We learned something last night at the gala presentation for Ten Year at the Ryerson Theatre: ensemble cast movies about high school reunions deliver very crowded red carpets. Shining young face after shining young face glided by, stopping only briefly to do some intense posing. Seriously, these guys were posers. Cast member Beth Whitson came first. She’s modelled for Vogue, and in an elegant floor-length gown she looked like, well, a Vogue model. She was followed by Kelly Noonan (note: saucy neckline) and director Jamie Linden. Scott Porter dressed like he was coming straight from class, and Aaron Yoo spiced things up with a plaid shirt and vest combo. And oh, look at Oscar Isaac: that hair, those eyes, that…velour blazer? Ari Graynor went a tad overboard with the whole pouting for the camera thing. Then, finally, the (sort of) big guns: Jenna Dewan-Tatum, wife to Channing, strolled by in fuchsia, followed by Max Minghella in his second carpet appearance of the festival (he’s also in The Ides of March). We barely noticed Kate Mara, but only because Channing Tatum was hot on her heels, eliciting shrill shrieks from the audience. Last but not least came Justin Long, whom you may recognize as a Mac (not a PC). See our photo gallery, after the jump.

If she could turn back time, Sarah Jessica Parker may still have a fancy title (Image: Vogue)

Sarah Jessica Parker just graced the cover of Vogue’s age issue (with every last wrinkle obliterated Photoshopped out of existence), and since the cover (which has divided critics) came out, the story leaked that the actress is no longer involved with Halston Heritage, the label she joined as president and chief creative officer only a year ago. We remember when SJP came to hype the brand at The Bay in March of 2010, but we assume her Sex and the City chops didn’t give her the measurable influence she may have thought—there was no sudden disco revival (sorry, Roy Halston Frowick) after her visit, besides the seemingly forced jumpsuit-a-day fetishism of former MTV personality Jessi Cruickshank.

No word from the Halston brand on why SJP is out, which has led New York magazine’s blog The Cut to speculate that Parker’s presence at the label actually made investors weary, since they may have wanted a more seasoned designer (and not, say, an actress who wears newsboy caps, short-shorts and high heels on her show). But we don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want SJP around to build a brand, because if she can make the dude who starred in an Inspector Gadget movie seem relevant again (come on, he was Ferris Bueller), she must have some serious mojo.

• Sarah Jessica Parker Isn’t Working at Halston Heritage Anymore [The Cut]

Carey Mulligan at the TIFF premiere for Never Let Me Go. (Image: Jeff Vespa/Wire Image/Getty Images)

In Never Let Me Go, she’s the plain, overlooked member of a love triangle (the others are real-life friend Keira Knightley and Andrew “New Spider-Man” Garfield), but off-screen, Carey Mulligan is a showstopper. The 25-year-old, who was a first-time Oscar nominee after last year’s TIFF hit An Education, walks into a suite at the Park Hyatt with a chic bleached-blond layered cut and TV-ready makeup that makes her look more like the movie star she is than the girls next door she usually plays. During a round-table interview, the London-born actress shows she a starlet with definite ideas about where her career is heading. Specifically, it’s heading into the role of a late-20s Latina in a Ryan Gosling movie. Maybe it’s better if Carey explains—the full interview, after the jump.

Having a friendship with Keira previously, how was it for her to be nasty to you?
She encouraged me to be nasty to her, actually … She turned around to me after the first take and was like, “Why are you being so nice? [Our characters] have grown up together. You’re not even that nice to me.”

Andrew Garfield told us it’s going to be quite some time before he watches this movie. Have you seen it?
I don’t watch a lot of it because, when I’m on screen, I go like that [bows head]. It’s difficult, because all I’m doing is ripping myself to pieces. It’s not torturous, but you come away from something and two years later you would do something completely differently than how you would have done it then.

How are you dealing with all the attention you’ve been getting? It’s only been a year since An Education.
I haven’t worked since Wall Street. All the Oscar stuff finished the beginning of March. We had three days in Cannes, and I did a photo shoot for Vogue. So March to May and Cannes was normal everyday life, then three days of “ahhh!,” then three days of posing for Vogue, and the rest of the time for myself. I’ve never taken off almost 10 months, but there were just [no roles] that I felt were dramatically different from stuff I had already done.

