Month: May 2021

These treasures will satisfy the air sign’s love of socializing *and* their need to recharge.

It is officially Gemini season, and we’ve got you covered with gifts for every ~multi-faceted~ Gemini on your list. The zodiac sign represented by twins — not The Row’s Olsen twins, though they do happen to be Geminis — has a reputation for being irrational, but the sometimes impulsive air sign has many strengths, too. Intellectually curious, playful and passionate, a Gemini is a wonderful leader. Honour that skill by gifting your fave Gemini a standout piece for their next big Zoom meeting, like a retro floral blazer.

True chameleons, Geminis can easily master the ebb and flow of multiple social scenes, effortlessly merging with any friendship circle. After a loooooong year of distance from friends, this social butterfly will appreciate goodies to elevate summer park hangs — think a bluetooth speaker for blasting tunes, a breezy puff-sleeve sundress from Wilfred or a punchy eyeshadow duo that’ll look cute peeking out over a patterned summer mask. And although they may have been voted “life of the party” senior year, this air sign values alone time to create, daydream, read and reset. It can be difficult for a hustling Gemini to push pause on the plethora of things they’ve got going on, so help them carve out solo time with Constance Stellas’s The Little Book of Self-Care for Gemini and a relaxing room diffuser.

Click through below for our favourite gifts for the Gemini in your life.

The actor who portrays Minnelli in the Netflix limited series ‘Halston’ on how she prepared for the iconic role — and got immersed in Halston’s fashion designs.

Before she was cast as legendary Broadway star Liza Minnelli in the Netflix limited series, Halston, actor Krysta Rodriguez was familiar with fashion designer Roy Halston’s persona, but that was the extent of it. “I didn’t know the whole story of Halston’s journey and legacy, and what led to his anonymity as we see him nowadays,” she says. Rodriguez knew that Halston — portrayed by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor — and Minnelli were from the same era but she had no idea of their close-knit friendship and the common threads that held them together. “I didn’t realize how deeply enmeshed they were in each other’s lives and careers, and in actually creating each other as American icons.”

For her own part, Rodriguez was already well-versed in all things Minnelli by the time she landed the role. The actor has an off-Broadway background and Minnelli has long been lauded in the Broadway world (she has four Tony awards). In fact, Rodriguez was doing an off-Broadway play that was in intermission when she learned that she had been cast to play Minnelli. “But I still had to research her because you can’t possibly know enough about someone to think about playing until you do that research,” she tells me from her home in Los Angeles. Rodriguez began immersing herself in everything Minnelli. “For months, there wasn’t a day that went by when I wasn’t reading something or watching something for months.”

Still, channeling Minnelli for the series — streaming now — wasn’t something that came easily to Rodriguez. “I was very cautious and nervous about articulating the part properly,” she explains. “You have so many chances to get things right in the theatre, and there are so many roles that you get to create from scratch because no one really has a point of reference. But that wasn’t the case with Liza: not only is she a legend but she is a living legend. The weight of what I was doing stayed with me the entire time.”

Comfort in the creative process included the need to feel at home in Halston’s designs. “This is why, for many reasons, the costume designers wanted to create everything from scratch,” she explains. “Most everything was recreated. Some of Halson’s pieces are in museums while other designs don’t exist anymore. We wanted to create designs afresh so that they felt authentic to the people wearing them.”

The buttercup-yellow pantsuit that Rodriguez wears in the scene where Minnelli marries second husband Jack Haley Jr., for example, was a recreation, designed to fit her meticulously. “The suit felt more authentic to me because had I put on the actual Halston suit I would have looked like someone wearing the costume,” Rodriguez tells me. There is a pantsuit that Minnelli wears in Studio 54 — the legendary New York City nightclub where Halston and Minnelli, among other friends such as jewellery designer Elsa Peretti and model Bianca Jagger were fixtures — that was in a museum and couldn’t be used. “The famous fashion designer Naeem Khan — who was Halston’s protégé in the seventies — recreated that pantsuit from the original pattern of Halston that he had. Because of COVID, he had the time to do it,” she says. “It is as meticulous and close as you can get without having the original.”

