MONTREAL MEANDERINGS

Because a woman can’t live on fashion and accessories alone, early last month I hustled off to Montreal for a couple of days with my cultural travelling companion event-planner extraordinaire (Party) Barbara Hershenhorn to take in the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. And yes, there was wining and dining and shopping involved. We may wear a lot of black but we aren’t nuns with a vow of abstinence. Abstinence is so overrated.

Me and Barbara at the funky Le Bremner resto in Old Montreal. It is so hot and anti-chic that it has no signage outside and is located in a fusty basement. The food is great but they don’t make any adjustments to the menu. No, I could not have the veg selection without chicken skin on top.

Special holiday packaging for Veuve Clicquot champagne, my fave bubbles, in a Montreal liquor store featuring Rome and Dallas, two cities associated with my brother-from-another-mother John “Junior” Maloney. Better pack a tote if you plan to shop for booze in Montreal. You have to buy a bag to lug your purchases.

This is not Jon Stewart on a random billboard in Montreal but sure looked like it to me.

Me at the Mapplethorpe exhibit doing my best Annie Leibovitz impersonation.

Me and super-sweet sales associate Marie Catherine Noël at the Denis Gagnon atelier on Rue Saint-Paul in Old Montreal. For moi, Gagnon is très formidable, the Rick Owens of Canada.

A prohibitively expensive but fantastic Japanese designer jacket at Cahier d Exercices on Rue Saint-Paul which is curated like Dover Street Market in New York, where I can’t afford to shop either. Old Montreal was dead, dead, dead the afternoon we shopped. We were the only people on the street -- it felt as spooky as an old episode of Twilight Zone. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.

This is not a Picasso outtake but another billboard on a Montreal street – you don’t have to go to a museum to see art.

The ceiling at the Ritz Carlton lobby bar where we went for a smart martini references the iconic Palm Court Lounge at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

The aforementioned smart martini at the Ritz Carlton.

This has nothing to do with Montreal but I loved this painting by Colin Stark in the entry of Optical Outlook on Yorkville Ave., where I get all my eye wear.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPERS

It has been getting to look a lot like Christmas ever since Halloween. Now get a grip; that is total overkill. Having said that, I confess to dipping my twinkle toes into the early festivities.  Anything with an open bar and I am there.

Oyster bar, beauty boutique, prosecco flowing – and hello, sailor. On November 23^rd, OverCat Communications hosted Shoppers Drug Mart’s beauty boutique holiday party at Malaparte on the sixth floor of TIFF Bell Lightbox. Here I am with OverCat president Audrey Hyams Romoff, one of my all-time fave p.r. mavens.

Romoff is traditionally the chicest chick in the room, and that night was no exception. I lusted after her velvet booties, which she scored at Topshop. Alas, I don’t have a Topshop foot. It’s the reverse little-red-riding-hood curse: too big or too small but never just right.

  

Here are two young glam gals at the beauty party just to make you feel bad about yourself.

The folks at Michael Kors previewed some of their spring 2017 line – and we haven’t even got through winter 2016! Michael Kors makes the best straw totes around and I love these platforms which work if you don’t go anywhere near a spring shower.

A pair of vertiginous floral Mary Janes that are so sweet and serviceable as long as you have an Uber hovering. My back hurts just to look at them.

These bejeweled skinny jeans are way off the cool meter but are not available in Canada. Just as well. How would you launder them anyway?

I was circling this Dries Van Noten sleeveless feather duster coat at Holt Renfrew. It went on half price but I still couldn’t justify buying it. It is such a knock-out show piece that you wear it once and everyone remembers it; wear it twice and the feathers trail behind.

Rob Salem at broadcaster turned entrepreneur Gene Valaitis’s 60^th birthday party at the Spoke Club on November 18^th.

Gene and me at the party, which included happy gang members like Jesse Dylan, Gene’s fellow Morning Zoo keeper starting way back in 1987 on Q107; Lorraine Segato, Gene’s sister in law; Kid Rock; Geoffrey Dawe and Wendy Muller; John Gallagher; Rosie and Michael Levine; and Joanne Smale.

No, it’s not me but a resident at Labdara Lithuanian Nursing Home putting up her feet near the Christmas tree. Give me 20 years and it’s me in fuzzy slippers.

Some members of our unofficial whine club doing a photo op at the Distillery. The gaggle includes gal-around-town/real estate person Val Dooley; journo Rosie Levine; photographer Biserka Livaja; and irrepressible BamBoo-who Patti Habib.

You know it’s a great bash when the shoes come off. These belong to Sheila McCarthy and they were resting comfortably last Saturday in the kitchen of party hosts nonpareil Colin Mochrie and Deb McGrath.