FASHION Magazine

By Alexandra Breen

When it comes to encapsulating the pathos and fervour of a melodrama like Onegin, based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin, experience can be your best weapon. Just ask Xiao Nan Yu (a.k.a. Nan), a dancer for The National Ballet of Canada who first took on the role of Onegin’s Tatiana at age 22, just before climbing the ranks of the company to become a principal.

“It was a fast promotion,” she says before diving into a rehearsal. “I felt pressure to live up to their standards and questioned whether I did enough to deserve it.” Years of critical acclaim later, the 36-year-old is reprising her cherished Tatiana role this month (March 19-23) opposite McGee Maddox at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.

See the Lady 2.0 fashion shoot »
See the Spring 2014 lady trend »

This season’s early adopter likes her tops boxy, her prints arty and her pleats as plentiful as they can be. In this photo shoot from our March 2014 issue, we meet spring’s new woman: Lady 2.0.

Flexible glass is coming soon to curved cellphone displays. Suspension furniture held together by tension is eliminating the need for glue. And 3D printing is being used everywhere from the medical world—to recreate miniature human kidneys and livers in hopes of eventually using them in transplants—to the runway, where Dutch designer Iris van Herpen incorporated it into her couture collection last July.

The ways in which we’re now able to change a form’s shape are multiplying by the minute. Referring to the trend as “shape creation,” Loretta Miraglia, corporate senior vice-president of global brand product development and innovation at La Mer, says she believes it’s the third industrial revolution. “It’s going to influence almost every industry, including ours.” And it’s what inspired her to bring the concept to anti-aging skincare with The Lifting Contour Serum ($330, at Holt Renfrew).

Back when The Beatles were puff-ing away and taking sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar, karma seemed like a hippie fad for the blissed-out granola set. Today, it’s made its way out of the incense-filled archives and into the mainstream, casting a spell on everyone from Sofia Coppola to Justin Bieber, who (with the help of his Twitter followers) named his puppy after the cosmic concept.

In the world of karma, what goes around comes around in a never-ending cycle of cause and effect, birth and rebirth. Kind of like fashion. So it should come as no surprise that this and other mystical themes have become trendy lately for designers, who are referencing its powers in everything from Kenzo’s evil eye sweatshirts to Mara Hoffman’s witchy beach bags.

Briefly, in the early 1990s, I was a smut peddler. I edited an anthology called The Girl Wants To, which included art and writing about sex and the body, from Roberta Gregory’s “Bitchy Strips” to Barbara Gowdy’s strange, beautiful account of a young necrophiliac, “We So Seldom Look on Love.” The anthology was part of a growing wave of heated discourse by third-wave feminists—women making sense of sex in the ’90s. These were women who felt the need to write about want, desire, pleasure and other taboo information. Taboo because we were talking about our bodies and sexuality in ways we never had, at least publicly and en masse. Think forward, and think of what even the sweetest pop star imaginable, Katy Perry, is saying in virtually all of her songs: that she is a bi-curious, sexy dream-girl/gurl who refuses to “bite [her] tongue” any longer. Having been pushed down to the ground, she is up and roaring in the old-school manner of  “I Am Woman.” She is Helen Reddy 2.0, in other words: no bowl-cut and cardigan, no dulcet tones, but the same fervent desire to tell us that we, as women, need not suffer oppression lightly; that we are a pride of powerful lions.

Lately, there has been a sea change, with a powerful sense of another killer wave coming—a “sexplosion.” Writer and former Variety editor Robert Hofler used the term in his fascinating book of the same name. But while his exhaustive, illuminating book focuses on the period from 1968-1973, the wild time that followed the sexual revolution, Hofler’s theories suggest that the future of sex will become less “man-made.” And it already has, of course. Female performers are busily upsetting ideas about sex and power, about the naked body and their perceived passivity.

In her graphic song “Pour It Up,” Rihanna sings, “That’s how we ball out,” in a voice that is virtually empty of inflection. And in the controversial video for the song—“The really sad thing is that she thinks she’s being edgy and sexy when in fact she is slowly destroying her soul,” commented one disquieted fan—she sings this chorus as she presides over a strip club, sitting on a throne in a diamond bra, collar and Lana Turner wig, talking like a man, acting like a woman and unsettling our idea of what it means to be either.

See the metallic photo shoot » See our metallic Spring 2014 trend guide » Add spark to your spring with metallic threads, embossed leather and sequins galore. For this shoot from our current print issue, photographer Chris Nicholls and stylist Fiona Green took inspiration from shine-rich collections like Gucci, Versace and Lanvin. For more on […]

The post From the March 2014 issue: Sparks fly in this spring-ready metallic photo shoot appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

There is a reason why playing one of the sultriest women on TV looks so effortless for Jessica Paré. The 33-year-old is a self-taught sensualist in real life who loves to indulge (spas, chocolate, travel, designer clothes, you name it) so stepping into her role as Megan on the award-winning drama, Mad Men, was something she felt completely suited for. In the last two seasons of the series (a new episode airs on April 13), the Québécoise actress particularly brought the heat as she managed to eclipse every scene she was in by her smouldering portrayal of Don Draper’s secretary-turned-wife. While immersing herself into the art deco surroundings of Beverly Hills’ Crescent Hotel, Paré is just as sleek as her television counterpart. Insisting on starting her interview with features editor Elio Iannacci with a glass of pino grigio, Paré offered her thoughts on style, stardom and the women of Sterling, Cooper & Partners after shooting FASHION’s March cover (on stands nationwide on February 17, 2014). Here is a sneak peek of her inside story: