Hello Toronto, Ontario!

While visiting Toronto, Ontario I came across a beautiful up and coming young designer, a street that had me reminiscing about San Francisco, the Bata Shoe Museum and even got a chance to travel up north to a hidden gem of a town called Muskoka.

Bloor St. in Toronto is equivalent to 5th Avenue in New York City. It has everything from Nike Town to Holt Renfrow, which is a terrific upscale department store. In search of the perfect winter boot, I soon got sidetracked and stepped inside Aritzia. Filled with the coziest knit sweaters by Wilfred, two-tone tights and the most helpful employees I’ve ever encountered, I now understood why Aritzia is one of the most favored stores in San Francisco. One sales associate asked if I needed any help and complimented me on my Falls blouse. Her name was Courtney deVries and I was in awe of her perfectly freckled face, auburn hair and effortless style. Being the creepy stalker girl I am, I asked to take her photo for The Pacific Muse. She kindly accepted and I snapped a quickie before her manager could see. However we weren’t that sly and her manager snarled at deVries and I for playing photo shoot. She mentioned how she’s a designer and model, so we exchanged information and now she’s on my blog. Here are some of Courtney deVries designs and a mediocre photo I took during our exchange in Toronto.

Courtney deVries modeling her own designs.




Courtney deVries floral mini dress was featured on MTV worn by Jess on the Hills After Show.



Queen St. in Toronto, Ontario is the hippest area in town. Its a mixture of San Francisco's Haight Street and New York's Soho. The red street car rails through Queen every couple of minutes, while track bikes dominate the road. A local Torontonian had her own synopsis of Queen St, "A watering hole for cynical hipsters and sloppy socialites, all the charm one could ask for inspiring creativity and general faith in man kind," says Brady F. Jones. Check it..




The Bata Shoe Museum on Bloor St. in Toronto, exhibits hundreds of shoes from around the world, with over 4,500 years of history. The "chestnut crushing" shoes aka "dominatrix man hating shoes" made a couple of my male friends cringe.


I also loved seeing Queen Victoria's petit ballet flats and gloves on display, because that evening I was heading to the premier of "Young Victoria" at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"Young Victoria" Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée