This story category covers fashion trends, clothing and accessories—plus shopping and shops.
SHOPPING AROUND | Fashion-savvy Canadians have long known about flash sales sites like Gilt, Ideeli and Fab, but the hassle of getting their wares home (many do not ship to Canada) has crimped many a deal-hunter’s style. Lucky for us, flash shopping has finally arrived in Canada. Read more
DARE TO REPAIR | Borrowing stuff from the guys— boyfriend shirts, boyfriend jeans and boyfriend blazers—is a fashion trend that’s been popular for some time now. It’s a girlish affection for all things androgynous and oversized that also extends to accessories. Made for a woman, the boyfriend watch is a masculine looking timepiece that has a big, bold face and the kind of chunky ruggedness that makes a woman’s wrist look particularly delicate. But our question is this: why would you ever send a boy do man’s job? Wouldn’t an actual man’s watch be the more authentic choice? Read more
CHEAP & CHIC | Say it ain’t so, Joe Mimran? Tell me you’re going to produce more than a limited number of what had to be the coolest coat on the Joe Fresh runway at LG Fashion Week in Toronto last spring. You know the manteau I’m talking about: the oversize neoprene topcoat that comes in colours so intense and on trend that most Canadian fashion journalists who saw it at the show proclaimed it an instant hit—then promptly stuck it on their need-to-get-one list. Read more
STYLE GUIDE | Back in 1991 when Hermès introduced the first double-turn strap on a watchband with it’s now iconic Cape Cod watch, little did the fashion world know the revolution it would cause. Now everyone from Marc Jacobs to Fossil has a multi-turn strap for the timepieces in their line. And what Hermès has done for watch straps it has also done for bracelets. Read more
STYLE GUIDE | Who’s the chicest woman in France? Not Bruni, Gainsbourg or Deneuve. It’s Inès de la Fressange by a landslide, if French newspaper polls are the gauge. Fressange, a French blueblood and former model, returned to the runway this past spring at age 53 to walk the Chanel 2011 show in Paris. Now she’s fashion muse to the masses in North America with the recent English translation of her popular style guide Parisian Chic, a handbook filled with her own whimsical illustrations, lovely how-to-dress-French photos of her daughter, Nine, and amusing single-paragraph fashion pronouncements.
Nonchalant Fressange, a high-low shopper if ever there was one, has great advice on how to think and dress like a style-savvy Parisian without selling the farm (plus insider tips about where to shop in Paree, should you go). Here are five of her myriad useful ideas on how to get “The Look.” Read more
CHIC + CHEAP | Fashion icon Jil Sander, referred to as the queen of minimalist fashion for her single-minded focus on understated elegance—picture the perfectly tailored pant, the precisely cut coat, the impeccably executed white blouse—will end her three year collaboration with Uniqlo, Japan’s inexpensive high-style-basics chain and Asia’s largest clothing retailer, with the launch of a final (fall/winter) collection on September 7. Read more
MONEY WELL SPENT | Although Vancouver is a rainy place, I almost never carry an umbrella— and if I do, it’s usually a cheapie. I go cheap because every umbrella I’ve owned has been either wrecked and ruined in a storm or lost in 60 seconds. Considering my history, I surprised myself recently by switching from $10 disposables to a $60 Blunt umbrella. If the Blunt lives up to its promise, it’ll be one of the last brollies I buy. Read more
SAVE ON CHIC | Not since Liberty London for Target launched in March 2010 has the big box emporium fallen so head over heals in a huge way for a luxury label—right now Target is madly in love with Missoni. Debuting September 13, Missoni for Target will include a mindboggling array of 400 products bearing the kaleidoscope of colours and unmistakable motifs—chevrons, zigzags, flame stitching and abstract florals—synonymous with the 58-year-old-Italian knitwear giant. Read more
SAVE ON CHIC | It’s kind of funny to think that Karl Lagerfeld, one of the most influential fashion designers in modern history, the face of Chanel, a man defined by his elitism and snobbery, most likely invented diffusion fashion—clothing lines by top fashion designers for inexpensive off-the-rack shops. Lagerfeld’s groundbreaking 2004 collection for low-end fashion house H&M, every piece of which sold out worldwide in under 60 minutes, unleashed an army of copycat courtiers itching to collaborate with mass-market retailers on low-cost apparel lines, starting a trend that continues unabated. Read more
SAVE ON CHIC | While I am seriously involved with a website that deals with shopping topics, I am not a shopaholic. When it comes to buying clothes, I like to have a specific goal in mind, like buying a bathing suit for example, and I can usually resist pulling out my wallet for anything other than the exact item I have on my list. Where this blue steel resolve always breaks down is when I am standing on the threshold of one of my favorite deep-discount meccas, Nordstrom Rack, where the deals are usually so crazy good that I never fail to find something I wasn’t necessarily in the market for, wonder if I’ll ever use but always wind up wearing till it dissolves into a few random threads. Read more