BY DESIGN

It was design central last week. The IDS (International Design Show) was in town generating parties all over the place, including at the Design Exchange (DX). I generally avoid the opening bash of IDS because it is a total clusterfuck. But I did dabble in the event, including attending the Monogram Dinner by Design at the aforementioned DX and a VIP dinner at Fring’s, a resto partnership between celeb chef Susur Lee and rapper Drake, to celebrate Caesarstone’s collaboration with hot British designer Tom Dixon. Dixon’s brand includes lighting, furniture, gifts and accessories; Caesarstone is a purveyor of primo quartz.

The DX event, presented by Caesarstone in support of Casey House and DX, featured installations of dining rooms by celebrated designers from Ashley Botten to Moriyama & Teshima Architects.

I experienced massive dining-room envy. The installations were incredibly inventive, putting to shame my vintage pine harvest table, which was distressed before distressed furniture was cool. The legs had been shaved to distraction by a succession of cats using them as scratch posts. At one point, my mother even wrapped the legs with hockey tape to thwart the cats. It didn’t work. The cats just shredded the hockey tape leaving it in tatters. Not a great look. I worry that the legs are so skinny/flimsy now, I will put a glass on the table one day and the whole thing will collapse.

The dinner at Fring’s was interesting. I loved the lighting fixtures and the bar chairs, shrouded in furry fabric. The ambient noise not so much. The acoustics are terrible, which is interesting considering Drake is in the music business.

It was an ambitious tasting menu – from oysters to grilled “asperagus” (the typo is theirs, not mine. Where is a proof reader when you need one?) and the food was served family-style. There was even Southern Spiced Maple Fried Chicken, which tasted like Susur had discovered the Colonel’s secret recipe.

Inexplicably, I was seated at the cool-kid’s table, which included dapper Tomos Lewis, Toronto bureau chief for Monocle mag, who was sporting a fabulous Liberty-print tie, and designer Tom Dixon, who table hopped in a retro brick-orange velvet suit, which he said he bought in London and whose previous owner was Eric Clapton.

Is he a huge Clapton fan?, I naturally asked. “Nope, not since (his band) Cream,” he demurred.

Moreover, he complained that the suit didn’t even fit.

Oh, okay.

Empty skull bottles make a Goth installation on the bar at the Monogram Dinner by Design at the Design Exchange. They formerly housed Dan Aykroyd’s vodka Crystal Head. What great candle holders they'd make.

Stylish and slinky Shauna Levy, director of the Design Exchange, Canada’s only museum devoted to design, sits one out. She is so hard-working, this is arguably one of the few times this dynamo isn’t on her feet.

I’m sandwiched between the coolest kids at DX event, designer guys Hal Eisen (left) and Andrew Bottecchia, partners in Bottecchia Artistic Group.

 

My fave installation at the DX is a decadent peel-me-a-grape theme by Commute Design that is described as Victorian but I see as more Roman Empire. All you need is a platter of suckling pig.

Runner up is a cityscape by Bortolotto that is very Manhattan penthouse. Cue the dry martinis.

A smashing tote bag by Tom Dixon that was part of the swag bag at the Fring’s dinner. It totally eclipsed anything inside it, which was primarily advertorial. I even got a shout-out to it on the TTC.