Leave it to Joe Mimran to throw the ultimate pre-Fashion Week shindig. A private screening of Versailles ’73 at the ROM on Saturday eve drew Toronto’s most notable dressers, along with legendary models Pat Cleveland, Alva Chinn and Karen Bjornson. The flick revisits a fashion show held at Versailles nearly four decades ago, in which a swarm of American models, many of whom were black, wowed the stuffy Parisian establishment. Following the screening, we trotted upstairs after Catherine Nugent, director Deborah Riley Draper, and the Beckerman sisters (both dressed in sparkly floor-length numbers) to a room outfitted with a runway and macaron trees in white and orange (this was a Joe Fresh event, after all).
Model Liisa Winkler headed straight for the bar, while Zoomer’s Suzanne Boyd did the rounds in a fantastical feather headpiece. Hello Canada’s Lisa Tant hobnobbed with Shinan Govani and The Room’s creative director Nicholas Mellamphy. Meanwhile, the ever-ebullient artist Andrea Bolley kicked up her heels to the ‘70s tunes spinning overhead, playing the muse to socialite Nolan Bryant’s lens. Cleveland—whose evocative reminiscing made her the star of the doc—swanned around the room in a graceful swath of lime green. Here’s hoping this week’s Joe Fresh runway show is just as effortless.
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