FASHION Magazine

Every week our Beauty Fix columnist takes on your questions about makeup, skincare, hair and more. Have a beauty question we haven’t answered? Email us at beautyfix@fashionmagazine.com or ask away in the comments below.

How can I curb shine without powdering repeatedly throughout the day?
There’s obviously an argument in favour of luminous skin in summer, but that usually means being in control of the areas that are radiant and glowing. If your rendition of “radiant and glowing” veers more towards “shiny mess,” then you probably should enlist the help of a product to reduce shine. Powdering your face is a bit high maintenance, and it’s also bound to lead to product build-up if you’re touching up throughout the day. Avoid that heavy look by misting your face with Face Atelier Ultra Matte ($40, faceatelier.com) instead. It can be used before or after makeup to minimize shine. The formula contains silicones that are heat-, moisture-, and sebum-resistant, which eliminates shine while giving skin an optical blur effect that softens the appearance of fine lines and pores. This stuff is a must-have for brides!

Shop some of our favourite sunscreens for the season »

Newsflash: Sunscreen isn’t akin to a hazmat suit. But the power to defend yourself optimally is literally in your hands.

The rules for sunscreen have changed yet again. Yes, you still have to apply it, and not just in the summer or when there are no clouds. But Health Canada says it can no longer be called “sunblock”—it’s not denim, so some UV is getting through—or “waterproof.” (“Sunscreen” and “water-resistant” are allowed.) This will spare us from a false sense of security.

Days after Isabella Rossellini turned 40, she was asked to leave one of the loves of her life. Not a husband or boyfriend—she ended relationships with Martin Scorsese and David Lynch long before celebrating
the big 40. It wasn’t acting, either, as Rossellini racked up stacks of film credits (from noirs such as Blue Velvet to comedies such as Death Becomes Her) before writing, producing and starring in her popular series of short films on animal sexuality, Green Porno. Rossellini, the daughter of Ingrid Bergman and filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, was pushed to abandon her place in the modelling world. And, as she conveyed in her 1997 autobiography, Some of Me, when she was 43 an executive at Lancôme decided that after serving 14 years as the face of the brand, it was time for a younger woman to take over. Rossellini has maintained that she was urged to graciously retire to save herself from embarrassment. Looking back at her track record (she’s appeared on 28 Vogue covers), she decided she would be foolish to step down from such a lucrative career. And at the age of 61, she continues to make modelling a part of her life, recently starring in a Bulgari campaign.

As for acting, Rossellini kept Hollywood at bay to devote her time to her Green Porno project. Having written and starred in more than 45 films on the subject of mating in the wild kingdom (she dresses up as a handful of creatures to demonstrate their sexual encounters), Rossellini, who is currently doing a master’s degree in conservation and ethology, has seen her venture blow up online as well as offline, as millions of viewers have clicked on her educational spots. The project became so popular that Rossellini adapted the films into a one-woman stage show which will have its Canadian debut in Toronto on June 6 as part of the Luminato Festival.

Around the white, light-filled studio, flashes of lime green, fuchsia and black Lycra blur as a roomful of people sway together, balance one another overhead, roll around or gently connect palm to palm. We’re at 80 Gladstone—a movement studio in Toronto opened by yoga teacher Diane Bruni—and this is Contact Improv, which involves moving spontaneously for an hour and a half while maintaining a point of contact with a partner. You sweat and gain strength from bracing your core and supporting your weight so you can lift your partner off the ground, if the urge strikes you, but you’re also forced to be present and mindful, as the movement is always changing. “It’s a wonderful metaphor for life,” says Bruni, who also offers classes taught by a Shaolin monk. “His spiritual practice is qi gong and tai chi and kung fu. It’s not praying and it’s not sitting; it’s all in movement.”

The search for spiritual stand-ins is on. “The yoga studio is a modern-day church, in a way. It’s where people go to be with their community,” says Jeff Krasno, co-founder of Wanderlust, a festival of meditation, yoga, movement and more that takes place in 14 cities worldwide—including Whistler (July 31 to Aug. 4) and Mont-Tremblant (Aug. 21 to Aug. 24)—and expects about 120,000 participants this year. “It’s about being around people who share your values and beliefs. [It’s] not religion in the more theocratic sense, but there’s an ethos to live mindfully.” In 2012, Krasno spoke at the Gospel of Sweat, held at New York’s Riverside Church and spearheaded by Lululemon, a company known for extolling the virtues of self-empowerment and inner development to its staff. Yogis and fitness aficionados gathered to sermonize about how a growing wellness-focused contingent is “praying through their pores.”

See our Spring 2014 athletic trend guide »

The last time I had contact with a tube sock was sometime in 1989. I was in Grade 9—the last year I was compelled to take gym class. It would fall under the category of extravagant understatement to say that I was not athletically gifted, and it still seems to me that not having to play team sports is one of the major upsides of getting older. So, as soon as gym class was no longer obligatory, I dropped it and fled the other way, at suddenly Olympian velocity.

Today, beholding a tube sock—the madeleine of middle school—still prompts a Proustian montage of fear, lanyards and bad gymnasium lighting. Fair to say, then, that this season’s celebration of haute sportswear is not my (gym) bag. But my childhood experiences with sports, especially the team variety, did provide me with much training in the art of play-meets-public spectacle. It’s a talent I appear to be honing tonight as I take the designer athletic trend for a spin—decked out in fresh-from-the-runway Marni—on game night at Toronto’s Real Sports Bar & Grill.

Sportswear took to the shelves in America during the Great Depression—a time when people began to prize utility over fuss and ornament. Fashion historian Rebecca Arnold wrote that it’s been “mythologized as an expression of American national identity—as practical, rational and authentic.” This season’s “activewear,” however, provides a swift kick to the practical and the rational, adding fancy and glamour to sporty lines and energetic colour.

No 16-year-old on earth can compete with Elle Fanning’s Hollywood cachet. She’s been on set with Cate Blanchett, shopped Rodeo Drive with Sofia Coppola and partied with Miuccia Prada in Milan (being the current spokesperson for Miu Miu and all). If that doesn’t signal a gal who is going places, her latest role in this summer’s Maleficent—which has her sharing the silver screen with Angelina Jolie—will. (P.S. she already shared screen time with Brad Pitt in 2006’s Babel and 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

On the cusp of Fanning’s next phase of fame, FASHION magazine photographed the young starlet for our Summer 2014 Issue in the apropos confines of an estate home in the Hollywood Hills. After she was snapped in outfits by a mix of labels ranging from Blumarine, Delpozo and Paule Ka, Fanning sat down with features editor Elio Iannacci to talk about fashion, film and family time with the Jolie-Pitt clan. Here is a sneak peak of Fanning’s cover story, due to hit newsstand shelves on May 19, 2014.

See the Gap’s Summer 2014 collection »

After a stellar Spring 2014 debut, The Gap’s new rock star creative director Rebekka Bay has clearly cemented a new ID for the brand: cool, current and oh so All-American. Her latest collection, for summer, has all of those elements too.

Picking up where she left off for spring, The Gap’s summer collection features casual wearable denim pieces and soft structured whites in a myriad of cool-girl pieces like colour-blocked button downs, paisley short shorts and star-printed slip-ons. Mid to light wash denim monopolizes the collection from skirts and boyfriend jeans, to dresses and vests.

After taking on her role as creative director last year the minimalist style mastermind has worked to design the best foundation pieces, creating strong groundwork elements of any collection. The collection, out in Canada on May 5, 2014 is sure to be popular with brand devouts and re-discoverers as well.