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Posts Tagged ‘Vogue’

Pretty Young Things

The other, other Boleyn girl: Rachel McAdams is morphing into Scar-Jo

McAdams at TIFF back in 2007 (Image: Attit Patel)

Rachel McAdams has been Toronto’s most promising talent for years, but despite starring in some pretty good movies and making high-profile pals—hell, she and her ex-beau earned their own amalgamated nickname, McGosling—Hollywood doesn’t quite know what to do with the girl. And so, after years of trying to carve out her own niche, the Notebook beauty has reverted to a less original but well-proven Plan B. Or, perhaps better put, a Plan S, as in the ultimate sexspian Scarlett Johansson. How McAdams has been pulling pages from the Scar-Jo playbook after the jump.

Step 1: Land a Vogue cover
Johansson earned Vogue’s top honour in April 2007; McAdams scored the coveted cover girl spot in the January 2010 issue. Johansson looked like Marilyn Monroe; McAdams more closely resembled one of the gals from Designing Women. But hey, it’s the thought (i.e., the approval of Anna Wintour) that counts.

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| 1 Comment » March 12, 2010 | 2:30 pm | Courtney Shea

Toronto Fashion Week

Greta Constantine’s fashion show is next week, collection far from ready

In yesterday’s blog entry for the Post, designers Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong of Greta Constantine offer a glimpse into their background as designers. Both were clearly brown-nosers from the start, scoring major internships while still in high school: Pickersgill with Toronto fashion label Comrags and Wong at Alfred Sung. Wong pursued his passion for fashion with veteran costume designer Susan Dicks; Pickersgill moved to Milan, working with fellow Canadians DSquared2 and British designer Neil Barret.

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| Leave a Comment » March 9, 2010 | 1:16 pm | Fraser Abe

Trend Alert

London calling: Canuck designers take centre stage during London fashion week

Canadians are getting a lot of attention from Londoners during the city’s fall-winter 2010 fashion week. The designers have politicians’ wives in a tizzy, American pop stars are paying personal visits, and the shows are the setting for controversy and catfights. Here, an introduction to three must-know Canucks—all with Toronto connections—who are dazzling Britain.

A frock from Erdem's fall show (Photo via catwalk.com)

Erdem Moralioglu

Shtick: Feminine, frilly, graphic prints (more sophisticated than cutesy) perfect for tea parties and après five.
Toronto connection: Known in the industry by his first name only, the half-Turkish, half-English designer grew up in Montreal but spent time at Ryerson for fashion design. Months later, he dropped out and skipped town to study in London, where he won the Chevening Scholarship from the British Fashion Council and was later nominated for the BFC’s 2009 Collection of the Year award.
Path to success: Erdem stocks the shelves of luxe global retailers including Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Browns and The Room (at The Bay). He recently received a nod from the wife of Britain’s prime minister, Sarah Brown, when she wore an Erdem dress to give the opening speech for London fashion week.
Celebrity fans: Sarah Brown, Michelle Obama, Thandie Newton, Chloë Sevigny and Toronto-born model Tara Gill.
Web site: erdem.co.uk

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| 2 Comments » February 23, 2010 | 1:48 pm | Glynnis Mapp

Required Reading

Celebrities are out, Alexander McQueen label lives on, Tyra Banks tones down look

• Tabloids may need to cross fashion shows off their list of places to snap Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan throwing a hissy fit. There’s a noticeable dearth of celebrity presence at New York fashion week, in part because designers can’t afford to pay the costs (airfare, per diem, outfits) associated with having stars sit in the front row. But mainly, celebrities have become too stale in an industry that’s always on the hunt for what’s new. [New York Times]

• Alexander McQueen’s label will continue on without the designer, who committed suicide last week. McQueen had finished most of his fall collection, which will show during Paris fashion week. François-Henri Pinault, president of French luxury group PPR, said, “This would be the best tribute that we could offer to him.” [BBC]

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| 1 Comment » February 18, 2010 | 2:30 pm | Natalie Goldenberg-Fife

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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| Leave a Comment » February 16, 2010 | 9:47 am | Fraser Abe

Gossipmonger

Jeremy Laing visited the Vogue office today

From Jeremy Laing's spring 2010 collection (Photo via Jeremylaing.com)

Toronto designer Jeremy Laing made a trip to the Vogue offices today, giving the editors a preview of his fall 2010 collection, which he will present tomorrow evening during New York fashion week.

While it’s not clear whether Anna Wintour saw the pieces, Florence Kane blogged about how much the editors loved them.

