Much has been made over the past two years about the absence of a Holt Renfrew bash on the TIFF social calendar.
Some festival party pundits nit pick apart the omission as a sign of a more austere approach to marketing at Canada’s ritziest department store but most of us just miss spotting celebs downing bubbly between its racks of Dolce and De La Renta.
All TIFFing has not been lost at Holts though. Last year, the store began a partnership with Variety Magazine, which sets up a photo and interview studio in the accessory department of its Yorkville flagship. Festival star snagging is a volume game and the Variety collaboration guarantees Holts’ magenta logo is seen on a step-and-repeat wall behind talent from a myriad of movies rather than just the cast of the flick whos’ after party it’s sponsoring.
So far this fest, Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Anna Kendrick, Leighton Meester, Rachel Weisz, Matthew Goode and many more have visited the store. On Monday afternoon, I “happened” to be hanging around the studio when Emily Blunt appeared to chat on camera with her Your Sister’s Sister costar and director Mark Duplass and Lynn Shelton.
Watching what happens behind the scenes at a set-up like the Variety studio is always an interesting experience, especially for someone who only gets sucked into the celebrity bubble for 10 TIFF days every year.
The sometimes endless waiting by so many producers, publicists, journalists, sponsors and swaggers for one person and their entourage to grace them with mere minutes of face time, the buffer zone of empty space between the star, their handlers and rest of us and the sorta staring is all so…curious.
Blunt was as delightful as can be though, especially upon departure when she shared a group hug with Duplass and Shelton before pulling her endearingly ragged roller suitcase up the Holt Renfrew escalator, off to catch a plane outta here.
If you’d like to “happen” upon a star too, Geoffrey Rush, Charlotte Rampling, Jennifer Garner, Jane Fonda and Chace Crawford are all scheduled to stop by the Variety studio at Holt Renfrew today. Don’t loiter around the La Mer counter expecting to see celebs though. Your best spotting chance is running into them on the sidewalk in front of the store as they make their way through the east revolving doors.
In other star spotting and scene hopping:
In a basement green room at Roy Thomson Hall last night, Toronto’s fashion editors-in-chief gathered for a W.E. tweet up with Madonna and the movie’s cast including Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough. At least that’s what it looked like as they twittered the meet-and-greet with as much giddy enthusiasm as a bunch of Bieber fans encountering their idol.
With Vitamin Water’s Burroughes rooftop event spot taking a well-deserved afterparty break Monday, Soho House picked up the celebrity slack during its final night popping up at 11 Duncan. There was Madonna again nursing a bowl of ravioli with uber producer Harvey Weinstein. There was Olivia Wilde warming up for Tuesday’s Butter gala. And there were Michael Fassbender, Gerard Butler and so many, many more doing the ‘do.
