New technology has always been forcing us to change. Here is a priceless vignette by Doris Lessing about the introduction of the television set to the row houses of post-war London. [I]t was the summer of 1950. Before I left Denbigh Road I saw the end of an era, the death of a culture: television […]
Perspective is so fabulous
Originally published in December 2011 in Blog
Someone said to me the other day, “You look like Amy Fine Collins.” I’ve read Amy Fine Collins. She’s a longtime writer on art, fashion and design for Vanity Fair, one of my favourite magazines. I like her work. I thought she was blonde and sporty, though, but that’s Nancy Collins, a celebrity profiler and […]
It’s just a phase
Originally published in October 2011 in Blog
Journalists go through phases. During and right after I left Elle Magazine, my beat was lipstick. I was the beauty editor. I reported on shade ranges, hero ingredients and cupids bows for years until I finally managed to write my way out of the pink ghetto. Beauty editor: I looked the part, but didn’t think […]
Hot off the press
Originally published in May 2011 in Blog
It’s time to stock up on new bathroom reading. Let me help you. The June issue of Canadian House and Home is packed with ideas for budget-conscious design freaks and includes an article I wrote about a Georgian Bay cottage. The owners, Juli Daoust and John Baker, are the proprietors of Mjölk (“Milk”), a Scandinavian and […]
Hot off the press
Originally published in March 2011 in Blog
Bold and beautiful
Originally published in December 2010 in Style at Home
Given carte blanche to decorate an empty urban penthouse for a sophisticated venture capitalist with a penchant for entertaining, designe Sasha Josipovicz – inventive, accomplished and theatrical – boldly rises to the occasion By Alison Garwood-Jones When a friend introduced Sasha Josipovicz, a design partner at Toronto’s Studio Pyramid, to his latest client, a venture capitalist […]
Home Stretch
Originally published in March 2009 in Canadian House and Home
A Toronto tastemaker breaks through walls, walls and more walls to create a serene, open space Inspiration usually strikes Alison Booth in the morning. That’s when her best ideas drop like coins from a winning slot machine. Take the morning she woke up her husband, Jeff Campbell, exclaiming, “Flocked chartreuse wallpaper! That’s what our bedroom […]
Rules of Attraction
Originally published in June 2008 in Canadian Home and Country
If it’s pink, floral, distressed and not nailed down, chances are this Toronto collector has the perfect place for it. There’s no use searching for an ordinary mug inside Barbie Brandes’s charmingly crooked kitchen cupboards. As far as she’s concerned, every day’s an exquisite teacup day, and no occasion is too mundane for an elaborate […]
