West Elm Toronto

West Elm, the younger sister to the gorgeous and rustic home decor store, Pottery Barn, has arrived in Canada, opening up in Toronto's trendy but still rather quiet, Liberty Village.

The open concept loft space and hardwood floors of West Elm Toronto offer the perfect environment to house the modern cottage like furniture that West Elm reasonably sells.

My design savvy friend, Jess, who invited me to the opening party, wrote a fabulous review of the store which can be read here.

Aside from running into milk. audio DJ, Gani and eating delicious mini quiches, a highlight of the night for me was noticing the clever use of a rock as a name card.

In addition to being environmentally friendly and having the option of keeping a personalized paperweight, the cleverly stylized rock was a good indicator of the type of modern & practical pieces that can be found at West Elm.

For those Canadians who still miss shopping at Caban, West Elm offers a wonderful alternative.

A Cool Thought

With the increased emergence of flavoured water flooding the competitive bottled beverage industry, why not create flavoured ice cubes? Or corporate ice cubes to help compete for advertising space? This would be especially popular for sponsors of important events and would also be a great idea for companies trying to target the hard to connect with 20 something generation who are so saturated by online marketing initiatives and are looking for something more memorable.

The above photo is my attempt at recreating the Volkswagon logo.

Impromptu Haiku

sunshowers are rare

droplets full with rays of light

leaving a warm glow

Toronto Fashion Week

Saturday night marked the end of Toronto's Fashion Week, with Maroon 5 providing the closing festivities at Nathan Phillips Square. That's right - Maroon 5, an American band, was chosen to perform instead of a Canadian artist, since we already saw enough local talent over the week.

I guess Maroon 5 appeals to both of the demographics in attendance at Fashion week: celebrity/pop culture obsessed ladies + gay guys. Anyway, to a worldwide company like LG, whom was sponsoring the event, it doesn't matter where the band's from as long as entertainment + lifestyle can all be connected to their stylish new phone.

Aside from the few designers who showcased samples from their collections last night, the only full show I attended was the Joe Fresh Spring '09 one. I hate the simple, boring and cheap clothes that Joe Fresh offers but was nonetheless excited for the event as my friend DJ FLOH BACK was providing the soundtrack which definitely drew more rave reviews than the clothes.

To emphasize the lack lustre clothes, anorexic models with boring super flat hair were chosen to frown as they walked down the runway in extremely high stilletos that totally clashed with the K-Mart-esque styles of Joe Fresh.

I know it must be hard to market a cheap clothing line to the fashionistas in attendance, as they would never be caught buying clothes at a supermarket or in the suburbs (where most Joe Fresh stores are located) so why try to appeal to trendsetters by not being true to your brand image?

The show could've been a lot more realistic had healthier looking models been chosen. The models should have smiled too - because at Joe Fresh you can buy a knock off Ralph Lauren cardigan for $20.

No matter who your audience is, you have to stay true to your brand image, because having a confused brand makes things difficult for the consumer. Although I guess Joe Fresh doesn't really have its own brand identity since it just copies other designers' fashions.

Royalty & Riches

Attention Toronto residents: Next Tuesday, October 28th, is your chance to....

Party in a castle

with a queen & king

an open bar

& lots of bling!

The Canadian Friends of the Israel Museum is an organization that throws really cool art themed parties around the world. This month, the Toronto chapter has teamed up with Christie's to bring you an exclusive viewing and briefing of gems, jewels & watches from Christie's New York.

The excitement is taking place at Toronto's own historic Casa Loma. DJ Dougie Boom will be supplying the beats so make sure your dancing shoes match that party dress.

All the money raised from the event goes towards funding free admission for children of all faiths and ethnicities to learn about art together at Israel's national museum. Pretty cool stuff.

For more information and to buy your tickets click here

Dancing Mascots & Other Nuit Blanche Highlights

Nuit Blanche 2008 was a night to remember and one that took several days to recover from. As mentioned in my previous post, there were a lot of exciting DJ sets to check out. My fellow art committee members and I started out at The Drake, Toronto's art & cultural boutique hotel, to hear Mike Relm DJ on the rooftop patio. I was a bit disappointed by his performance since it was 90% identical to his last show in Toronto in 2007.