Rodriguez remembers one moment when the genius of Halston especially struck her. “I was in a fitting and I happened to see some of the patterns,” she tells me. “I was in awe. The patterns were basically like decorative origami.” Rodriguez was taken by how a lot of Halston’s dresses were minimalist in design but complex in construction. “You can do the whole dress with one theme and I don’t think I understood what it takes to make a dress like that. It feels wrapped around, but it’s so very meticulously thought out and quite a mathematical process. To make something intricate look so effortless takes a lot of mental gymnastics, not to mention very deft fingers.”

Rodriguez says that while some of Halston’s pieces (a formal caftan, for instance) might not be worn as readily by women today, for the most part his designs are timeless. “I think what makes his fashion so classic is that they are meant for all kinds of women’s bodies. He was very deliberate about dressing all shapes and sizes and that’s what kept him universal for as long as it did. He brought fashion to the masses in a way that wasn’t really done before him.”

In this day and age, Rodriguez believes it’s very difficult to have a designer as ubiquitous as Halston. “It could be that the era of designers like Halston is gone forever,” she says. “That’s not to say that designers today don’t have a great impact. Of course they do. But it’s like television. We used to be a society where everyone would gather around one program. But now we’re heading to a place where we all get our own individual television network. I’m being hyperbolic but with social media the influence is so targeted that it’s almost impossible to have everyone look at the same thing at the same time.” But in the sartorial seventies, everyone was looking at Halston.

Since the series wrapped, Rodriguez has found herself looking to Halston once again. “I launched my interior design company Curated by Krysta Rodriguez last week, and I was inspired by Halston and Minnelli and their 1970s design aesthetic so much that it influenced my own design style,” she says. Indeed, Halston himself was heralded as a household name having trademarked everything from perfumes to interiors before he lost the rights to design under his name.

“We say this a lot and it’s true: Halston was the original influencer,” says Rodriguez. “He put his name on everything. And money was one only part of that equation: I think he just loved showing off and he loved being good at a lot of things. It was a real high for him to be the arbiter of taste in every arena.” She pauses, then adds, “And he was.”

The Summer 2021 cover star says it’s about time people talk about anti-Asian racism. “They’re shared global experiences and something that the Asian diaspora has grown up with. The situation has gotten worse in the past few years, where casual racism has become very openly accepted.”

The Fernanda Ly you see walking down the runway and posing in editorials and ad campaigns is the personification of cool. She exudes both a quiet magnetism and an air of mystery that some might interpret as her being standoffish. Fernanda Ly in real life is warm and self-effacing, with softer edges. For someone whose presence commands attention on camera, she’s pretty much attention-averse when she’s off the clock. Except for when it matters. That’s when Ly shows up and isn’t afraid to speak out.

Her YouTube channel provides perhaps the most intimate look at the real Ly, showing many facets of her prismatic personality. Originally intended as a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like being a working model in the fashion industry, it has evolved, thanks to the pandemic, into a channel for Ly’s varied and sometimes niche interests — her luxury handbag and shoe collections, her adventures in building a mechanical keyboard and her love of beauty, anime and cosplay. But she also doesn’t shy away from digging deeper, especially when sharing the realities of being a model — the good and the bad. “The fashion industry is really secretive, even though it has such a luxurious image,” says Ly on a Zoom call from New York. “I want potential models to be aware of what they’re signing up for and to bring awareness to the unsavoury parts.”

Ly first came blazing into the fashion world at age 19 with her pastel-pink hair, turning heads on a runway full of notables as she walked Louis Vuitton’s Fall 2015 show. She was booked by creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, who signed her on for a five-season runway exclusive. Ly not only mesmerized attendees of Paris Fashion Week but also drew the fashion world’s collective attention — it practically vibrated with excitement.

This was a pretty impressive feat for a girl who’d been scouted just two years previously, before her final high-school exams, at a shopping centre in her hometown of Sydney, Australia. Before that, Ly had lived a relatively normal existence. She was born to Chinese parents who had moved to Australia from Vietnam in search of a better life and was raised in the suburbs of Sydney. The honours student was pursuing an architecture degree at the University of Technology Sydney until her career was catapulted by a single catwalk appearance. Once the work started pouring in, she pressed pause on her studies and turned her full attention to modelling.

