LIGHTFORM 267 Niagara, 416-745-5656, lightform.ca
Most style-centrics fall head over heels for flashy handbags or designer shoes, but this one loves statement light fixtures more than anything he can wear or carry. So it’s not surprising that while other fashion brains are already fixating on fall’s new coats and boots, I spent a summer afternoon drooling over the pendants and desk lamps at Lightform’s west-end headquarters.
The company focuses on selling to architects and designers, using the Toronto showroom located in an old lamp factory to educate them about their lighting lineup. (The long list of brands includes Fabbian, Metalarte, Marset, Roll & Hill and Baccarat.) Homeowners can order fixtures here, too, though, and have the pick of everything from miniature FLOS task lamps to an LED installation that makes a wall look like it’s been pierced with dozens of glowing rings.
Lightform picks: FLOS’s D-Light lamp is also an iPhone charger equipped with a cool touch dimmer, $425 Brooklyn-based Roll & Hill reinterprets industrial cage lights in copper and powder-coated metal, $650 to $850 the showroom’s ultimate buy is Phillippe Starck’s decadent Marie Coquine fixture for Baccarat, an ornate crystal chandelier suspended from an umbrella on the end of a photographer’s light stand weighed down by – wait for it – a leather punching bag filled with sand from France, $38,000.
Look for: A new collection by Rich Brilliant Willing debuting in the fall.
Hours: Monday to Friday 9 am to 5 pm, Saturday 11 am to 5 pm.
