Just who is Ted Baker? I know the name, I know the gorgeously turned-out stores, and I know the stylish clothes-somewhere between Gap and Gucci–he sells. But I’ve never seen a picture of Ted or read an interview with him. Nor have I heard of rival design houses out to poach Ted, or of Ted cavorting down the catwalks-a model on each arm-at his fashion shows. It’s because, actually, Ted doesn’t exist. Ted is, in fact, a figment of his own label’s imagination.
 

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CHECKED SHIRT BY D&G; JEANS BY ACNE

Photography: FERGUS PADEL
Fashion: DAVID ST. JOHN JAMES

“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” - Paul Fussell
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It was hard enough keeping track of Justin Timberlake when he took the stage at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre. Get distracted for just one second and you have to hunt to find the guy again, amid his live band and all the dancers. It’s a shame really, because how amazing would a show be with just him and a small band, doing what he does best-singing? I don’t like all that other nonsense. It’s for artists who need to compensate. JT doesn’t.
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With the recent panic that plastic water bottles may leach potentially dangerous chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA), we can’t help but worry that the good-faith practice of reusing these containers will have negative health effects. But with innovative designs now upcycling and repurposing old trash, I think us plenty capable of scheming past the tired conservation requiring simply that we use the product this way, use it this way again, yes, this way till it falls apart and is poison to us all.

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Travel with me. Through my home’s back doors, across the cracked and broken patio, and up the pitted zigzag of cement steps hemmed in by straggling weeds. Past my lawn-turned-jungle to the left and my neighbour’s land-grabbing bamboo to the right. On and on, beyond even the perforated greenhouse–and there, in dappled shade, you’ll find my place of solitude and salvation. Black and silent, the compost bin beckons me like some ancient desert temple, its bulbous contours rudely defying my modernist taste.

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