Ly went on to book shows and ad campaigns for fashion heavyweights like Dior, Chanel, Tiffany & Co. and H&M. She also travelled the world — from Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve (to raise awareness for elephant conservation) to near Mount Fuji for a photo shoot. Meanwhile, her quirky fashion sensibility made her a street-style favourite and her striking pink hair topped every beauty mood board. (FYI, her much-lauded cotton-candy strands were a DIY dye job, thanks to some bleach and Manic Panic.)

Despite her success, Ly strove to be more than, in her words, “a hanger.” In 2017, she contributed to a series of personal essays on Models.com, bringing light to the sexual harassment within the modelling industry. She shared her experience of being inappropriately touched by a stylist and pointed out the various ways models are mistreated. Many of the models who also shared their experiences for the website’s survey chose to remain anonymous. “I also heavily considered that,” she admits, before adding: “It feels more personal when you know who and what someone experienced. I wanted people to know that they’re not alone.”

This decision might seem at odds with the model’s reticent personality, especially since Ly has always safeguarded her personal space. “There are some things that I believe are more important than my privacy, which is why I choose to speak out about them,” she explains. It’s why the thoughtful slivers that she does share carry more weight.

Ly inadvertently became the cool Asian model, which came with its own set of pressures and expectations, especially for someone her age. “People had an image of me, and I wanted to reach that image and be who they thought I was without really knowing who I was within myself,” she shares.

She also became aware of how the industry tends to view Asian models. “Asians are not a monolith,” says Ly. “Everyone thinks an Asian person is Chinese, Japanese or Korean. They always think of East Asia, but there’s also Southeast Asia. And when they want an Asian model, it’s always a model with black hair and pale skin. People don’t realize that we also come in many different colours and varieties. There are billions of Asians out there, so why would people think we all look the same?”

When it comes to identity, Ly has struggled with being put into boxes and never quite neatly fitting into any of them. She’s too Australian to be the Asian model, too Chinese to be the Australian model and not Chinese enough since her parents are from Vietnam. Once she moved abroad, she realized that she actually feels Australian the most. Ironically, it’s the part of her identity that she gets questioned about most often.

Earlier this year, anti-Asian hate crimes grew and gave rise to the Stop Asian Hate movement, which added another layer to a pandemic that was already rife with challenges. “It’s about time that people became aware of our experiences, which aren’t just limited to America,” she says. “They’re shared global experiences and something that the Asian diaspora has grown up with. The situation has gotten worse in the past few years, where casual racism has become very openly accepted.”

Ly is no stranger to it either. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Asian person who hasn’t experienced racism of some sort in their life,” she says. “I have — through work. People try to talk about me, not knowing that English is my first language and that I can understand them. It seems small, but it builds a lot of anger and resentment within you over the years.”

As more people get vaccinated and there’s a glimmer of hope, Ly’s uneasiness remains. “There’s always this lingering sense of sadness and anger because we’re all worried about what the next big thing will be,” she says. Something as simple as stepping outside has become a big deal. “It’s supposed to be safe to go outside, but it’s still just very scary. What if I’m next?” When her friends go biking, in addition to their masks, they wear sunglasses and a hat and tie their hair back so they won’t be easily identified as Asian. “This is something they’re supposed to be doing for leisure,” laments Ly.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, there have been some silver linings. Ly, who admits to being a homebody, has learned to readjust. She taught herself video editing for her YouTube channel. Last December, she brought home a kitten named Butter who has kept her smitten and entertained. When the fashion industry pivoted to Zoom shoots, Ly welcomed some of the creative control she got as a model. “We had to do our own makeup or wear our own stuff, which was really fun,” she says. And the pandemic has also strengthened some of her friendships.

Right now, her modelling work has started to pick up again. Another thing that likely won’t remain the same for much longer is Ly’s hair colour, which has been blond for the past two years. When she dyed it after almost seven years of sporting the same shade, she decided that this was the new her — older and wiser. But whatever colour palette she lands on next, she has already proven that she’s more than just “the girl with the pink hair.”

