Articles of Section 'Streetwise'.

Streetwise | Arts

Event's odd pairings pay off

By Janet Smith

Opera singer Heidi Mundel admits to being a bit scared when she heard that the Tomorrow Collective had matched her up with hip-hop dancer Shay Kuebler to come up with a new work.

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Streetwise

Talks on the trade

By Janet Smith

B.C. Fashion Week has just announced its seminar lineup for its biannual event, April 4 to 9. While industry-oriented shows keep runways busy at the Scotiabank Dance Centre all week, the series at SFU Harbour Centre's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue will be open to the public all day on April 4 and is aimed at Marc Jacobs wannabes and others interested in the apparel biz. Among the offerings from 9 a.m.

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Streetwise

Ancient art finds new form

By Janet Smith

Jessica de Haas's vibrant, textural felt wraps and jackets are part avant-garde art, part boho-chic-rooted squarely in contemporary fashion. But the processes she uses to make her Funk Shui line verge on the primitive. As the artist so aptly puts it: "I definitely do things the long way."

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Streetwise

Ties bind this wedding wear

By Jada Stark

Whether you're an old-fashioned kinda gal or a modern woman, whether you have a grand fairy-tale wedding or a secret Vegas elopement, on that night you'll most likely want to look and feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. This is supposed to be the passionate night of smouldering consummation.

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Hunt and gather elegance with rustic appeal

By Janet Smith

Passersby probably thought it was the opening of the latest art installation: a hip, black-clad crowd was mingling by a deer head mounted over a fireplace, surrounded by raw leather skins hung over the stark-white walls. Hand-felted jackets were displayed on stands like freestanding sculptures.

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Adidas reborn on retro riffs

By Janet Smith

The clothes on the runway of Adidas Originals' packed opening party looked straight out of an après-ski party in the Swiss Alps, circa 1973. That in itself was not surprising: the striped sweaters, puffy primary-hued parkas, and Moon Boots-real Moon Boots!-are reissues of pieces the sportswear brand created with skier-designer Carlo Gruber 30-odd years ago.

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Sculptural hats make crochet contemporary

By Janet Smith

When Lajla Nuhic finally finishes one of her meticulously hand-crocheted hats, she pops it onto her head and asks her husband and children a simple question: "Is it dead or alive?"

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Fashion pops up amid showgirls and acrobats

By Janet Smith

With fire jugglers, Ziegfeld Follies-style stripteases, and Cirque du Soleil-worthy contortionists, the recent Girly Show II was definitely not your average fashion runway display. Admittedly, straight-up catwalk stuff is becoming harder to find these days: organizers are ramping up the old standard by mixing it with everything from rock concerts to art shows.

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Jewellery spans pearls to pop-art plastics

By Luisa Rino

With the eclecticism of this season's trends, it would be difficult to update your wardrobe without committing to at least one of the current fashion themes. The question, though, is this: is it better to go boho, Russian, Edwardian, late-'60s graphic, or even a little bit country? Thrown into the mix is the deep diversity of accessories available. An entire wardrobe of jewellery is essential for each of these looks.

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Duo spins pony tales into playful collection

By Luisa Rino

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Streetwise

Fashion boutiques play double duty as galleries

By Janet Smith

On the stark white walls of Gastown's mooncruise gallery hangs one of photo-artist Jean-Frédéric Bourdier's abstracted urban landscapes: an ethereal detail of a swimming pool's modernist tiles. Below it, displayed on a white shelf, sits a single shoe: a sky-blue patent-leather clog by Sweden's Skåre Toffelin. Both are treated like fine art, and that's the point. Vancouver's newest boutiques are doubling as exhibit spaces, and they're curating the apparel as much as the framed pictures.

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Intricate line sparkles with glam-boho style

By Luisa Rino

It's a fairy-tale wedding story that turned into a business idea. Big sis was getting married and little sis thought of making something special for the event. Many crystals and several backaches later, a new jewellery line took shape. Not long after the Just Married sign came down, Amanda Vogler had launched her first sample collection.

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'Boarding in Paris at hard-core heart of sole

By Luisa Rino

It's remarkable how a youthful passion can become a life's work. For one fashion entrepreneur, skateboarding has led to a global footwear brand and help for the homeless. Pierre André Senizergues, president, owner, and CEO of California-based sportswear giant Sole Technology, grew up 10 minutes from Paris, where he skateboarded through the catacombs and around the Eiffel Tower. This was one hip kid back in the 1970s.

