WINE AND POSES

Wine and fashion are pretty much two of my favourite things. In that order.

When they occur simultaneously, it is bliss. Years ago in sunny Yelapa, Mexico, I recall sitting in a beach bar sipping a margarita (Mexican wine is a no no) while shopping for silver bracelets. It doesn’t get much better than that.

On Monday, I started off with a tasting of Portuguese port and Douro wines at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, followed by the Preloved fashion show across the street at the tents at David Pecaut Square, one of the events at World MasterCard Fashion Week.

There was more black in the tents than at a Sicilian funeral -- and not just on the backs of fashion flock in the audience. On the nails of the fan boys in the crowd.

Here I am before the start of the Preloved show, decked out in a vintage jacket by Gino Charles  (an American line established in 1966 by Teal Gino Traina and Malcolm Charles Starr), which I scored at the Ian Drummond booth at the CAFTCAD sale on Saturday.

These two girls are not en route to Fashion Week but could very well be. They are street fashionistas, two students walking along King Street after a pit stop at Tim Hortons. The girl at left could always use her Timbits box as a purse.

This is the booth featuring Portal Douro Grande Reserva 2009, my favourite wine at the tasting. It is yummy, with a "toasty character,” and available in Vintages at LCBO. I could get pretty toasted on this baby.

A fun couple milling around in the tents at World MasterCard Fashion Week. They are both stylists/models and not afraid of colour and pattern. Their leggings and tees hail from Nuvango on Queen West and are not for the timid.

The models take a finale walk on the runway at the end of the Preloved show. Preloved must be doing something right because it is celebrating its 20^th anniversary making pieces out of recycled materials. The show was a ton of fun though some of the outfits looked like pieces of schmata tacked together. But that’s just me.