Photo credit Shawna Lee 

What a terrific request I received from Touchpoint Films producer Kevin Saffer, asking me and swellest side kick Billie to dress up some fine folk for the 50th year Birthday of Tim Horton's. On a Throwback Thursday, Yonge and Dundas Square was transformed into a Tim Horton's coffee shop and street scene from 1964 including vintage cars, records, and a DJ spinning sweet sixties sounds.

Using costumes from our personal collections as well as from Berman and Co and the Ian Drummond Collection, Billie and I styled up 20 characters to populate the street scene and invite passerbys to join the free coffee and donut lines. Even with the rain it was a terrific time and such a pleasure to work with the OgilvyOne Agency and all the talent.

And to join into the fun we ordered these hot pink bowling shirts for the costume department to wear.

Not since the Sonny Liston bio pic Phantom Punch, have we been able to revisit this period of early 60's style.

Here's the research page created for this project and here's the video made celebrating their 50th anniversary and of this day.

Check out Shawna Lee who was the make up and hairstylist www.shawnaleebeauty.com

The most frequent question I get asked out of the blue by actors and people's Mother's I've never met is where can I get a fancy dress for a party, event, opening night that they don't have to spend too much dosh on it either. Well the very smarts gals at Rent Frock Repeat knew this was a popular challenge and created a rental program where by you select a dress from their website. They send it to you in two different sizes and then you send it back with their shipping label and no trip to the dry cleaner for you!

It's a terrific program and I have even found dresses for Bitten from their Toronto location. You do need to create a login but it's totally worth it to see all the new pieces they keep adding from Narces, Caitlan Power, Emogene Couture and Michael Kors among others.

I had the pleasure of doing some modeling for their site when they needed a model to fit some dresses. Unfortunately I'm not smiling in any of the photos they picked (I swear there WAS laughter while I teetered on heels I'm not used to).

Photography  www.magdalena-m.com
Beauty Team www.thebeautyteam.ca

My first film as a Costume Designer in the mid 90's came out entirely by accident. I had become friends with a few of the kids at the Film School at Ryerson whom I met during a creative writing class. I knew one of my classmates was going to be shooting a 'little musical dance number' in the school cafeteria and I offered to drop by and help with the costumes as I was in the theatre program at the time.



Director Allison Beula's own words:
"On the day that I was scheduled to film my dance number, which was the key element of the entire film, I realized to my horror that the costumes provided for the number for the actors were truly horrid. Jo had promised to pop in during the filming to see if I needed anything. I needed costumes for ten dancers and the camera was ready to roll within the hour! Jo claimed she could costume this ragged group in 20 minutes. I was a director on the edge and even though I knew this was impossible I had nothing to lose so I told her to go for it. To my shock, and ultimate good fortune Jo, within the 20 minutes (umm a wee bit more time  I think, more like 2 hours) had five women in matching dresses and five men in tuxedos. The film went on to win me the 'Norman Jewision Filmmaker of the Year' award, to which I owe much of it's success to Jo."

Well I was (and still am) a huge  collector of costumes and my closets across from the school cafeteria did in fact hold several handfuls of cocktail dresses, tuxes, evening gloves and jewelry. Luckily it was in black and white! I also got to dance in the movie which was a terrific bit of fun.

Unfortunately these photos are not of that short film Recipe for Making Love. I have that on a vhs tape somewhere and maybe I'm a bit inspired to try and hook up the VCR again. These pics are for the next student film I did with the same wonderful director called Time Steps. I made all these dresses with my lovely assistant Chriss Fort out of the cheapest polyester lining we could find on Queen Street. The dresses just lasted the day before they fell apart.
Thank you Allison for some great memories of my first film.

In celebration of the prep of Season III of Space Janitors and the nomination of Season II for a Canadian Screen Award for Best Digital Series, I wanted to share a few behind the scenes pics of that nominated season.

To the left we have the excitement of when the Chewbacca costume arrived and I scared my husband in his office.

Here is Stephen Hart as Dewey and myself with my favourite (now missing) hat, and Hanne to the right showing off all 7' of Stephen and how she had to climb a chair for finals.

This was one of my favourite costumes to craft this season, a purple girl Bobo Fetta, Samantha the Babe Bounty Hunter, to have a hot date with Mike. Lots of spray paint (yes I wore a mask) and no bathroom breaks for actress Lori Bassarab. She was a trooper (not a Squall Trooper however).

Here we have Scott Cavalheiro with Pat Thorton as one of the Bounty Hunters (and again with actually seeing his face to the right). Little known fact, Scott played about 6 different characters in both seasons from the other Dennis Clone, several different Bounty Hunters, and a Pilot.
Please ignore Scott's unraveling foot wrap- this character was wrapped so the costume started to un-wrap...

We shot right up until Christmas and the costume department organized a secret Santa gift exchange. Here's Geoff Lapaire, director and creator of Space Janitors giving out the bounty. Please note the handsome tree Hanne made from fluorescent green manila wardrobe tags.

To watch Season I and II of Space Janitors visit www.spacejanitors.com

I've always been a bit of a maximalist. No, 'less is more' for me. So as I'm between projects I get to sit with all my costume jewelry, shoes, vintage coats, books, research files and I realize I do not need anymore stuff. 

I'm also helping prepare CAFTCAD's Canadian premiere of A Conversation with Edith Head, January 17th-19th 2014 at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. This behind the scenes feast of great movie lore and delicious story-telling provides insight into Hollywood’s legendary costume designer, Edith Head. In her six decades of costume design, Miss Head worked on 1,131 motion pictures, dressed the greatest stars of Hollywood, received thirty-five Academy Award nominations and won an unprecedented eight Oscars. Wow, that's a lot of Oscars.

The only thing I really, really want for Christmas is for the Indiegogo campaign for this event to be successful. If I ever got you a job, or lent you a suit, or volunteered on your short film, or donated to your marathon or mustache, please consider donating the minimum contribution of $10 this holiday season. You don't even have to wrap it up. But also consider there are some terrific perks- shopping with a Costume Designer or Stylist, a walk on role on the new Global series The Remedy, a custom logo by the artist who did this poster, Dan Sadaba, or simply tickets to the show.

And hey, if you're in Toronto on January 17th-19th, perhaps you'll want to see it too. It's received marvelous reviews across the U.S. and we thought it was so great that we're bringing it to Canadian audiences.
 Tickets at http://buddiesinbadtimes.com/event/a-conversation-with-edith-head/2014-01-17/. 

The Indiegogo link is http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-conversation-with-edith-head/x/405535

For a great read about Edith, Susan Claassen who plays the title role, and the show check out 
Drew Rowsome's terrific article. http://drewrowsome.blogspot.ca/2013/12/above-all-glamour-conversation-with.html

Btw, does anyone have Santa's direct email address?