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Diving into B.C.'s new wave of designers

By Janet Smith

A full-blown revolution is under way in the local fashion industry, and nowhere was it more evident than at the recent Apparel B.C. annual showcase. Sure, the usual large-scale suspects, from Jax to Lululemon Athletica, were prominent at the advocacy organization's event at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. But they were far outnumbered in the evening's runway display by a flock of upstart designers who, if you haven't heard of them yet, will probably be familiar to you soon.

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Fashion is elemental for fresh Manganese

By Luisa Rino

It's right after graduation and you've still got that glow from peaking on your final project. Your fashion presentation was a success, you've made great friends and allies, and even found a future business partner. Then you are invited to participate in the city's fashion week as a guest in the Up and Comers section of the event. What could come next? That's when the call arrives. It's the Bay and they want to see your line.

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Streetwise

Five easy pieces build breezy new collection

By Luisa Rino

The same key pieces that make a wardrobe functional and fashionable are often the milestone pieces in a fashion designer's collection each season. Joanna Kulpa, who officially launched her first collection with a holiday line this past winter, starts from this premise. Her designs stem in part from her own thoughts on dressing: "I keep things for a long time, and I like to think of my collections the same way.

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Elev8 crafts girly edge from glittering stones

By Janet Smith

Fashion is a notoriously shallow business, but sometimes amid the glamour you find someone trying to do good.

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Show off swelling bellies

By Luisa Rino

It's one of those moments in fashion when a trend or style statement actually looks to be making an impact on cultural perceptions and attitudes. In this case, the subject is pregnancy. Last month, the New York Times and Vogue featured major stories on principal dancer Irina Dvorovenko, her swelling belly spectacularly on display in both instances. What this kind of coverage says and perhaps does is integrate the importance of motherhood into the working woman's life.

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Spring looks pretty, casual

By Janet Smith

At the Block's recent fashion show, dresses and wraps got a dressing down

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Hipsters' secondhand ironies start to grate

By Tara Henley

Last fall, my girlfriends and I set out on a citywide gallery crawl for SWARM 5, a festival that celebrates local artist-run culture. We ended up in an alley off Main Street, surrounded by an enormous crowd of hipsters. When we finally waded through the too-cool-for-school mob and into the packed space, we couldn't get anywhere near the artwork. So we resorted to people-watching.

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Queerly Beloveds Wax Nostalgic

By Guy Babineau

I'm sitting in the parlour at English Bay Weddings feeling a little bit out of my element. Beyond leaded French windows, milky winter sunlight dapples the waxy leaves of a Portuguese laurel and the first early blossoms of an ornamental cherry tree and spills through the glass onto warm yellow walls and a burnished oak floor.

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Jewel Pros Give Brilliant Tips

By Luisa Rino

Jewellery is the one fashion accessory that can make all the difference between dressed up or dressed down, professional or casual, good taste or bad. As a result, there are lots of women out there who won't even venture near the stuff. Making the act of finding a new piece so difficult is the multitude of choices, varying cultural norms, and, of course, the price. Jewellery is, purely and simply, a luxury.

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Stylish Looty Stuffs Your Christmas Booty

By Tara Henley

Now that the holiday season is in full swing, a lot of old friends and acquaintances are getting in touch. Invariably, these guys rush through the requisite festive greetings then get right down to business. "You're a style writer," they say, frantically. "What should I buy for my clotheshorse niece?" Or trendy sister, or fashion-obsessed girlfriend, or shopaholic aunt. "What about one of those flashy black-string ponchos?" they always ask. Good Lord, no.

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Give Them Hermès and Bicycles

By Luisa Rino

Gifts should always be about giving friends and family something they would not normally indulge in. It's that rare opportunity to treat someone to the luxury and superfluity they might only guiltily bestow on themselves. What follows is a guide to perhaps some obvious choices but with slight realignments: chocolates and diamonds, but no furs.

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Glamour of Bollywood and Main

By Tara Henley

As globalization renders the world an increasingly small place, many believe that North American values are spreading like a virus, erasing local customs and traditions, and leaving an army of cellphone-toting, McDonald's-eating, Britney Spears fans in its wake. Thankfully, cultural exchange isn't quite that simplistic.

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