My ode to red heads, Vogue and Toronto’s own fave red-headed editor. I hadn’t noticed this shot until a couple days ago. Caught outside Rodarte’s S/S collection. I had just bumped into Abi, a Toronto editor and writer, with whom I had the absolute pleasure of working close to at the start of my career. She and I have a funny way of bumping into each other all over the Americas.

Oh, and isn’t Grace Coddington just divine? Like she’s descended upon us from another land, and used her hair to anchor her safely on earth? It is rhetorical. I assume everyone agrees with me because I have made my statement.

xo

Textstyles has its first give away of the new year! Thomas Sabo has launched two fragrances at Sephora. Here, for this weekend only, you can win Charm Kiss.

A little belated Valentine gift from Textstyles to you!

There are just a few pesky rules to enter:
1. Contest is open internationally.
2. You must comment to THIS post to win, with your email address.
3. You must ‘Like’ Textstyles on Facebook to enter.
4. Tweet/blog/facebook this give away, and send word, to be entered a second time. Tweet: @ThomasSaboCDN

Contest ends Tuesday, February 21st at midnight. Winner will be drawn at random and announced the following day.

Throw you’re name in the ring. It may be your year…

xo
s

This isn’t turning into an ode to Emmanuelle Alt blog or anything. I’m just trying to make a point about style. The last post, we saw lady Alt, black blazer, sharp shoulders, très le smoking (although, I don’t think she does), and ferocious stare.

Here we have the antithesis. All lightness. Playful even. Wearing her sunnies, sparkling in a Nantucket summer-ready ensemble. There’s a softness to Alt here, none of the hard edges from the day before remain. What does linger, her keen sartorial sport. The thing is, both looks suit her. Both, completely opposing outfits, on the same woman, render a different silhouette, a new image that speaks to the person. This is what I strive for. Everyday costumes.

Emmanuelle Alt, editor in chief of Vogue Paris. Fierce. No make up. Hair that’s barely brushed but that laissez-faire French attitude that keeps everyone on their toes. I love the darkness here. After I snapped this shot I went back to it to double check that I had seen something there. I hadn’t imagined it. Her gaze was so direct and purposeful.

I love how almost six-months later this photo still brings me back to that exact moment. To those exciting shivers I felt during this exchange.

Happy New York Fashion Week! So to celebrate the start of the F/W collections I’m posting shots from NYFW in September at the S/S shows. Let’s see how much fashion has “evolved” in the past 6 months. Any hypotheses??

So fierce, right! Who else could wear a macrame skirt and pull it off? Anna Dello Russo, with a mens inspired white shirt tucked in but unbuttoned down to there… and lest we forget the rocks keeping her décolleté cool. Obviously, this is how one rolls into a Rodarte show. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

I love this shot cause the whole thing is just white hot!

Vintage Hudson’s Bay jacket worn on Francesco Fiore. I love the signature stripe’s infinite variations.

Tell me what you think.

I’m knackered! Totally spent, but then my blogging blues kick in and I can’t stop thinking about you and what you must think of me. I’m not a bad blogger just trying to find a life balance.

So, I really wanted to show you these images from a shoot I did with NOW Toronto. Katrina Tompkins one of the founding designers behind Tinsel & Sawdust.

I loved her Jeremy Laing hair, and the bags of sawdust, and the feeling that this place was full of possibilities. In another world, time, I would have been a carpenter. Rather, I should add that to my list of “in another life…”

Oh the places I get to explore!

At home with Sarah Taylor for TheKit.ca. I stepped into Sarah’s home for a quickie shoot where she showed me her favourite pieces, (loads of Canadian brands!) and beauty regime. The Kit runs in the Toronto Star every Thursday as a pullout section, so go buy a newspaper, it’s good for your brain—and consequently my career.

Taylor’s one of those girls I shoot a lot. Always on point, whether she’s going for hippie or polished, wearing combat boots or heels, she pulls it off seamlessly.

Look 1:
Ashley Rowe pants,
tank Won Hundred from Fawn boutique
heels Jenni Kayne from Chasse Gardée

Look 2:
wool and leather jacket Pink Cobra at Carte Blanche

Look 3:
sweater h&m
vest TopShop

To ever inspiring!

