L'Oreal Fashion Week: Fashion for Breakfast

This St. Patrick’s Day marks the convergence of several fashion factors: French shoe designer Pierre Hardy’s capsule collection for Gap European Editions arrives in select Canadian Gap stores (on a two-week delay from the U.S. delivery) and Day One of L’Oreal Fashion Week, showing the fall/winter collections of designers from across Canada. By another lucky coincidence, leprechaun green -- as in both eco and the shade, is hot hot hot (as the style-speak goes). Project Runway Canada bad-boy Evan Biddell is the first show this afternoon.

In Canada, fashion takes a village and this week that village has pitched an enormous tent and camped out in front of Toronto City Hall. The usual suspects - editors, stylists, photographers, models and bloggers - are right now assembling their artful "this old thing?" outfits and asking themselves the usual questions: Will Toronto model Amanda Laine, freshly anointed by Style.com as one to watch, make an appearance on the 90-foot runway this week? Will Feist’s version of Sea Lion Woman be the most overused runway song again this season? And what exactly are editors and journalists scribbling in those shiny new Moleskines, anyway? While you're mulling the answers, check out Rags & Mags, the new and ongoing style exploits of Lucinda McRuvy and Max Velosse, two fictional characters at work and play in the Toronto fashion industry. The exchanges are written by fashion biz diarist extraordinaire Carolyn Rohaly and rendered by fashion illustrator/blogger Danielle Meder, and include a fabulous faux Eye Weekly ‘My Place’ profile and a cunning send-up of Toronto Life’s insipid ’24 Hours With’ feature.

Oh, and about that breakfast? Sorry, but fashion week is a movable feast that doesn't eat.