Sign me up
Spent a night this week at Peter Freed and Tony Cohen’s new boutique hotel, The Thompson Toronto, which promises to be happening h.q. The full saga of my adventures will appear Saturday, July 10 in the Star’s lovely Living section. Meanwhile, some impressions..
Thomas and I at home in August House & Home
Neither a failed dream of peaceful and mutual civic understanding, nor large scale police brutality, it seems, will divert me from the bloggers true task: shameless self promotion. Continue reading…
Harper's Photo Op
Almost a decade ago, when I was shooting a tv show for the Life network called The Goods, my friend and co-producer Martha and I had a running joke. Since the show was largely shot for budget reasons on the streets of Toronto, which we hoped to make look chic and interesting, but was not proving particularly obliging, we kept calling it, Toronto, City of Love. Continue reading…
Canada's Biennale Bid: animal, vegetable or architecture?
Popped in to the Design Exchange the other night for the presentation of architect and sculptor Philip Beezley’s Hylozoic Ground, Canada’s juried selection for the 2010 Venice Biennale in Architecture. Hylozoism apparently, is the ancient belief that all matter has life… Continue reading…
Harper struts his stuff for the G20
Woke up this morning to an earthquake (5.0 0n the Richter scale) , the scream of police sirens, helicopters whirring overhead, and tornado warnings. Welcome to Toronto for the G8/G20 summit, where our mild-mannered metropolis has been revealed as a police-run puppet state, complete with parades of cops on city streets, cops in riot gear on every corner, and Hazmat Support Units cruising city streets. Continue reading…
Queen's Park Under the Influence
Friends with you is the cheery moniker of Miami-based multidisciplinary artists and experiential design gurus Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, whose transformation of Queen’s Park into a Rainbow City over the weekend was one the bright spots in what is increasingly looking like a rather dismal Luminato festival. Continue reading…
The composer voguing for the cameras
Thoroughly enjoyed Rufus Wainwright’s wonderful new opera, Prima Donna, which made its premiere last night at the Elgin for the Luminato Festival, even though walking in, I was terrified it would be a repeat of the horrendously misguided and truly dreadful John Malkovich Infernal Comedy, which I had the misfortune to attend the other night (when Malkovich had nothing to do but make jokes about his laptop and wander around the stage strangling the wonderful German singers with a purple bra, I really just had to block it out. I started making grocery lists, thinking of things I had to do just to space out). I have to say, much as we want it to succeed, the jury is still out on Luminato–the curating is really hit and miss. Continue reading…
Self-portrait of the Selby
Todd Selby is a graphic artist and photographer who has become a splash on the fashion scene for his real, unfluffed shots of fabulous people at home just plopped on their unmade beds or sitting having coffee, a guilty pleasure of the similarly fabulous voyeurs who visit his haymishe, hand-drawn site, www.theselby.com. Last night the Selby himself was in Toronto to celebrate the launch of his new book, The Selby is in Your Place, in honour of which Holt Renfrew generously threw a party at the brand new it-spot, Parts and Labour, which turned out to be like a 3D version of Selby’s quirkster-chic aesthetic. Continue reading…
Rainbow suds
I know they aren’t really all that effective, but drive-thru car washes where you get to stay inside the car as it’s being bathed are one of my all-time favourite things.
New column, new tiny head
The big news in this morning’s papers as far as I am concerned is the debut of my new column, Style Czar in the Weekend Living section of the Toronto Star. I hope I can persuade some readers to take a moment away from snoozing over the Globe to flip through the mountainous Saturday Star.
I know it looks formidable, but it’s a fun, lively read and there are some great voices in the paper that should not be missed. And somewhere, buried under the Wheels sections (is that meaningful, I can’t help but wonder?) is my column in the Living section.
And quite frankly, I am thrilled to be there–not only does the Star have the most readers, it’s also just won Paper of the Year for journalistic excellence from the Canadian Journalism Foundation. I don’t even mind my new headshot (the shooter, an old pro told me to lean forward on one leg because it makes one’s eyes appear bigger–after, I noticed every other tiny head in the paper is posed exactly the same way).
And the ed-in-chief, Michael Cooke, is very funny, very clever and a real peach.
Here I am last night, wowing my coach by slicing the cork off a bottle of Veuve with a sabre, Napoleonic style, at the fabulous Wine establishment gathering in the beautiful courtyard of Berkeley Castle.
So many of us were eager to sabre a bottle that we could hardly keep up with all the opened bottles of bubbly, which definitely put us all in a festive mood. Clinked many glasses myself with my host for the evening, the Wine Establishment’s Laird Kay, who has the unique distinction of being a wine cellar designer, as well as his partner, Spafax MVP Raymond Girard, jewelry designer Jane Apor of jRox and Interior Design Show head Shauna Levy and her Dutch-born husband Anne, who is the North American rep for Mooi (and, who , apparently, was almost denied status here in Canada because the immigration authorities, unfamiliar with his unusual Dutch first name, were insistent that he was a woman). My date for the night was the delightful and talented Stephanie Cameron, who by day, works as an editor with Zig, but by night has a secret role as a photographer, if you pour her sufficient amounts of champagne.
I have to brag that I was one of the few females who were victorious in attempting to open a bottle in this manner, although it really isn’t all that difficult. It’s all about hitting it at precisely the right spot in the seam with sufficient swagger–since the bottle is already at 80 lbs of pressure from the carbonation inside, it doesn’t take much to blow the cork right off in a satisfying spume.
But it sure does feel good–and then you get to celebrate your little victory with a glass of champagne!
Victory is Mine!
Dr. Bob Bell for PM
I had the good fortune of being one of the lucky few to catch the Munk Debate on health care live Monday night: according to the wonderfully named Rudyard Griffiths, the devious mind behind the series, it’s proving such a hot ticket with the cultural elite, every seat in the house was sold out within a mere four hours. Continue reading…
My new footwear obsession
Have we discussed my new footwear obsession? I don’t think so. Even though I have, by this point, developed an entire clog wardrobe, there is no love like the love I am experiencing this summer for my new Swedish Hasbeens. Continue reading…
Sequins, anyone?
Last night may have been the Powerball, but the real art party was out on Ossington. 129 Ossington had an opening (Neil Young’s vibrant canvases), as did Jamie Angell (John Kennedy’s crazy wonderful mixed-media pieces, Barry Allikas’ giant, minimal graphic paintings) and the modern mavens (even those who planned to go to the Powerball) started out the night wandering the best street in the city first.
Me and my like-minded gal pals Susan and Andrea met up looking like a local version of Sex and the City in accidentally coordinating metallic outfits.
Party boots
Last night’s party, an opening for Yabu and Pushelberg’s fabulous new digs for their high-end furnishings store, Avenue Road, made a splash on le tout Toronto’s design scene, and not just because it was raining cats and dogs. Continue reading…
Copyright © 2010 Karen von Hahn. All rights reserved.