So you still don’t know what you’re going to be doing next.
Oh, I do! I got a job. I’m doing a film with Ryan Gosling called Drive. That role was sort of a late-20s Latina woman. But I so wanted to work with the director [Nicolas Winding Refn], I sort of went in and said, “What if it isn’t? What if it’s me?” So we’re sort of rewriting it.

Has there been a downside to the success you’ve had lately?
Not really. We were in Telluride this weekend, and I was in a gondola with a bunch of people who just literally walked out of Never Let Me Go, and they had no idea. They were chatting away about the film, what they liked, what they didn’t like, why didn’t [the characters] run away? No downsides. Really outrageous good sides!

Never Let Me Go opens in Toronto on Sept. 24.

Nothing to see here (Image: Josh McConnell)

Passengers travelling to Lester B. Pearson International Airport were told to expect “significant delays” today due to the arrival of world leaders for the G20 and G8 summits. They weren’t kidding: wait times approached nearly seven minutes for chicken noodle soup and a cup of Red Rose tea at the Terminal 3 Toast! Café. “Wow, I waited longer for soup than I did to check in,” we thought, flipping though a copy of Vogue we purchased at the gate B12 newsstand after a lengthy browse.

Many in the café lineup were just happy to be killing time since they, like us, left the city with hours to spare out of fear of road closures, traffic chaos and increased security. Travellers on the 7:30 a.m. TTC Airport Rocket did report seeing OPP cruisers on the 427, but those officers could have been responding to reports of short lines at Terminal 1 Tim Hortons.

Blasberg signs copies at The Room (Image: George Pimentel)

For reader bonus points: Find the other gossip king in the photo on Blasberg’s blog post.

• O Canada! [Vogue]

From Matis' fall show (Image: Jenna Marie Wakani)

According to a piece in the Ryerson student weekly The Eyeopener, Toronto-based designer (and Project Runway alum) Lucian Matis will skip LG Fashion Week’s fall season and show in New York instead. The designer recently presented his fall collection in Toronto, but it must not have created the buzz he was looking for. Indeed, his show was given an early 5 p.m. time slot, and the venue wasn’t exactly packed. “You have to be international, you have to grow continuously,” Matis told the paper. “I feel like it’s a little bit slack right now. I feel like it’s not moving forward, so I need to move forward.” Maybe Matis read Amy Verner’s recent Q&A with André Leon Talley, in which the Vogue editor agreed that Canadian designers might have to leave the country in order to get attention. At any rate, fashion week just lost one of its best shows.

• Ryerson fashion grads: big fish in Canadian pond [The Eyeopener]

We were kind of surprised by her presence in Vogue, since she is currently working as a fashion assistant at the magazine, but considering how Vogue interviews its own staffers for blog posts, we assume that the magazine is such an authority on fashion that there’s no one else to interview but themselves.

• Black in Fashion [National Post]

• Larger than life Vogue editor hits the small screen [Globe and Mail]

One of the looks Greta Constantine showed at Holt Renfrew (Image: Jenna Marie Wakani)

Yesterday morning, Holt Renfrew invited the media to attend an intimate showcase of five Canadian lines it will be carrying at the store. Considered some of the best in the country, each of the designers—Denis Gagnon, Jeremy Laing, Mikhael Kale, Greta Constantine‘s Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong, and Lida Baday (who was not in attendance)—showed a few pieces from their fall collections. Also present were fashion week queen bee Robin Kay and Vogue writer Mark Holgate. The problem? None of the designers are showing during LG Fashion Week, which runs until Thursday in the massive Allstream Centre that’s been pimped out in all the razzle-dazzle of a King West club. And Holgate, who came to Toronto as a guest of Holts, won’t be attending any of its shows. Kay was clearly stung by yesterday’s event, despite rumours that Holts may bring the designers to fashion week in future seasons. Kay told the Star that the designers “will not get the coverage that a brand needs in that [Holts'] environment because there isn’t a large number of shooters and tweeters, or live-streaming.” She also described the event as “quiet” (and it was—delightfully so) and chastised the store. “Holt Renfrew is a sponsor. With their largesse, they should have made a point of bringing that gentleman to the site to see that we are a fashion week and to see designers he may not have heard of. That’s a sponsor’s duty and responsibility.”