This is the silhouette I dream of every day. I tell myself that I’m going to get a tailor to fit all my clothes, to build from scratch my ideal silhouettes and then I’d be fabulous.

Over the summer I was cooped up in period costume warehouse photographing true vintage garments, piece-by-piece. It was a labour of love and I feel madly deeply for the 40s. The angular silhouettes. The nipped in waists, the powerhouse shoulders and the buttons! Oh the buttons in bone, metal, covered in fabric, they were bonkers! Then I realized that the wide leg trousers that I love from the 70s were from the 40s. Fashion does nothing but recycle. And I fell even harder.

On a day when all I can think about is, “Am I wearing enough layers?” I want to dream about a latitude that would allow me to wear a silk blend blazer, finely cut to me, with strong shoulders, an itty bitty waist and trousers, flared with the sweetest little peep toe spectator heel. Oh, and I’d be wearing a hat, wide brimmed, and hopefully big enough for my cranium, while I sipped cocktails at an outdoor café, in Rome.

Photo from Arthur Mendonça F/W runway collection.

The Morning After, video for the fall/winter collection of Label. Here are a few stills that I took behind the scenes of the day shoot, (where I really didn’t do much, other than take stills of my beautiful friends). Someone’s gotta do it.

This video makes me wish so badly to look good in leather leggings. But I’ll never, so I can live vicariously through gals with legs for days.

Click to watch the video. It is quite nice.

Today, I realized I’d never showed you this photo that I had taken from NOW Magazine during Toronto Fashion Week of designer Jessica Mary Clayton. One of my favourite Toronto designers, who, if you aren’t already familiar with you should go get familiar with! She designed my princess 3rd Anniversary Party Dress—yes, she gets all caps for putting the capital “P” in my party.

She makes her own fabrics in her west end home and has an eye for romantic sartorial flair, but never falls into the froufrou girly girl shit. Clayton somehow makes you feel like a sweetie pie who wants to get into some serious trouble.

Here she is standing in front of her ink blot video screening for her s/s 2012 collection.

Obviously, as you can plainly see, she is a babe. Yup yup!

Layers. This woman’s look is all about the layers from her hair to the outfit. But thing is, the hat steals the show. Today, the hat is such a focal point. Even in hand, her chartreuse and rose bowler hat overshadows the ensemble. Aside from it’s pop of colour against a black and white canvas, the hat is so other. No longer do you have to cover your head to leave the house, and the hat has suffered it’s fall from the height of fashion.

The hat has now become a true mark of sartorial flavour. Someone wearing one assumes a role, a cool attitude. I’ve never felt comfortable wearing a hat, but what I love about this woman is that neither is she. Here the bowler is a prop and it still works.

In light of the New Year, I wanted to share my new space. Just because I love it. Love being here, and I love love love, my chalkboard wall. I am making myself clear, yeah?

For a while, I was between places, ie. back at my parents’. Thank god I have them. My roomie and I bide our time and after a meager 3 months we found this gem. The apartment, rather a converted office space, with its drop ceiling and ugly tiled floors just screamed, “Take me!” (Apartment hunting in Toronto is turning into blood sport.) I mean it didn’t help that the dude who lived here, for 3 years mind you, ran a tech company out of this converted office apartment/office (say that 5 times fast). Each room has several outlets and jacks, the place was so bare and sterile, and the overhead lighting would give you a blinding headache. It just had a crazy mojo that caught us in its web. So with a shit ton of love and vino we made-over our Queen East spot. And damn, don’t she look gooooood.

This is me showing my baby off.

So from strange cables poking out everywhere to 3 quarts of chalkboard paint to new lighting last week. I wanted to share my slice of Toronto and a few of my favourite nooks… Oh, and my homemade broccoli soup!

Happy 2012!
When it’s cold outside all I can think about is when it wasn’t. You quickly forget the feeling the sun has on your bare skin. I wonder, despite how much I do like Toronto, why any pioneer stayed this far north. One winter wasn’t enough for them to realize, “Yup, keep moving down thataway, due south!”

So while I’m daydreaming of far off places and tanning oil and cocktails on the beach I look at my street style shots from the sunnier months.

Here is a shot taken outside the 3.1 Phillip Lim show of Sarah Rutson, Fashion Director at Lane Crawford.