FASHION Magazine

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It is always darkest before the dawn, so the proverb goes. By our calculations, the sun should be rising on planet fashion any day now: the Fall 2012 runways plunged us into a cavernous black hole of clothes worthy of Louise Brooks and Siouxsie Sioux, and haunting beauty looks that referenced Tim Burton’s films. That mood also infected the making of Lady Gaga’s fragrance, Fame. “I like black, especially what it has to do with fame, because it is a veil,” she says, tapping her knife-like ebony talons on the table at a hotel in New York. “It’s sort of like saying, ‘I don’t want you to see something.’” The R&D department struggled to create the noir-hued perfume that turns clear once airborne—an industry first. (Rumour has it one staff member was inspired when he spotted a bottle of black vodka behind the bar while out for a drink.) The request for an ominously coloured juice was music to the ears of its perfumer, Richard Herpin. It meant he didn’t have to exclude ingredients that can be visually unappealing when mixed together. “I could use anything I wanted,” he says. As fashion has taught us, black hides a multitude of sins.

Toronto’s The 10 Spot (749 Queen St. W., 416-915-1010, 10spot.ca) has carved out a nice little niche for itself. When it first opened in 2006, it was one of many new nail bars spreading like wildfire across the city. But it was instantly likeable for its totally cheeky and hilarious attitude, and in the way it branded itself as the anti-spa, positioned way more as a place to congregate with your chicks rather than unwind and tune out the world.

Now, owner Kristen Gale has removed the relaxation/isolation component from facials with the addition of a Facial Bar,