Fashion & Trend

When makeup artist Violette spies an incredible fabric, her instinct is to bring its qualities to a face. “I try to recreate the texture and colour on the eyelid,” she says, wearing a white T-shirt, mauve satin skirt and delicate gold jewellery, her shaggy brown bangs grazing her eyelashes. “I’ll change the shape of eyeliner to make it more couture, or I’ll blur the edge of a red lipstick to make it feel like the shape of a dress or a fabric.” Born in Paris and now based in Brooklyn, Violette—who goes by her first name only—was not formally trained in makeup artistry, which she believes she benefited from. “It’s really old school,” she says. “It’s not about inspiration or expressing yourself.” Instead, she studied fashion design and art, the latter training her eye for her future career. “It helped me understand volume in the face and body and how light is supposed to hit the skin,” she says. “I’ll change the shape of eyeliner to make it more couture.” Avoiding a more traditiona...

It was almost a year ago that Gucci’s head offices were raided after the luxury brand was suspected of tax evasion. Now it seems the case may finally go to trial. Milan officers recently finished up their investigation into the company and now allege that the brand owes the Italian tax authorities around €1 billion (over $1.5 billion Canadian) for revenues booked between 2010 and 2016. They suspect that the company was paying taxes on profits generated within Italy in a different country that had a more beneficial taxing system. For example, Gucci is part of the French luxury group Kering . Kering uses the Swiss company, Luxury Goods International (LGI) , to manage the distribution and logistics of many of its brands. Prosecutors are essentially arguing that Gucci’s revenues should be taxed in Italy, not in Switzerland. A source claimed that Gucci’s Chief Executive, Marco Bizzarri and the company’s former CEO, Patrizio Di Marco are the main subjects of the investigation and whil...

For a remote island with around 70 inhabitants, northern Scotland’s Fair Isle has had an impressively outsized impact on culture. Its eponymous sweaters are beloved for both their distinctive zigzag patterns and their practical warmth; they were reportedly worn by polar scientists on the 1902 Bruce expedition to Antarctica, and the Prince of Wales brought them into public view in the 1920s when he donned the nubby knits. Fair Isle replicas (see below) have become immensely popular thanks to their provincial, old-world charm, but the genuine article is still hard to come by—islander Hollie Shaw has a wait-list that’s three years long for one of her hand-knit sweaters. Click through for our favourite Fair Isle-inspired knits. 1/10 Fair Isle-Inspired Sweaters Fair Isle wool sweater ($399, Acne ) Buy Now 2/10 Fair Isle-Inspired Sweaters Oversized Jacquard Sweater ($100, Z...

You’d be hard pressed in this day and age to walk into a café and not find a version of avocado toast on the menu. It’s reached the point where the dish has not only taken over the food scene, but developed into something bigger, transcending its spot on the plate to become a cultural symbol of sorts and (let’s not forget) the butt of almost every millennial joke . But while it’s clear we are living in avocado crazed times, the green pear-shaped fruit hadn’t reached the skincare industry until now, with the launch of  Glow Recipe’s   Avocado Melt Sleeping Mask . You may already know about the brand’s  watermelon version . The millennial pink mask was an instant hit with customers, selling out seven times over on their website and garnering a wait list of more than 8,000 people at Sephora. “People loved the lightweight texture and the AHAs that resurfaced skin effectively,” says Sarah Lee, co-CEO and co-founder of Glow Recipe. “We heard from our customers that they wa...

By the time I reached university, I knew the acceptable answer to “Who’s your favourite author?” should under no circumstances be “Sophie Kinsella.” Despite her back catalogue of New York Times bestsellers—including the insanely successful Confessions of a Shopaholic series—it wasn’t prudent to cite as your scribe of choice a pretty young woman who wrote mostly about pretty young women and their dalliances with men, shoes and career chaos. Not if you wanted to be taken seriously, that is. No, you were much better off citing Noam Chomsky, Kurt Vonnegut or, hell, even Stephen King. Chick lit , the sort of novels Kinsella wrote, were for silly women: the type who can’t exercise a modicum of self-restraint when in driving distance of an end-of-season sale. When Emily Giffin’s first novel, Something Borrowed , hit stores in 2005, with that giant engagement ring and cutesy lowercase typeface on its pastel pink cover, I steered clear of it like it was a bottle of birthday-cake vodka. When...

Despite major medical advances in the treatment for HIV/AIDS—with regular daily medication, the virus can be rendered inactive and untransferable—there is still fear and discomfort surrounding contact with someone who has it. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Casey House , only 38% of Canadians said they would be willing to be touched by somebody with HIV because many still believe it can be transmitted that way. “So we said ‘let’s challenge that stigma, because you can’t actually pass HIV from skin to skin’,” says Joanne Simons, CEO of Casey House. That’s the intent of Healing House , a pop-up HIV+ spa that opens its doors for two days, on November 30th and December 1st, which is World AIDS Day. Fifteen HIV+ Healers will be providing free  services : a head, scalp, back and shoulder treatment, an express hand treatment and mini-facials. “It’s really so that we can invite the public in and say ‘are you willing to do this, are you nervous?,” says Simons of the conversati...

