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.

Known most for her role as Robin Scherbatsky—the token Canuck on TV’s How I Met Your Mother—Vancouver’s Cobie Smulders is one of those stars who comes off as a natural on and off the camera. Photographed during an emotional time when her widely successful sitcom was wrapping up its last episode (airing March 31), Smulders cleared her just-as busy film schedule (she has a couple of blockbusters on her plate, including a star turn in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) to pose for FASHION Magazine’s April 2014 issue and chat with features editor, Elio Iannacci. Here is a sneak peek at some of the things she talked about in her cover story—which arrives on newsstands on March 17.

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.

Photography by Team Peter Stigter

Photography by Team Peter Stigter

Photography by Team Peter Stigter

Photography by Team Peter Stigter

Photography by Team Peter Stigter

1/5

Anna Dello Russo

Anna Dello Russo

2/5

Leandra Medine

Leandra Medine

3/5

Hanneli Mustaparta

Hanneli Mustaparta

4/5

Miroslava Duma

Miroslava Duma

5/5

Cara Delevingne

Cara Delevingne

If you type “street style star” into a Google search, it will generate over 671 million results. The pages range from gushy Tumblrs and Pinterest boards to roundups on magazine websites to street-style candids by the photographers who’ve catapulted these hitherto anonymous fashion plates into superstardom. For devout fashion followers, the names Hanneli Mustaparta and Susie Bubble roll off the tongue with the same familiarity as Anna Wintour and Carine Roitfeld. Meanwhile, type “fashion magazine editor” into a search, and you’ll get a paltry by comparison 136 million pages that err on the side of the pedantic “how to become” genre and images of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

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:

Shop Ania’s style » As a photographer, model and fashion blogger, Ania Boniecka knows her way around the racks. “Topshop, Joe Fresh, Zara and H&M are my go-to places,” she says. “I spend a lot of time shopping.” At 13, Boniecka and her family emigrated from Poland, and it wasn’t long before the leggy brunette […]

The post It girl: Meet Calgary’s model blogger Ania Boniecka appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

When Stephanie Mark moved to a new apartment last fall, she was forced to finally tackle a major project on her to-do list: “Clean out closet.” As co-founder of The Coveteur, Toronto-based Mark makes a living peeking inside the closets of others, but in rummaging through her own, she came face-to-face with more than a few ghosts of shopping sprees past. In fact, her closet cleanse unearthed an entire wardrobe’s worth of designer items no longer in rotation: a pair of Jimmy Choo flats, an Isabel Marant dress, a Ferragamo snakeskin iPad case. “I even discovered a pair of Proenza Schouler suede boots that I never wore—not once,” she admits with equal parts amusement and shame. Faced with a monstrous pile of barely worn designer labels, Mark decided to try her luck at consignment. She made $1,000 in three months.

Most of us have been in Mark’s position before. Who hasn’t spent what feels like a month’s salary on a pair of killer heels only to realize they’re literally killing your feet? Onto the top shelf they go, never to be seen—or worn—again. And then there’s the printed dress you couldn’t resist at the store but pass over every morning when it’s time to get dressed—it just hangs in your closet, tag still on. In her 2012 book, You Are What You Wear, psychologist Jennifer Baumgartner writes that only 20 per cent of the clothing in an average person’s closet is worn on a regular basis. That’s a lot of unworn clothes taking up much-needed space and, as Mark puts it, “making zero dollars.” Which explains why she and other in-the-know fashion professionals are increasingly finding ways to cash in on their closets.

“It’s a great way to purchase new pieces and keep up with the trends each season without having to live in a box on the street,” jokes Mark, who put her recent earnings toward a Christopher Kane dress she’s been wearing non-stop. Her pieces (69 in total) went to LAB Consignment, a high-end showroom in Toronto where owner Lauren Baker sells everything from Louis Vuitton handbags to Marc Jacobs cashmere hats (profits are split 50/50 with consignors).

See the Chanel photo shoot images »

Sailor stripes, nautical knots and laid-back luxe bring Coco Chanel’s Deauville style alive in Chanel’s Resort 2014 collection. Inthis photo shoot from our current issue, we delve into the world of Chanel codes and find that there are just as current as they were over 100 years ago.