FASHION Magazine

Boo! Halloween is here and you’ve your Kimye costume is ready to go. Whether you’re celebrating Friday, Saturday, both, or neither, there are plenty of events, haunted or otherwise, to take in this weekend. Beautify yourself on the cheap, peep some Bond accoutrements up close or eat some brains for breakfast. Trick or treat!

Read on and find out what to do this weekend »

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The National Ballet of Canada must be feeling quite royal this year because it’s celebrating a diamond anniversary (that being 60 years) of pliés, and toasted as such at last night’s glittering Diamond Gala. The special edition of the company’s annual Mad Hot gala featured five performance works, including premieres of two spellbinding works, Polar Night (choreographed by Robert Binet and danced by real-life couple Heather Ogden and Guillaume Côté) and Silence Screams Venom (choreographed by Côté and danced by Greta Hodgkinson alongside Giorgio Galli, Keiichi Hirano, Patrick Lavoie and Christopher Stalzer) and finishing off with the most glittering of all: an excerpt from George Balanchine’s Diamonds, complete with the entire company decked out in jewel-encrusted costumes.

After the performances, the full house, including the ballet’s artistic director Karen Kain, Rufus Wainwright and Jorn Weisbrödt and the fabulously feathered Lynda Prince (who was overheard giving Kain posing directions) mingled all around the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. The designer-clad doyennes, Victoria Webster, Trinity Jackman, Cleophee Eaton and Amy Burstyn-Fritz, made Katrantzou/Erdem/McQueen sightings seem as simple as it could be with vodka cocktails and rock candy stir sticks in hand.

Today’s bag snoop comes via FASHION‘s latest and greatest new addition, features editor Elio Iannacci. Since joining the team last month, he has already broken bread with Sophia Loren, Iris Apfel and Rufus Wainwright, to name a few, and contributed to our overall fabulousness by well, just being himself. From the photos in this gallery, it looks like Elio carries all of his belongings with him to the office every day. Let’s go inside for the full scoop.

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It’s not very often that an evening can be described as unforgettable, but Operanation 8: A Muse Ball was exactly that. Last Friday, the Canadian Opera Company’s annual gala took over the three-storied lobby of the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, a glittering venue that had passersby on University Avenue gawking through the windows, and with good reason.

Yorkville’s Rac Boutique put together a fashion installation of custom-made designs by Canadian labels like Calla, Joeffer Caoc, Ashley Rowe, and Greta Constantine. Since the wares were showcased by models more mannequin than mortal, more than one of the 1,100 guests was excused for mistakenly fondling the ladies’ outfits. But really, who could resist copping a feel of that floor-length, electric-purple Arthur Mendonça number?

There’s some new blood in the building! And by that, we mean our building. Our office neighbours over at Luminato announced this morning the welcoming of a new creative director: Jorn Weisbrodt. Why is this especially exciting? Having worked with The Watermill Center, La Scala di Milano, the Spoleto Festival, the Barbican Centre in London, the Bolshoi Theatre (!!!), the Lincoln Centre Festival, and the Manchester International Festival, the German-born and currently New York–based director brings lots of new blood to the festival. Why is this even more exciting? Well, selfishly speaking, we (as in I) are huge fans (we/I mean huge!) of Weisbrodt’s husband, Rufus Wainwright. The two became involved with Luminato after Wainwright’s opera, Prima Donna, made its North American debut during last year’s festival. As a career stalker of the Ruf (ah yes, I was a card carrying fan club member of his internet fan group during high school, once waited in the cold for him to sign my purse… really), having him almost next door means our love affair might just continue… whether he likes it or not!

For opera fans and party lovers alike, the Canadian Opera Company’s annual fundraising gala, Operanation, is one of the hottest tickets of the year. Taking place in the crystalline Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, the event is an innovative mix of opera, rock, dance, and, of course, plenty of bubbly that not only delights the crowd but also raises a pretty penny for the company (last year’s gala raised more than $100,000). This year, the COC has sweetened the pot by adding Rufus Wainwright and Montreal-based dance-pop band Austra to the lineup of Operanation 8: A Muse Ball.

Some of the items in Lindsay Lohan’s 6126 clothing line look rather familiar to a couple of designers. Black Milk Clothing’s James Lillis and designer Jen Kao both say Lohan copied their designs. The company disputes this, naturally. [WWD]

But wait! It is apparently LiLo who’s had her designs lifted. [Stylecaster]

A NY Times report surfaced yesterday that H&M in New York’s Herald Square had been mutilating and dumping unsold clothing. H&M responded, saying “We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.” It’s worth noting that H&M is listed as a donor to Windfall, a Canadian new clothing bank. [NYTimes, Racked, Windfall]