It’s been over three decades since  The Handmaid’s Tale  was published—and likely a little while since you read the CanLit novel in grade 10 English class—but over the past couple of years, the dystopian world that Margaret Atwood created has come to the forefront of popular culture. Whether it’s an Emmy-winning television series , a sexy Halloween costume , Melania Trump’s 2018 White House Christmas decor , or a global march protesting the erosion of women’s rights and freedoms , the Handmaids’ red cloaks and white bonnets have left the pages of Atwood’s novel, and entered the real world. Which has lead those of us in real world to ask: Mrs. Atwood, our dear national treasure, can we ever expect The   Handmaid’s Tale sequel? (AKA, please tell us what the future holds and let us know everything is going to be okay.) Atwood, who celebrated her 79th birthday earlier this month, took to Twitter to confirm the rumours. She announced that the follow up novel, titled The Tes...

Women work hard, both on and off the clock. From demanding jobs to packed social calendars, it can be difficult to find time to set aside for yourself. As hard as it can be to say no to after-work drinks or event invites, sometimes you just need to stay in. Use the dip in temperature as an excuse to cancel plans and focus on self-care instead—and there’s no better place to start than with your skin. Winter is notoriously hard on our bodies, but something as small as a 15-minute sheet mask could replenish the moisture that this season has stripped from the skin. Here are a few reasons you should make time for these hydration powerhouses this winter. There’s a mask for every skin type No matter your skin type, there’s a sheet mask soulmate out there for you. The Garnier SkinActive Moisture Bomb sheet masks are some of their best on the market; not only does each mask contain half a bottle of serum, but there are also six formulas for a variety of skin needs. Choose the lavender an...

It all started with a microbiology experiment gone wrong at the University of Guelph. Shelved in a beaker, scientists noticed that the contents looked strange and under a microscope, discovered it was glycogen, a form of energy used by all living forms that can fuel cells. (In skin, it helps with the production of elastin, collagen and hyaluronic acid.) This variety, from non-GMO Ontario sweet corn also loved water.  “It will absorb and hold onto it so that’s what give [the scientists] the indication to look at skincare,” says Alison Crumblehulme, founder of Veriphy , the skincare line that now uses it as its active ingredient. Each of the three products—a lactic acid serum, a moisturizer and an eye cream—uses 200 per cent more of the active than what is typically used in a product, says Jessica Kizovki, lead formulator. “It’s not a cheap ingredient, but we really wanted to power pack it,” she says of the phytoglycogen. It also allowed her to forgo using silicones. “By increasing...

Dumplin’ A Southern feel good beauty pageant flick set is exactly what the winter season called for. Adapted from Julie Murphy’s best-selling book of the same title, Dumplin’  stars Jennifer Aniston as the pageant-obsessed mother of Dolly Parton–obsessed Willowdean, played by  Patti Cake$ ’ breakout Danielle Macdonald. When Willodean stages a protest and enters her mother’s teen pageant, other plus-size contenders follow—to which Willodean respond,  “I’m not the Joan of Arc of fat girls.” Here’s hoping Dumplin’ sets Netflix on the road to redemption after the whole Insatiable disaster.  Available December 7 Tidelands: Season 1 Think Twilight meets Revenge — but with mermaids. That’s not how Netflix is describing this Australian Original Series, but it seems to hit the mark. The description they’ve shared is fairly vague: “Tidelands follows Cal McTeer (Charlotte Best), a young woman who returns home to the small fishing village of Orphelin Ba...

As someone with a public history of loving memes, I would argue that one of the greatest articulations of all time is “Name a more iconic duo…I’ll wait.” The phrase  first appeared attached to a photo of Kendall and Kylie, then spread to everything from Kanye and Donald Trump , a hammer and sickle , to perhaps less tastefully, the  Twin Towers . Now, the meme exists in accessory form, as Comme des Garçons and Gucci have teamed up to produce a designer tote bag. According to a press release, “Gucci is pleased to announce a partnership with Japanese label Comme des Garçons in a project that sees the Houses meld their design codes in an intriguing and unexpected way.” The bag combines the muted simplicity of Comme des Garçon’s brown paper bag tote with the luxury bat signal of Gucci’s red and green broad stripe. Photography Courtesy of Gucci “The two labels would not seem to be obvious bedfellows, and yet, driven by a desire to explore new creative possibilities, both Guc...