Photography by LILY & LILAC. Styling by DAVIAN LAIN. Creative direction by GEORGE ANTONOPOULOS. Hair by BEN JONES FOR BRIDGE ARTISTS/REDKEN. Makeup by ALLIE SMITH FOR BRIDGE ARTISTS/MAC. Manicure by ELINA OGAWA FOR BRIDGE ARTISTS/ZOYA. Photography assistant: CHRIS COOK. Fashion assistants: PIERINA CARLIN, JACQUELINE BENN SCHUPPE. Makeup assistant: TOMOMI GONZALEZ.

Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world.

You don’t exactly need to be a scholar of fashion to know that its pendulum always swings between extremes—dress silhouettes go from bandages to sacks and back, and the instant a trend hits its saturation point, you can bet that its complete opposite is waiting in the wings to deliver its solo. Never has that been clearer than over the past few months, as body-conscious dressing with more cutouts than a slice of Swiss cheese has come into its own, displacing the all-comfort, all-the-time status quo. From Jacquemus to KNWLS to London’s Queen of Cling Nensi Dojaka, the fashion industry is betting on all things skin-baring as a mood lifter and life preserver all in one.

And I want to be excited about that. As a lover of fashion and a fan of all the above designers, I’m pulling for everyone involved. But the pressure to achieve what society deems the “perfect” re-emergence look, and the invisible work that often seems to demand, is jarring to think about for those of us who were getting used to clothes that swaddle, rather than display. As lockdowns began here in the U.S., those of us lucky enough to work remotely quickly found that rib-tickling waistbands, underwire bras and shoes that weren’t at least distant cousins to a slipper started to feel like relics of a less enlightened time. When I thought about how many days I spent enclosed in the itchy agony of a pair of tights, or buckled over from high-waisted pants, it was like hearing about life in the 1800’s: people used to live like this?

Bettmann

While the Before and After times aren’t really as binary as we’d once thought, it’s become a fashion and media preoccupation to imagine dressing for the After and all the anticipation and dread that entails. Amanda Mull asked in The Atlantic, “What do you wear to reenter society?” and offered some answers drawn from the way previous pandemics shaped fashion, while Talia Lavin pushed back against the pressure to have a Hot Vaxxed Girl Summer with a frankly appealing-sounding alternative: Blob Girl Summer. Obviously, the extent to which you want to dress up remains a personal choice. Many people are cheered by the prospect of using clothing as a pick-me-up. But for the rest of us, there’s an external keep-up-with-the-Joneses pressure that feels like a combination of the first day back at school, a college reunion and the world’s most awkward mixer is looming. When I hear people fretting about looking perfect for the summer to come, I second-guess myself. (Should I have been popping in Invisalign or investing in a Peloton back when I was simply focused on survival?)

Vecchio

What happened to going easy on ourselves? Last year, fashion’s firm re-centering around physical comfort—something that had been trending long before the pandemic, with haute sneakers and tracksuits becoming the norm—felt like a benchmark of some kind. It was freeing to not think about how I looked to others or where I might fall short, to let go of the idea that, especially as a female-identifying person, I needed to appear a certain way and achieve a certain level of grooming simply to do my job. (If athleisure mobilized me, then sweatpants radicalized me.) I hoped that, in the same way we reconsidered the way we do so many other things—work, commute, structure our days—we might demand a sea change rather than a return to a flawed version of “normal.”

Instead, things feel like they’re moving at hyper-speed, with fashion and beauty standards only more accelerated than they were pre-lockdown. Anecdotally, I keep hearing about four-figure purchases or obscure plastic surgery procedures from people who were previously strangers to both practices. When it comes to fashion, the unsustainable (in multiple senses) expectation that we sink money into keeping up with the latest trends has come roaring back, and the idea of post-pandemic “revenge shopping,” while understandable, feels antithetical to one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned in the past year. Namely, that we really only need so much.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

The CAFA Awards look a little different this year, but there’s no shortage of boundary-breaking creativity on the virtual red carpet.

The Canadian Arts & Fashion Awards (CAFA) gala looks different this year, and so does its CAFA 2021 red carpet. Ahead of tonight’s virtual ceremony celebrating Canadian excellence in the fashion industry, the style set got glammed up for remote close-ups in ensembles by their favourite Canadian designers in lieu of a live red carpet. Photographers George Pimentel and Jimmy Hamelin darted around Toronto and Montreal capturing the local looks and it’s a completely unique spin on a virtual red carpet.

