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Posts Tagged ‘trends’

Trend Alert

Spring trends: anything goes—no, really

Fashion tends to move at breakneck speed. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the latest trends, which is why shoppers often turn to the media for guidance, but sometimes we can be guilty of further confusing things. To wit, this spring trends guide from the New York Times.

Suzy Menkes details what’s hot, like this season’s silhouette, which should be linear and slim or oval and hourglass. Skirts should be long and slim or short and A-line, but women can also go with a blanket wrap or a full 1950s-style number. Colours, she says, are also in, especially camel, toffee, gray, pine green, purple, orange and black. Knitwear looks good plain and minimalist or oversized and fluffy. In hosiery, go for patterns or shiny leggings or thick and matte stockings.

Well, it’s good to know that virtually every shape, length and colour is in style now. So now when we parade around in our purple hourglass coat with the short orange A-line skirt and fluffy, oversized pine green sweater, we can tell people, “No, we’re not crazy. This is in fashion. Don’t you read the Times?”

The trend chart [New York Times]

The New Normal

Richard Florida, an American in Canada, predicts talent will leave the U.S. for other countries

Florida's latest book, due out in April (Image: Random House)

Richard Florida is soothsaying once more. The U of T professor told BusinessWeek that American ingenuity—which is often foreign ingenuity—is waning because the world’s most talented individuals are either not coming to America or are being seduced away from America by such countries as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Meanwhile, the best minds in Asia are staying put. “If China picks up its share of global talent, and then India, and then Australia—you add up those percentages, and they create an enormous structural disadvantage for [America]. It erodes our competitive advantage.”

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Rumours & Rumblings

12 food trends we observed at the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices show

All the rage: finger foods (Photo: Renée Suen)

To follow up the Canadian Chef Survey of food trends, we decided to attend the annual conference of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA) to see if the proof was in the pudding. Turns out, it was in the verrines (see photo). Our 12 key trend observations, after the jump.

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In Print

Best New Restaurants: Toronto Life’s much-anticipated April issue is on newsstands

Toronto Life is proud to announce that James Chatto’s annual list of the city’s 10 best new restaurants is now on newsstands (his five honourable mentions can be viewed here).

The restaurants are ranked as part of “Where to Eat Now,” our 12-page food feature that also notes the trends we love, the trends we hate and the ones with which we have a love-hate relationship.

Newsstand buyers should be pleased to know that the April issue also comes with our guide to dining out in the GTA, complete with 350 star-rated reviews of Toronto Life–recommended restaurants.

Bon appétit!

Rumours & Rumblings

Three terrifying visions of our food future, courtesy of Condé Nast Traveler

The tea leaves of our impending food future have settled—and they look ominous. Condé Nast Traveler predicts that over the next few years, the dining world will undergo some dire changes. Three choice items among the soothsaying:

  1. Chefs will be on their hands and knees, foraging for native plant species in the wild.
  2. Restaurants will be passé, or, if they exist at all, will function like galleries, inviting diners into bizarre exhibitions of intense stimuli (think seafood dish paired with an iPod playing sounds of the sea, seagulls squawking in the background).
  3. Chefs will embrace science like never before, consulting chemists, X-rays and CT scans to seamlessly separate stocks, identify animal structures and whip up perfectly textured sauces.

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Restauran-TO

Chef survey lists the top 10 food trends of 2010

Celiac-safe beer: gluten is so 2009 (Image: Joe Lewis)

Health nuts and celiac sufferers, rejoice. A survey of chefs reveals that 2010 will be the year of simplicity, sustainability and gluten-free beer. The list of top Canadian menu trends isn’t terribly surprising, as environmentally conscious diners have been forgoing imported produce in favour of all things Ontario for several years now, but considering all the poutine, burger and charcuterie joints that have been popping up in the city, we’re surprised these lists don’t show animal fat a little love. (The full lists, after the jump.)

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Pantry Raid

The latest food fashion is not a dish, but an elusive “fifth taste”

British chef-writer Laura Santtini has managed to get umami into a tube (Image: laurasanttini.com)

The Japanese have known about it for years, and researchers have confirmed its existence, but the Globe is just now declaring it fashionable. Umami is a taste (separate from sweet, sour, salty and bitter) first recognized by Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda more than a century ago. Apparently Canadian chefs are clamouring to get it into their dishes. “I do think people are really capitalizing on the name,” Andrew Novak, owner of Toronto restaurant Umami Sushi, told the Globe. “Everyone has something that they’re referring to as umami.”

The so-called fifth taste is ubiquitous in Japanese fare: seafood, shiitake mushrooms and tomatoes, as well as fermented and cured products, such as soy sauce. The flavour’s ability to elude description—it has been variously described as meaty and savoury, or like the sweet flavour of barbecued salmon—has whet the appetite of a few cunning profiteers. The Food Channel recently listed it among its top 10 food trends of 2010 (yes, they realize it’s only March), and umami was the subject of a cook-off on The Next Iron Chef. Yet, as Novak himself says, the brilliant thing about a basic taste is that you don’t have to eat out to enjoy it: “Home cooks could combine their own ingredients to achieve the same effect.”

• Everyone’s crazy for … umami? [Globe and Mail]

In Print

Mind your manners: massive sharing platters are back

Staggering out of an economic hangover, Torontonians are still embracing the culinary equivalent of the Snuggie. Savvy chefs are upping the homey quotient with Flintstonian sharing platters.

See our picks for the best of the biggest >>

Beauty School

Grey hair trend makes its way to Toronto

Drew Barrymore's TIFF dye job (Photo by James Helmer)

We’ve been wondering when the grey hair trend would make its way from celebrities, teen bloggers and fashion runways to the streets of Toronto, and it seems that time has come.

Toronto junior stylist Mike Baronowski went from dark brown to a platinum-silver months ago to match his clients at Greg May Hair Architects in Yorkville. But Greg May, owner of the salon, has seen a serious increase in demand for all kinds of wacky shades.

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Trend Alert

Jeremy Laing’s fall 2010 show a hit in New York

Last Friday, as some patriotic Canadians got their kicks watching the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics, Toronto designer Jeremy Laing got his by presenting a wildly well-received fall collection in New York. Laing experimented with the fur trend this season, sewing pelts (all sustainably hunted) into rows to increase movement. The pieces worked; editors at Vogue lusted after the pieces, and The Cut liked his “lightweight toppers” of beaver, raccoon and muskrat fur.

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