Spent today on set with these good looking people, making as much magic as we could muster up. Scribbles, studs, and strong poses TK.

Thanks to Mr. Pike for shooting, the girls for looking pretty, Amanda for bringing spiked and shining everything.

Some snaps on set:

The last supper

All this waiting has been enough to make my stomach growl. So as I flip on my stove’s front element and set it to high, prepping dinner, I think to myself: it’s about time.

Three months ago I wrote, “This is the first of many meals to be discussed, dissected, and devoured.” Well, each course of my meal is finished. This morning with the click of a mouse my final feature at j-school went up on Rabble.

I set out to discover the dining set in Toronto that has moved onto the web. Bloggers, restaurant owners, chefs, and critics invited me into their world. Morning meetings brought the best coffee that has swam over my underdeveloped taste buds. Evenings meant dinners or a drink at an industry event.

I visited old restaurants and consumed new media. Each day I’d wake up to a full feed of the new foodies I’d started to follow on twitter. But the semester has come and gone, and with it my story. Another copy, with the photos posted here, will run in Futureale come May—along with Lauren’s column on Cowbell’s butchery sessions.

If we have to bring out the dinner mints (though Lauren says they ruin the good dining taste) now is the time. The marks are in, the story is up; I’m pleased with what I’ve done.

Thanks to all that picked up my calls, sat in front of my camera; offered interest and answered questions. In a city so easy to get lost in, this community is undeniably tight knit and vibrant.

To all the food friends I’ve made over this semester: I’ll see you on twitter.

*all photos are by Ryan Couldrey

Rage against the fashion machine: FAT day III

If androgyny is in, Christabel turned the trend up two notches last night with a full circle dragging show. The performer appeared on the FAT runway first in a mister-man costume suit, then took a hammer to masculinity and birthed a set of streamers out his paper-mache stomach.

Next he pulled on a wig and pair of red-rouge lips, making the transformation complete. Out came a feather boa and a set of garden clippers, time to snip off the dick. The strap-on big black dildo was tossed into the crowd, a signal for the fashion to start.

First up was Hedylidae’s creamy commercial collection, followed by Aimee Tobolka’s indulgence in sheer, lace, and netted love. After that were Heidi Ackerman’s deconstructed dolls, covered in slate-silver headgear and strapped on football shoulders.

Between shows Magneta Lane played its girlish indie rock and set the stage for Romandin, an elaboration on Cristina Sabaiduc’s Mass Exodus collection. Sabaiduc, who has worked under both Carolina Herrera and Jeremy Laing, showed looks built with chicken wire and filled with fabric strips alongside minis covered in the texture of abstract paint.

After Asphyxia sent out an angsty collection and a final model spouting blood, more of the Rye-high fashion kids. Last a lengthy performance piece, In Bitu by Karey Shinn. It started with hip-hop dancers, then more gowns letting go of balloons.

A pink haired Davy Crockett followed, hunting two doe models, complete with antlers on top their heads. Sparkling purple, blue, and silver mermaids swam out after, then a seaweed covered dancer, more balloons, and a stormy masked goddess who was the last sight of the night.

Earlier as the crowd spilled in and squished itself up against the walls the whisper went through the photo pit: when will FAT explode and LGFW crumble? The answer? Not yet, not now, probably not ever. The two occupy opposing fashion spaces—FAT’s for art’s sake, LG a retail PR push.

Still, it was not so long ago LG—then Loreal—was an underdog itself, so the established fest may want to watch its back.

Heidi Ackerman haute headwear

Sans Soucie's big beauty

Romandin's instantly edit-able dress

Sarah Magwood outside with her sister

Christabel, pre transformation

One of Aimee Tobolka's Wang-ish looks

The best of Rye-high third-years

The misses of Magneta

Nadja looking out for outfits to wear on Artstars

The hunter

The hunted

Dez, another Rye-higher who is about to be featured in Flare

Asphyxia look, post Carrie

Lusting for FAT models: day II

At FAT the models move. There are no stiff shoulders, straight leg steps, or dead eye-stares. Instead they cartwheel down the catwalk, blow kisses at the cameras, crawl on all-fours, leap frog over each other, swing tennis rackets, and drag the next girl forward with hooks piercing the skin.

Fitting then, that the second night began with a dance by Lauren Weisz. In Sunday’s best black ties and simple sauntering dresses, the models lined up two-by-two. Women behind the men, they kicked their legs up over suited shoulders and spun in circles, losing dresses as swirled, revealing black lingerie underneath.

Opera boomed out of well worked vocal chords as a busty brunette led a procession of tightened bodices by Starkers Corsetry. Bombshells in sheer black skivvies followed, including a hot-and-heeled miss Carli Rothman, who I found backstage after the show with a slice of pizza in hand, undies and all.

Self proclaimed jetsetter and socialite Jet Phynx filled the gap between shows with his brand of fame and fashion induced pop. Later Phynx, who self designs his highly stylized stage looks, tells me he’s been hanging with Gaga and Kanye and is en route to Europe and Japan to continue his global takeover.

Evan Biddell, who must have spent many sleepless nights to pull off opening his first boutique and creating collections for both LGFW and FAT in a single season, opened the second set of shows. Biddell enlisted Magnet Creative’s Gail McInnes, former Phantom Pastel Supernova, and your favourite fashion writer Sarah Nicole Prickett, to walk in the show.

Then there were the style sluts, all wrapped up in latex, courtesy of Pippa and Fashion Whore. There was the terminarix with her tech-armour arm, Alice out of Wonderland, and a rubber red wonder-girl walking in heels so stiff she needed arm supports just to wobble. And finally a set of wedding-white balloons released at the runway’s end before the top was dropped for the fondling of a honeymoon hooker.

It ended with a not-so-subtle nod to Mr. McQueen as punks in plaid kilts were paraded to live bagpipes. The presentations blended into performances with one last towering black beautiful monster standing a story tall and followed by a crawling mini monster, all teethy with face paint, whispering to the model inside the way.

Then the lights went black and before the announcer could finish closing remarks I was out the door to find a beer and a boy for a birthday, and finally a bed.

Master of the reveal, miss SNP

As his bio says: Jet holds a drink in one hand and a crowd in the other

Backstage beauties

Feed the models

One of these things, not like the other ones

Nolan Bryant with that Yuppie Activist

The lovely Lauren Weisz does it all

Suffer for fashion

Wobble on

Trapped as a twosome

A nice day for a white wedding

The offspring of the McQueen generation

Crawl towards the closer

Our era ends

Sneakers, a bowtie, and black polka dots under a shining smoking jacket, I grinned like the boyfriend the Betsey girls didn’t have back in high school. Prom night. Time for sloppy wet kisses, screaming sentimental secrets, and dance floor anthems we’ll never forget the words to.

It was the last dance. We threw it ourselves, knowing our school is not the type for banquets or balls, homecoming or black-tie affairs. We rented out a bar. J-Prom, Carly called it, as she handed out little red tickets during our last days of lecture hall.

We cabbed west on College, finding a tiny bar filled with familiar faces, ribbons and balloons. Knowing we wouldn’t be all together like this again until convocation, if ever, we bought each other drinks, toasted to semesters past, then to moment; finally the future.

We chose our most likely to: become a CBCelebrity, take down the man, and teach our kids when they go to college years from now. (For medicine or law, we hope, anything but what we did.)

The DJ spun a few last classics always requested at prom, and we filled the floor, wrapping our arms around each other, and spitting out the lyrics.

So we crooned: A singer in a smoky room, a smell of wine and cheap perfume. For a smile they can share the night. It goes on and on and on and on…

And we held on to that feeling.