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An afternoon, night and morning at the museums

Marseille artist Thierry Agnone packed a few surprises for the Bata Shoe Museum curators when he shipped the cardboard pumps and boots now on display as part of its Paper Glamour exhibition.

In among the slingbacks drenched in ice blue sparkles and boots covered in brown feathers were styles cut out with a few choice words.

At an opening lunch yesterday, Agnone said he was thinking about the way the French have appropriated English swears like “bitch” and “fuck” when he traced the words onto some heels created specifically for the show. Luckily for fashion lovers (and school groups), the cussing footwear has been relegated to a nook he called the “devil’s corner” and the exhibition’s main focus is the magical styles which have endeared him to shoeaholics across France.

Footwear fans like Inès de la Fressange, the former Parisian model and current Roger Vivier ambassador, who loaned three pristine white shoes to the show and calls Agnone’s pieces “beautiful poems made of paper” in its catalogue. There are dreamlike and romantic qualities to the collection’s exaggerated toes, pin straight stiletto heels and wisp-thin straps.

Agnone, who trained as a shoemaker, made a point of stating that he sees himself as an artist and not a designer. That didn’t matter to the women previewing the pieces who would have all happily tried one on if he worked with fabric and leather.

They could have worn them to the opening party for the Vanity Fair Portraits exhibit at the ROM last night. The Bay invited Toronto’s boldest faces to sneak a peek at historic celebrity photographs from the magazine‘s first 1913 to 1936 run and modern snaps from its rebirth in 1983 to last month’s dual Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett covers.

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Hilary Swank, by Norman Jean Roy, December 2004, publ. March 2005.

There are iconic images of Josephine Baker draped in pearls, Princess Diana in black a white and Jackie Collins wearing leopard print sitting in the back of a limousine next to her sister Joan who has a single white rose popping out of her cleavage. Two video loops capture the elaborate, cinematic shoots of Annie Leibovitz while Edward Steichen’s photos of Isadora Duncan and Colette highlight the simpler but no less stylish slant of pictures in the magazine’s earlier editions.

Steichen gets a show all to himself at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years focuses on his fashion photography in the 1920s and ‘30s and his work for Vogue and Vanity Fair.

Models pose in stylized deco settings wearing Chanel, Schiaparelli and Lanvin while detail shots put the focus on the era’s metallic turbans and t-strap heels.

Thierry Agnone Paper Glamour at the Bata Shoe Museum runs until December 31. Both Vanity Fair Portraits at the ROM and Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, the Condé Nast Years at the AGO open to the public this Saturday, September 26 and continue until January 3, 2010.[rssbreak]

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