form of film stills, magazine clippings and more. In honour of the molto dolce occasion, we bring you a Fellini-inspired edition of FASHION Plates, to help you channel the indulgent, sexy attitude of his many muses. So, up the glamour and get shopping.

Head to the TIFF Bell Lightbox for Fellini: Spectacular Obsessions and take in the chic excess associated with the director.

Bell Lightbox Exhibit (tiff.net)

Shop the guide now! »

By Jennifer Campbell

Montreal recessionistas, take note: On October 10 only, the Diesel store (2114 Mountain St., 514-845-4335, diesel.com) is offering the deal of the third-of-a-century.

In a season where ‘it bags’ are on the out, and updated classics are investment worthy, Jessica Jensen (shopjessicajensen.com) is a go-to designer. A Ryerson graduate with previous stints at Calvin Klein and Michael Kors, Jensen has honed her talent with the best of them. Her collection is a stunning selection of clutches and totes that are both luxurious in quality and timeless in their appeal. 

It must be a year of anniversaries: besides Blo Blow Dry Bar turning one year old, 2008 is the 20th anniversary of not one, but three fashion editors: Anna Wintour (of Vogue, duh), Franca Sozzani (of Italian Vogue) and Suzy Menkes (of tall hair fame and the International Herald Tribune). Closer to home, it’s also the 30th birthday of Banana Republic (bananarepublic.com).

It’s the end of this fashionable girls favourite season and the second bottle of Skyy Vodka this year has just landed on my desk. (TIFF is less than a week away and sponsor Skyy has come up with some tasty cocktails to commemorate the annual film fest, hence the new addition to my at-home bar. Atom’s Amarula Colada, (Click for recipes) after Canadian star director Atom Egoyan, looks delish.) One shouldn’t really look a gift horse in the mouth, but on a morning such as this, I can’t bear to look at it—just yet.

Fresh and tanned from a 10-day holiday on the Mediterranean, I’m back on the fashion circuit, energetic but frustrated with the weather (where will I flaunt my new gold Paule Ka micro-bikini and flirt with beach bums?) But thankfully I’ve got a bunch of cool things to do this month. I can’t complain. After eating like a pig in France (they now drink champagne on ice!) and Lebanon, it’s time to get a bit of a workout and get ready for those uber-tight leather leggings I’m dreaming of. (Haider Ackermann at Les Createurs is what I’m aiming for, if you must know.)

When you think of Geox shoes, stylish, swanky footwear isn’t what normally comes to mind—try granny-variety loafers and not-so-chic driving shoes as images that pop up instead.

When Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” he must have been referring to the weeks leading up to the holiday season. A frazzled yet fabulous time filled with eggnog, Amex bills and excess.

So naturally, what happened while riding the subway last week (while visions of Holt Renfrew danced in my head) came as a great surprise–a divine intervention. Pasted above an ad for a shopping mall, I noticed a sticker that read, “Consumption does not fill the void.” And suddenly, standing there with my parcels (a haute hostess prezzie and a fab new pair of bejewelled strappies to deck the halls in), I wondered: When did consumption begin to consume us?