FASHION Magazine

Praise the red carpet gods! The stars really pulled out all the stops this year at TIFF, which was great to see, given some years’ lackluster outings. Lace, length, and print were big trends this year, and so were megawatt designers, from Marisa Tomei‘s Proenza Schouler, to Madonna‘s Tom Ford, to Elizabeth Olsen‘s Erdem. They’re all big winners in our eyes, but if you HAD to choose, who would be your favourite? Vote after the jump!

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To lure the stars in town for TIFF, Toronto-based PR agency NKPR held a packed-to-the-chic-gills IT Lounge. The fashionable and free were on offer up during the fest, so the most important question can now be answered: Who stopped by?

Visitors for the most part held Canadian passports, with a few internationals getting their swag visa stamped. Those spotted included: Keshia Chanté, Howie D, Taryn Manning, Russell Peters, Paul Haggis, Dustin Milligan, Dean McDermott, Billy Boyd, Lauren Lee Smith, and many more from the world’s of television, film and music.

A few nights this week, industry folk turned their attention from TIFF to the stage. The music stage that is. For the second year in a row, the Festival Music House set up shop at the Mod Club to host performances by young and up and coming Canadian musicians. This year, acts performing included K’NAAN, Sam Roberts Band, Rural Alberta Advantage, Lights, Hey Rosetta!, and the recently Rolling Stone-crowned it-band, The Sheepdogs. The music was loud, the crowd was high energy, and the drinks—like at any good party—were free. Other than the homegrown talent themselves, Geoffrey Rush and Tommie-Amber Pirie were the only celeb spottings throughout the three nights. Given stars like RPatz’s proclivities for dive music bars like the Horseshoe, we’re crossing our fingers for some megawattage next time around.

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Word: Denouement

Meaning: From the French word for, literally, untying knots, “denouement” is used to signify the narrative resolution of a tangled cinematic or literary plot.

Usage: “That denouement untied things up nicely.”

On Tuesday night, Interview, a.k.a. one of New York’s definitively coolest mags, threw down with home-grown megabrand Joe Fresh atop the Spoke Club to celebrate the film “Like Crazy,” alongside its rising stars Felicity Jones (we’ve heard her referred to as the next Carey Mulligan) and Anton Yelchin. Everything was orange-y hued (including the Negroni), which is probably why Jessica Chastain showed up. Or maybe it was to engage in a ginge showdown with also-stunningly-tressed PR gal Alison Lawler-Dean. Despite the slight chill in the air, the patio was packed with minglers, including the inimitable power couple Joe Mimran and Kimberley Newport-Mimran.

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Word: Festigue

Meaning: Sometimes used during Christmas and similar holidays to describe a weariness from all that cheer, it can also mean indescribable tiredness during any kind of festival, especially a 10-day city-ruling film one.

Usage: “An intimate soiree at Lounge IX to celebrate the remaking of yet a horror movie starring an ex-model and a procedural-drama TV actor? No thanks, I’m a little festigued.” ― me

A BMW, a neon-orange Thomas Sabo string charm bracelet, and a ring of the buzzer got us into Goodnight this past weekend. It was there that New York haute hotel the Gansevoort had set up shop for late night TIFF after parties each night. Past the entrance pretenses, the private back-alley club offered its usual back-alley type of fun, only this time tricked out with the likes of Jon Hamm, Hugh Laurie, Leighton Meester, and Alia Shawkat a.k.a. Arrested Development’s Maeby Fünke (as soon as we heard she was there, we seriously gunned it, but alas, she had already left. “Marry me!” is all we wanted to say.) Possibly the most fun parties of the week (and that’s saying a lot, given that virtually every soiree has been gangbusters), our favourite part of the evening(s) was frequenting the graffitied-up wall in the alleyway to pose for impromptu photo shoots and pretend we were in a music video.

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Your mom will probably want to compare the movie Ten Year, about high school friends coming together for one night at their 10 year reunion, with movies like The Big Chill. And your older sister will probably compare it to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, but while the movie does have some similar themes against the backdrop of who-we-were-then-isn’t-who-we-are-now, what it has that these do not is the most genetically blessed graduating class ever assembled. Case in point, the cast-members who showed up at TIFF to promote the film: Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Justin Long, Ari Graynor, Kate Mara, Brian Geraghty, Lynn Collins, Oscar Isaac, Kelly Noonan, and Scott Porter. There may have been more, but we ran out of fingers.

We asked the cast, who of their co-stars they would want to go to a reunion with. Read their answers after the jump:

Despite the long list of megawatt celebs (Clive Owen! Leighton Meester! Emily Blunt!) that rolled through the Variety Studio at Holt Renfrew this week, the vibe was decidedly relaxed. We stopped by on Saturday to do a bit of celeb stalking and instead of the flurry of stress we thought we’d be met with, the celebs were easy breezy, spending a couple of minutes in front of the camera, and then schmoozing, playing the new Nintendo DS, drinking wine or tea, and accepting gift bags full of swag from Moroccan Oil and Canadian jewellery company Anzie.

While we were there, we spotted Rachel Weisz, alongside her Deep Blue Sea co-star Tom Hiddleston, looking breathtaking (we mean that literally) in a Giambattista Valli resort leopard dress, with a simple shape and sky-high black pumps. Leighton Meester, who was interviewed alongside scene-pros Allison Janney and Oliver Platt for their film The Oranges, was looking sweet in a Louis Vuitton resort 2012 pleated dress, a blazer by Nonoo, and pink and black Pierre Hardy wedges. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Paulson sported matching prints.

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Overheard: Ten Year writer/director Jamie Linden mentioning that he and his cast (including Channing Tatum and Kate Mara) had gone to a “dive bar” a.k.a. Ossington’s Sweaty Betty’s the night before the premiere. We wonder if he heard about the place from Ten Year actor Justin Long, who’s ex, Drew Barrymore, has been known to […]

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Aside from Monday night’s double-whammy Madonna dinner and celeb-filled after party at the Soho House, AMC/Nikki Beach/La Perla threw a boudoir-themed party atop the TIFF Lightbox at La Terrasse. (Bizarre semi-celeb sighting of the night: on our ascent to the swank rooftop terrace, the Trailer Park Boys tumbled out of the elevator—they were dressed, strangely, as racecar drivers.) Once inside, partygoers took endless iPhone shots of the astounding view (you can see all the way down King Street) and lounged on wicker couches on the gladiator arena–steep steps of the venue to watch a parade of La Perla lingerie models adorned in Birks jewels trot by. Guests, however, were not pleased by the cash bar situation. “What?!” gasped one attendee in an immaculate suit. “This isn’t open bar?” The surprisingly low AMC talent quotient (read: no Hamm sightings) was also on everyone’s lips. We did, however, catch a glimpse of Jordan Clark, Sunday’s barely legal and oh-so-gorgeous redheaded winner of So You Think You Can Dance Canada, nervously gulping down a pink highball, and fellow ginge Glenn Baxter stalking the crowd. Also spotted: a super-sunned Ben Mulroney and Ennis Esmer from The Listener on CTV.

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Word: Meet-cute

Meaning: A romantic-comedy trope in which two future lovers meet in a wildly unlikely and thus totally fateful way.

Usage: “Oscar and Amy fall in love. And what a Meet Cute they have! On their first evening together, they go out for the evening, their taxi explodes (yes, explodes) and they run in the rain and wade in the mud and find a restaurant where they eat tuna melts that make them sick and they run outside and hurl. This is the Meet Cute as Meet Puke.” ― Roger Ebert in his review of Three to Tango, 1999.