About

Karen von Hahn was born in Toronto in 1961, the same year as US President Barack Obama, but as yet, she has not been awarded the Nobel Peace prize.

In her short yet glorious lifetime, she has however, graduated from the first class of girls at an all boys’ high school, obtained a law degree, been in the employ of a convicted fraudster, been yelled at for failing to get the right amount of foam on a cappuccino for Shirley Maclaine, married the guy who sat next to her the first day of law school,  flipped a convertible, lost a fur coat,  and had two children. And that was all before she became a journalist.

Starting out at Toronto Life in 1988 as the magazine’s Super Shopper, for which she won the William White award, and graduating to a weekly column which ran for close to a decade in the Globe & Mail’s Style section, Karen emerged as Canada’s pre-eminent voice on style with substance.  While Karen’s lifelong shopping habit, a natural by-product of such accrued expertise, proved essential in her quest for trends in the art of consumption and meaning in the material world.

As host and producer of the groundbreaking television program The Goods for the Life network, she introduced a whole new way of looking at social trends through the material world. At House & Home, Karen designed the magazine’s popular Trendwatch column, which she wrote for many years. She has also been a columnist and regular contributor to both En Route and Fashion.

Currently the Toronto Star’s “Style Czar”, with a weekly column that appears Saturdays in the paper’s Living section, as well as the Editor-in-chief of King West magazine, the desperately insecure overachiever is also a contributing Style editor with a regular column at More magazine, writes for a number of publications, and is a frequent public speaker on trends in design, culture and lifestyle.

If she does say so herself, Karen is also the author of one very funny book, The Hip Guide to Toronto.