* UPDATE: Despite what was reported previously, Holt Renfrew tells us that they did take Holgate to the Izma show, which opened fashion week on Sunday evening. The writer was only in town for 24 hours, however, and therefore not able to make it to other presentations.

• Best in show, far from the runway [Toronto Star]

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.

Step 2: Strike that perfect sexy-thespy balance
There are actors who are sexpots and actors who are serious. Johansson is a rare combination of the two, and, based on her scantily clad but critically lauded performance in Sherlock Holmes, so is McAdams.

Step 3: Catch Woody Allen’s eye
Word is R-Mac will work alongside Wedding Crashers co-star Owen Wilson and Marion Cotillard in an as-yet-untitled Allen picture, set to be filmed in France this summer. Johansson starred in three Allen movies in as many years between 2005 and 2008, making her one of the director’s most significant muses since Mia Farrow.

Step 4: Attract famous admirers
Logan Lerman, the adorable 18-year-old star of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, has revealed that McAdams is his “dream girl,” and Robert Downey Jr. had high praise for his Sherlock Holmes co-star, confessing he would have liked to film more sexy scenes.

Step 5: Land an A-list action hero beau
Bigger than the buzz surrounding McAdams’s gorgeous gown was the actor’s Oscar night encounter with Jake Gyllenhaal; according to People, Gyllenhaal introduced her to a friend as “the mother of my child.” Johansson is married to Ryan Reynolds, a hunky action star with a sensitive soul. Gyllenhaal will earn his action hero crown this summer in The Prince of Persia.

Step 6: Acquire a variation-of-J. Lo nickname
Everyone’s calling her R-Mac. OK, fine, we’re calling her R-Mac, but it’s catchy, even if it sounds like a very large truck or an airport’s runway. Then again, Scar-Jo kind of sounds like a coffee for doctors or a character from the Lion King, and it’s worked for her.

• Rachel McAdams joins Woody Allen film [Hollywood Reporter]
• Logan Lerman crushes on Rachel McAdams [Just Jared]
• McJakey & the Mighty Opes! [Lainey Gossip]
• What you didn’t see on the Oscars [People]
• Robert Downey Jr.’s man crush [People]

In Toronto, the pair met while living above Jacob’s Hardware at Queen and Spadina and decided to create their own label, Greta Constantine, named for Wong’s mother, Greta, and Pickersgill’s grandfather, Constantine. They note that when they started the line, fashion Web sites like style.com didn’t exist; neither did reality TV shows like Project Runway (which Wong would compete in, then insult)—only Vogue, their “bible.”

The duo’s Toronto fashion show (again scheduled outside of fashion week) is just over a week away, to take place on March 19. Though the space at the Bayview Audi dealership is booked, the clothes are not even half ready. We’re expecting future updates to be a lot shorter (perhaps a preview of the collection) as the stress piles on and hopefully a lot more dramatic.

• Before reality TV ‘we had our Bible, Vogue’ [National Post]
• Toronto designers jump the gun on fashion week [Toronto Star]

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

Strong shoulders from Todd Lynn (Photo via catwalk.com)

Todd Lynn

Shtick: Androgyny, armour-like shoulders, rock and roll, and superior leather and fur construction.
Toronto connection: Lynn graduated from the fashion program at Ryerson University in 1991 and worked out of his grandmother’s home in Toronto before heading to London.
Path to success: He is rock and roll’s best-kept secret: Lynn began designing onstage apparel for such rock impresarios as U2, the Rolling Stones and Marilyn Manson. He recently released Phoenix, an autobiographical documentary about his design work, and has collaborated with shoe god Christian Louboutin.
Celebrity fans: Janet Jackson, U2, Marilyn Manson, Courtney Love and the Rolling Stones.
Web site: toddlynn.com

