Author Archive

We’ve always been fans of Danielle Meder and her excellent fashion industry blog, Final Fashion. Last year, she up and moved to London to work and explore, and though we miss her and we’re jealous, we’re also thrilled for her! And we’re still reading her blog, and loving her work.

Check out today’s awesome post, “five ways to end your fashion design career”. It is better to burn out than fade away? Danielle’s got us thinking that any kind of premature expiry is a giant loss of talent, and even big-time designers don’t have it easy. Worth a read!

As always, Danielle’s created this stunning illustration to accompany her piece:

I LOVE THIS!
Clearly, Yoga Jeans are a must for
every woman with discerning style.
Tom Ford said so.

You’ve been reading and hearing from me for months about how wonderful Sarah Selecky‘s book, This Cake is For the Party is. Since I started posting about the book last July, Sarah was a finalist for the Gillers, a CBC Bookie winner for Best New Writer, and now, is shortlisted in the Best New Book (Canada and Caribbean) for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize!

Well, smarty-pants Sarah has created a new dimension of enjoyment for her lovely book of stories: an iTunes playlist of songs that correspond in some way to the theme of each story! Clicking the link will open your iTunes, and you can purchase or sample each of the songs and try to guess why she picked them!

Congrats to Vancouver’s Ayala Moriel for her mention on Toronto Life‘s website, as part of their monthly roundup of the city’s best stuff! If you haven’t rolled one of these luxurious natural scents on yet, remember to next time you’re in the shop! They are mucho lovely.

Love this bag! Clean and simple design, beautiful vegan leather and at a great price, no less! Nella Bella has done it again…

Check out all the ways you can wear a London Bag, and come into the shop to get yours before they’re gone!

Thanks to BlogTO for the awesome post full of ancient photos of Toronto! It’s amazing to see the city in its early years, and to see parts of Parkdale as they once were.

1. Queen Street West, looking east towards Dufferin Street (you can see the Gladstone Hotel on the left). That brick retaining wall on each side of the road is gone now.
–

2. The South Parkdale Rail Station was located at Jameson Avenue and Springhurst Avenue. Those big houses in the background are probably still there, split up for rentals by now.
–

As I was searching around for old photos and trying to identify Parkdale’s train stations, I came across a neat site for train enthusiasts, Old Time Trains. Here is a photo of the tracks and bit of the neighbourhood around Dufferin and Queen.
–

Click here for some general history of Parkdale. You can also check out a series of posts about Old Parkdale here.

Shopgirls is super-excited about this stunning limited-edition calendar, produced by Kid Icarus! Formerly a Studio Number Nineteen project, The Handprinted Calendar idea has been resurrected and features an all-star cast of local talent. There are some new faces for the 2011 roster of artists, along with a few artists from the calendar’s past.

The 2011 Calendar roster includes:
Lisa Vanin
Samantha Chiusolo
Kellen Hatanaka
Vicki Nerino
Britt Wilson
Steve Manale
Steve Wilson
Roben Nieuwland
Keith Jones
Aaron Leighton
Jim Mezei
Ryan Snook

If you are unfamiliar with the project, the concept is to take 12 artists and produce a calendar with each artist choosing one month to illustrate and only two colours to pull it off. There are no guidelines on layout or how the information is presented, the artist has full control. The entire calendar is screen printed by hand from the cover, right through to the backing.

The Calendar will be available for purchase on Tuesday, December 7th 2010 at the shop. Pre-order yours now, for this amazing limited edition piece.

Here’s your sneak peak!