From new mother Deborah Lau-Yu donning jewellery by J.Y. GAO, to Narces designer Nikki Wirthensohn Yassemi balancing tulle and sequins on a steep staircase, Canadian fashion’s finest spared no glamour. Anishinaabe activist and stylist Sarain Fox evinces bird-like energy in a lush forest, while Myles Sexton serves up a *moment* in an extravagant David Dunkley headpiece and Montreal-made Denis Gagnon dress. Each is an exhibit of its own.

FASHION Magazine’s very own editor-in-chief Bernadette Morra graces us in a Greta Constantine dress that is equivalent to sunshine, while creative & fashion director George Antonopoulos wears Toronto treasure U3. With much more to see, browse the gallery below for a nation-wide parade of fashion-forward moments worn by some of the biggest supporters of Canadian fashion on the virtual CAFA 2021 red carpet.

To register to watch the 2021 virtual CAFA Awards, visit www.cafawards.ca.

The fashion fund, announced at tonight’s CAFAs, also includes a three-year mentorship at the department store.

Canada’s oldest retailer is set to launch the Hudson’s Bay Fashion Fund, an annual grant of $25,000 paired with a three-year mentorship program, aimed at fostering emerging BIPOC Canadian designers.

The award was announced at tonight’s Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards by Canadian designer and Brother Vellies founder Aurora James, who started the 15 Percent Pledge, a commitment to stock at least 15 percent BIPOC-owned and designed brands that Hudson’s Bay signed onto just last week.

And while the timing is fortuitous — in early May, the $25,000 Suzanne Rogers Designer Grant was “deferred” following social posts the socialite and fashion patron posted with former President Donald Trump, a blow to an industry with already limited grants and financial support for designers — Hudson’s Bay says this fund has been in the works since at least last summer.

“George Floyd’s death was a galvanizing moment for many,” says Tyler Franch, VP fashion director at the department store. “At Hudson’s Bay, it was apparent that we needed to look at how we do business and how we support the BIPOC community. The Fashion Fund is one of many steps we have [taken] and continue to take to accelerate racial equity in Canada.” The choice to offer this opportunity to BIPOC designers, he continues, was an acknowledgement of the “systemic disadvantages” these communities can face. “As Canada’s fashion retailer we need to be accountable [to] and reflective of all Canadians,” says Franch, “to ensure diversity in the brands we offer, as well as the designers we work with.”

Hudson’s Bay has also recently released its “Charter For Change” which marked the company’s 351st anniversary by acknowledging a need to “reconcile its past” (which includes a troubled history with Canada’s Indigenous people) and “change for a more equitable future.” That includes a commitment of $30 million over ten years for the Hudson’s Bay Foundation to support anti-racism education and create career opportunities for BIPOC people. “[The Fashion Fund] is part of a holistic approach Hudson’s Bay is taking to build an equitable Canada for all,” says Franch.

The fund combines a monetary grant with a mentorship program that will give the recipient the opportunity to learn from various departments across Hudson’s Bay — product development, material sourcing, finance, marketing — as well as the opportunity to have their work featured on the retailer’s website or in their brick-and-mortar stores. “While the financial support is obviously incredibly important, investing long-term in the growth of the brand through mentorship and real-time experiences is really what sets this fund apart from others,” explains Franch of the model they’ve chosen. “With a national footprint of stores combined with the 5th largest e-commerce business in Canada, Hudson’s Bay can provide unparalleled insider access to Canadian retail.” The program is designed to “build a thriving brand and business,” he continues, nodding to the knowledge gap that can often exist in creative industries between creating beautiful things and actually being able to make a living from it.

For Franch, who helped to spearhead this initiative within Hudson’s Bay, helping to build that bridge between talent and opportunity is what this fund is all about. “As a former [magazine] editor, I recognize that the market is looking to support and showcase emerging Canadian designers, but they often do not have the runway to succeed,” he says, noting that the dream of this fund is to be the launching pad of say, the next Virgil Abloh. “We want to be part of their success and bring global attention to Canadian design.”

While the exact details — including eligibility criteria — have not yet been announced, the fund’s recipients will be chosen by an advisory board that Franch says will be “a diverse panel of some of the country’s leading industry and societal change-makers.” Applications open this September.