Typical Mark Fast knitwear (Photo via catwalk.com)

Mark Fast

Shtick: Intricately knitted body-conscious ensembles.
Toronto connection: Fast grew up just outside Winnipeg but spent several years in Toronto, studying patterns and garment making at Seneca before heading to London’s famed Central Saint Martins school.
Path to success: At his debut show at London fashion week this past September, Fast cast three plus-sized models in his runway lineup. The impromptu change caused a stylist to walk out on the show minutes before it began and stirred up the now-raging debate over extremely thin models. He’s been getting buzz steadily since, and even refused to loan clothes to Lady Gaga. For spring 2010, Fast collaborated with Topshop for a capsule collection and recently launched a cheaper “luxury basics” line, Faster by Mark Fast: a cache of knitted tights, ballet-style bodysuits and form-fitting dresses. At his most recent show, Sarah Brown had to literally barter for a seat (a blogger reluctantly gave up her front-row position).
Celebrity fans: Sarah Brown, Emily Blunt and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, daughter of French Vogue editor-in-chief Carine Roitfeld, Telegraph writer Hilary Alexander.
Web site: markfast.net

• Fashion fit for a first lady [Daily Mail]
• Erdem autumn/winter 2010/11 collection [Telegraph]
• Todd Lynn and Louise Goldin get tough [Marie Claire]
• Todd Lynn RTW fall 2010 [WWD.com]
• Canadian designer Mark Fast declines to give clothes to Lady Gaga, gives them to Topshop instead [Toronto Life]
• Mark Fast’s fall show features plus-sized models, gets thumbs-up from British PM’s wife [Toronto Life]
• Who Did the Seating at Mark Fast? Sarah Brown Squeezed Out [New York Magazine]

• 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]

• Martin Scorsese will direct the advertising campaign for Chanel’s new men’s fragrance. The ads, which star French actor Gaspard Ulliel, will air globally in September. Hopefully the scent smells nothing like the way Robert De Niro looks in Raging Bull. [Vogue]

• According to Jay Manuel, Tyra Banks is planning to “tone down” her appearance for the next season of America’s Next Top Model by giving up weaves. Manuel says Tyra’s going for “French sophistication as opposed to that kind of Tyra-fied look.” It’s a shame—Tyra’s outrageous style is one of the main reasons we tune in. We’ll have to rely on André Leon Talley to spice up the judging panel. [The Cut]

• Members of Italy’s fashion community are spewing after Vogue editor Anna Wintour insisted Milan cut its fashion week schedule from five to three days. The critics insist that the shortened week will damage the industry, but we can’t help but wish someone could convince Toronto to do the same. [WWD]

Of the furry items, Laing noted they incorporated “northern elements, but presented in a refined way. It’s not about trapper style.” His knitwear—chunky oversized pieces with three-dimensional detailing—scored, too. Style.com writer Romney Leader wrote that it was savvy of Laing to focus on texture and surface. We’re hoping for more gold in Vancouver, but it’s good to know one of Toronto’s own has already won in New York.

• Show off your fuzz [The Cut]

• Jeremy Laing fall 2010 [Style.com]

• Jeremy Laing layers fur, leather, prints and knits for a lineup of new fall favourites [Fashion]

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.

And why did they love the pieces so much? Because the clothes have Canadian flair.

Jeremy’s fall line marks his first foray into fur, and he’s done pieces in red fox, muskrat and beaver—all sustainably hunted in his native Canada. He’s sewn strips of the pelts onto material, “to give it the movement of a fabric garment.” Everything is very warm but very light, which makes it perfect for tramping to shows in a snowstorm like today’s. The only thing we don’t like about the collection is that we’ll have to wait until next winter to wear it.

We believe they call that a rave review, and further justification as to why the designer doesn’t need to show at Toronto fashion week.

• A Jeremy Laing look we need right now [Vogue]