(Image: Karolyne Ellacott)
This new Dundas West spot has plenty of potential, but needs more polish to compete with the other Canadian-centric restaurants on the scene.
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Review: Contemporary Canadian cuisine and potent cocktails at The Guild on Dundas West
Target’s next designer collaboration is with 3.1 Phillip Lim—and it’s being sold in Canada
After a reported five year courtship, Target has finally convinced buzzy New York-based designer Phillip Lim to do his first mass-market collaboration for fall 2013. Available September 15 across Canada, 3.1 Phillip Lim for Target will include men’s and women’s apparel, bags, and other accessories, with a focus on muted colours and prints. Most of the 100-plus items will run around the $50 mark, though his leather jackets will cost upwards of $250 to $300 (steep by Target’s standards, but still far cheaper than the usual $1,700 price tag). Though Target has done some hugely popular capsule collections in the past, this is the first mega-collaboration to hit Canadian shelves. We hope local shoppers prove more polite than some of their counterparts in the U.S.
John Fluevog Shoes opens a new store in the Distillery District
(Image: John Fluevog Shoes)
Vancouver-based John Fluevog Shoes opened a second Toronto location in the Distillery District on Saturday, giving another boost to the area’s appeal as an upmarket shopping destination. (Since December, Gotstyle and eco-friendly children’s clothier Mini Mioche have each opened newer, bigger locations in the district.) Fluevog, who has earned global success with his colourful, distinctive designs, celebrated the new store by releasing two limited-edition designs, one for men and one for women, available only at the Distillery location. If you want to snag a pair, you had better hurry—there are only a few left.
John Fluevog Shoes, 4 Trinity Street, fluevog.com, 416-583-1970
Trend We Love: clothing stores charging the same prices in Canada and the U.S.
Cross-border shopping is getting less and less tempting. First, a raft of American brands opened stores in Toronto, and now a growing number of shops, including Loft, Ann Taylor, Express and Lululemon, are charging the same prices on both sides of the border. The majority of Aldo’s merchandise is also priced identically, while Abercrombie and sister brand Hollister have lowered Canadian prices from 25 to 30 per cent higher to just five to seven per cent higher (the company says duties account for the vestigial mark-up). The push for price equality can be traced to lower costs, near parity between the two countries’ currencies and that the Internet makes it possible for Canadians to find out easily if they’re getting bilked. Target, we hope you’re taking notes. [Globe and Mail]
Zara launches online shopping in Canada
After years of waiting for Zara to bring online shopping north of the border, the retail giant is finally launching its Canadian online shop and mobile app. Both the website and the app have the full range of men’s, women’s and kids’ apparel at the same prices as in stores, and Zara is offering free delivery (with eco-friendly packaging, no less) anywhere in Canada for purchases over $50. The return policy is also consumer-friendly: shoppers can return online purchases to any store within 30 days or can have them picked up from home at no charge. The e-commerce launch comes days after the announcement that Toronto is getting a brick-and-mortar Zara Home store before the U.S., suggesting the company is finally paying Canada some attention. Consider us mollified.
Editor’s Letter (March 2013): interracial marriages, multiculturalism and the mixed-race generation
In grade school, I was taught that Canada embraces multiculturalism, whereas the United States is a melting pot. The notion was drilled into me year after year: we celebrate our diversity and encourage the preservation of our ethnic heritage, whereas Americans assimilate. Boy, were my teachers wrong. Toronto is a melting pot if ever there was one. It’s true that this city hosts dozens of ethnic festivals every year, and that we like to trumpet our cultural differences, but we also assimilate within a couple of generations.
According to the 2006 census, interracial pairings are growing at a much faster rate than same-race marriages, leading to a new cohort of hyphenated Canadians. It’s a phenomenon I witness all around me. Friends of mine in their childbearing years struggle to come up with names for their babies that work in both the mother’s and the father’s cultures—because so often those cultures originate at opposite ends of the globe. They want to give their kids names that fit into the little segment that overlaps on the Venn diagram of their respective backgrounds: Japanese-Jewish. Dutch-Jamaican. Chinese-Norwegian. Iranian-German. Hence some unusual Facebook birth announcements: Boaz, Asher, Raya, Lev, Emine.
Zara is launching online shopping in Canada by summer
(Image: Aurelijus Valeiša)
For a long time, Zara has fended off Canadians’ pleas for online shopping, focusing instead on bringing the service to Europe (2010), the U.S. (2011), Japan (2011) and China (2012). But recent rumours suggest parent company Inditex will finally launch an online Zara store in this country by spring or summer. That development, along with recently-launched online stores from Aritzia, Sephora and Mexx, should help make online shopping in Canada a lot less frustrating.
A new mixed-raced generation is transforming the city: Will Toronto be the world’s first post-racial metropolis?
I used to be the only biracial kid in the room. Now, my exponentially expanding cohort promises a future where everyone is mixed.
Click on the image for 10 interviews with mixed-race Toronto children
Last fall, I was in Amsterdam with my parents and sister on a family trip, our first in more than a decade. Because travelling with your family as an adult can be taxing on everyone involved, we had agreed we would split up in galleries, culturally enrich ourselves independently, and then reconvene later to resume fighting about how to read the map. I was in a dimly lit hall looking at a painting of yet another apple-cheeked peasant when my younger sister, Julia, tugged at my sleeve. “Mixie,” she whispered, gesturing down the hall.