We then headed back to my place for a few pick me up drinks and some delicious cheese. The Ski Queen Gjetost cheese that I inhaled, looked like peanut butter but tasted like caramel. Incredible.


After refueling, we ventured back to Toronto's Art & Design District where we were amused by the red lights in Trinity Bellwoods Park and the random art displays in the numerous galleries and alleyways lining the strip. It was also fun to experience the unplanned run-in's from co-workers and friends who were amongst the thousands of people frolicking in the street.


Next stop was my friend's birthday party on Ossington where we practiced our dance moves at Levack Block, only to show them off when the bar closed at Rolly's Garage, which was one heck of a dance party!


The pics below are of the 84.85 at Rolly's Garage. Colin, the rapper, is in the green hat, while Jay, the DJ, is spinning his magic.






I didn't think the night could get any better until we hit up OPOPO's 2nd annual impromptu Nuit Blanche Take Over the Street Dance Party!!!! The energy in the air was so intense that we decided to head over to Liberty Village around 5am to cool off. Sometimes too much fun can be overwhelming.









We stumbled upon more random art installations in corners, alleys and even coming out of windows, like a giant waterfall! At first I thought I was dreaming cause I was so tired but there was actually a waterfall coming out of a window from one of the old historic buildings in Liberty Village. Click on this youtube video if you don't believe me


.
To end off a fantastic night, we danced to early 90's happy music at Lamport Stadium with an assortment of mascots as our guides. Seriously. Check it out on the youtube video bar to the right of the page. Enjoy!

Nuit Blanche

Nuit Blanche, or White Night, for those of you who don't speak French, is an all night art event that started in Paris and has spread to many other world class cities. Torontonians seem to love Nuit Blanche and have doubled their attendance rates from the 2006 inaugural year to last year's recorded number of 800,000! With some major sponsorship money coming in from Scotiabank and a general positive vibe from locals and media outlets, it looks like this year will be bigger & brighter, filled with more exciting nighttime treats.

Last year I ended up at an adhoc car wash party on Queen West near Gladstone Avenue where I danced till the sun came up to the awesome electronic/house beats of OPOPO & Operon. This special event was not part of Nuit Blanche but anything goes on a night where art is in charge! The boys who DJ'ed knew that no one would care if they were taking over private property to play really loud music when people down the street were watching random objects being thrown from the roof of a building, all in the name of art! If this type of stunt is of interest to you, be sure to check out SMASH! Droppin' Stuff! in Liberty Village.





Unfortunately the car wash has ceased to exist in order to make room for more condo's (surprise) Fortunately, rumour has it there could very well be another sporadic dance party taking place nearby, but the location for now remains a secret. My recommendation is to hang out in the Queen West area and you'll be sure to stumble upon some kick-ass beats at 4am, not to mention tons of cool art installations along the way.


I"m going to try and check out Mike Relm who will be performing at The Drake earlier on in the night. Mike Relm is one of the coolest and most original DJ's I"ve ever seen as he incorporates videos (often controversial) into his music in order to keep the listener thinking while dancing.



After his performance I'm going to head over to an abandoned garage on Ossington to catch The 84.85 in action with Syntonics. It's not every night you get to party in an abandoned garage and Nuit Blanche helps local residents remember that art can be found anywhere at any time of day, in numerous forms.


So next time you see that random looking object on a sidewalk corner, you might want to have another look. Maybe it has a deeper, hidden meaning that only a young child can understand, or 1 million Torontonians on a magical night.


Nuit Blanche runs from 6:52pm to 6:52am on Saturday, October 4th - 5th.

DJ Spotlight - Boys Noize

Boys Noize are playing in Toronto tonight and I am so excited!!! I missed their show last year at The Social, a much smaller venue than This is London, where they will be DJing tonight with Montreal's A Track, brother to the lead singer from Chromeo.

Aside from hosting a pre-drink for 14 of my fun & crazy friends, I also can't wait for tonight because Boys Noize are an extremely talented electro duo that still charge reasonable covers for their gigs (unlike Justice who's ticket prices have gone up 75% since last year).

From Snoop Dogg to Feist, these German musical geniuses have remixed quite the diverse range of artists and made their songs more conducive to partying. Click here for a glimpse of their electrifying performance at Coachella this past April and get ready to dance!