If Jeremy Laing didn’t need his savage new fur pieces for his presentation this Friday evening at Milk Studios, we’d have ripped them off the rack when he came in to preview his latest collection at the Vogue offices today, and worn them to all the shows this week.
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| Leave a Comment » February 11, 2010 | 1:20 pm | Carley Fortune

Required Reading

Jimmy Choo Uggs, Sarah Jessica Parker designs for Halston, Tony Blair to become fashion exec

Tamara Mellon choo-choo chooses Uggs

• Jimmy Choo designer Tamara Mellon has joined the list of people who actually admit to owning Uggs (André Leon Talley and Cathy Horyn are also on it). In fact, Mellon loves the boots so much that she’s collaborating on the design of five styles of Jimmy Choo Uggs (Chuggs?) to be available in October for a whopping $595 to $795. [Fashionista]

• Tony Blair is in the final stages of negotiating a deal to join the French luxury goods powerhouse LVMH as an advisor. The group owns, among many other companies, Louis Vuitton, Celine, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and a host of high-end alcohol brands. Blair is a close friend of LVMH head Bernard Arnault, and the pair is expected to work closely together to attract new clients. Now, if only Blair would advise his notoriously unfashionable successor on what to wear. [Huffington Post]

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| 1 Comment » January 14, 2010 | 12:18 pm | Fraser Abe

Required Reading

The New Yorker on Rodarte: the emperor has no clothes

A look from Rodarte's Target collection (Photo from Target)

Rodarte is probably one of the most talked about fashion lines coming out of the States right now. In only five years and with no formal training, sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy have nabbed over $200,000 in industry prizes, won the endorsement of Vogue editor Anna Wintour and designed a sought-after diffusion line for Target. In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, writer Amanda Fortini documents the ascent of the avant-garde designers but isn’t as awed by the sisters Mulleavy as the rest of the fashion world.

Fortini describes Kate as “zaftig” (our favourite new euphemism for “fat”) and takes note of part-eaten boxes of mini-cheesecakes lying around the studio. She also classifies Kate’s sweater as “the sort a frumpy older lady might wear.” But sharper criticisms are aimed at the Target line.

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| 1 Comment » January 14, 2010 | 8:27 am | Fraser Abe

Rumours & Rumblings

Rachel McAdams takes cooking classes in Kensington Market

V0CV001021N0 Rachel McAdams plays it differently than most homegrown starlets who find success in Hollywood: she lives north of the border in a Toronto Victorian, bikes or walks everywhere, and still sports well-worn boots from her days as a York drama student. Although she is currently gracing the cover of Vogue, wearing Dior and Dolce and Gabbana, McAdams says she isn’t interested in material possessions: “I really don’t desire things. I prefer to spend my money on experiences, on meals or travel.” Recently, her Toronto experiences have included knife-skills sessions at the Kensington kitchenware shop Good Egg, which prompted a vow to improve her vegetable slicing technique. She prefers to eat at “unstarry, cash-only, foodie-slacker restaurants” like New York’s Kasadela in Alphabet City, where McAdams opts for spicy chicken wings, grilled salmon skin and dried nori. Her ideal day? Kundalini yoga, grocery shopping and fixing up her once tumbling-down house, which she shares with her brother. This day sounds unconvincingly simple for someone who once dated Ryan Gosling and Josh Lucas, but true to her “famously private” reputation, we assume she’s simply leaving out the most salacious details.

• The Notebook, part two [Vogue]

| 7 Comments » December 28, 2009 | 2:31 pm | Matthew Hague

Shop Talk

Life in the Fast lane: Canadian designer Mark Fast returns home after turning heads in London

Mark Fast at Ame, flanked by two models in his designs (Photo by Karon Liu)

With such magazines as Rolling Stone, ID, In Style, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar and nine editions of Vogue (Korean, Japanese, Chinese, American, British, Italian, Russian, Greek and Spanish) featuring his designs, it’s odd that Manitoba-born knitwear designer Mark Fast doesn’t get more mainstream attention in his home and native land. But that could change shortly.

The 29-year-old was fêted at the Rubino brothers’ new restaurant, Ame, in Toronto on Friday night—a splashy homecoming party following recent successes overseas. Fast, who has lived in England for the past eight years, caused a stir during London fashion week when he chose three plus-size models to wear his form-fitting knit dresses; his stylist quit, saying that the models “didn’t have the walk down as well as the more experienced slimmer girls.” His clothes have recently been spotted on pretty young things, including Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester, and he won a coveted sponsorship from the British Fashion Council to show at London fashion week in February. “All of my ideas came from here, and I don’t want to be hidden away in London forever,” Fast told us on Friday. “Someday I’d like to get a place in Vancouver.”

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| Leave a Comment » December 21, 2009 | 2:52 pm | Karon Liu