“Mixie” is a sibling word, a term my sister and I adopted to describe people like ourselves—those indeterminately ethnic people whom, if you have an expert eye and a particular interest in these things, you can spot from across a crowded room. We used the word because as kids we didn’t know another one. By high school, it was a badge of honour, a term we would insist on when asked the unavoidable “Where are you from?” question that every mixed-race person is subjected to the moment a conversation with a new acquaintance reaches the very minimum level of familiarity. For the record, my current answer, at 30 years old, is: “My mom’s Chinese, but born in Canada, and my dad’s a white guy from England.” If I’m peeved for some reason—if the question comes too early or with too much “I have to ask” eagerness—the answer is “Toronto” followed by a dull stare.
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Why does everything cost so much more in Canada?
Target’s plans to charge higher prices in Canada than in the U.S. triggered a new round of grumbling about the Canadian–American price gap last month. Now, a Senate committee report on the issue has made the country’s consumers—and consumer journalists—even more fired up. The report’s most anger-inducing section describes “country pricing,” the system by which manufacturers charge Canadian retailers 10 to 115 per cent more on wholesale products on the grounds that sucker Canadians are simply willing to pay more (the retailers pass the higher costs along to consumers). Higher customs tariffs, fewer economies of scale and higher transportation costs also contribute to Canada’s steep prices—though Diane Brisebois, president of the Retail Council of Canada, told CBC’s Marketplace that those factors should only raise wholesale prices by five or 10 per cent. On the upside, the committee found that U.S. and Canadian prices will converge as more Canadians start to compare prices using smartphone apps and websites—which should put competitive pressure on manufacturers and retailers. We hope.
Miu Miu launches its first Canadian boutique in Holt Renfrew on Bloor
Canada’s first Miu Miu boutique
Miu Miu’s Toronto boutique opened this weekend (a week earlier than rumoured) in a corner of the Holt Renfrew store on Bloor. The space is small but luxe, with damask curtains, gold counters and crystal display cases. The store-in-store carries the quirky-cool brand’s handbags and accessories, but none of its clothes. In other words: you’re in luck if you’re looking for a gorgeous purse, but anyone in the market for a purple print suit will have to order it online.
Miu Miu Holt Renfrew Toronto, Holt Renfrew, 50 Bloor St, W., miumiu.com
Pay Check: the salaries and bonuses of Toronto’s five highest-paid CEOs
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While most rankings of the super-wealthy focus on net worth, it’s hard not to also be curious about how much the not-very-average Joe earns each year. Enter the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which released its latest list of the country’s 100 highest-paid CEOs earlier this week, based on data collected for 2011. According to the CCPA, the average salary of the top 100 Canadian CEOs was $7.7 million (which, the left-leaning think tank pointed out, means they pocket the average Canadian salary of $45,448 in a little over half a day’s work). However, the five Torontonians who cracked the top 10 make considerably more than the average. We break down local bigwigs’ base salaries and mind-blowing bonuses below.
The Celtic Invasion: why the arrival of hundreds of Irish construction workers benefits Toronto’s building boom
Sean and James McQuillan left Ireland for Toronto in 2010
In the mid-1990s, companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Apple, attracted by Ireland’s well-educated workforce, tax incentives, minimal regulations and low wages, opened offices in Dublin with a speed that surprised even the gravest doubter. By the time the Celtic Tiger, as the exploding Irish economy was dubbed, had fully deployed its claws, the unemployment rate had dropped to just under five per cent, one of the lowest in the developed world. Ireland’s GDP grew to one of the highest in Europe, exports doubled in just five years, and the average income was climbing seven per cent a year, almost triple the Read the rest of this entry »
eurozone average.
Money Talks: 10 Toronto celebrities who command five-figure speaking fees
Earlier this week, Wayne Gretzky was in town talking, oddly enough, about investment strategy. Apparently, The Great One isn’t only adept at stickhandling behind the net (his office, so to speak); he can also manage your stock portfolio. After all, in this age of Ted Talks and corporate retreats, one of the quickest and easiest ways for the famous and voluble to get even richer is through speaking engagements—and the topics they cover don’t even have to be married with the reason they’re famous in the first place. Gretzky, for example, clocks a $50,000-a-pop speaking fee and a staggering $1 million per annum from TD Bank to talk about money management. And he’s not alone. Here, Gretzky and nine other Toronto notables who are cashing in on the speaking circuit.
Canadian-centric womenswear shop Pho Pa closes
Pho Pa, the women’s boutique that focused on Canadian-designed clothing and jewellery, has closed its doors after seven years on Queen West, and several more in Kensington Market before that. Local brand supporters who will miss Alexia Lewis’s shop can take some comfort in knowing that at least a few other stores in the area also stock Canadian designers.
Ken Gass walks away from Factory Theatre for good
It appears the Ken Gass/Factory Theatre saga has come to a close. In a press release, Gass, who founded the theatre in 1970 and returned to save it from insolvency in 1996, put an end to the months-long ordeal:
While I am extremely grateful for the huge outpouring of support I have received from the community, I wish to now state firmly and unequivocally, that under no circumstances in the foreseeable future will I consider returning to the Factory Theatre, either as artistic director or in any other capacity.
