Something for the gals and the guys

[attach]2296[/attach]I now have another great reason to shop on Avenue Rd. north.

Jewellery junkies will jump up and down to learn that there’s another place on the upper Avenue to buy bling other than Girls n’ Pearls (another fave) — and that’s at the brand spanking new Stonefox Design Originals boutique.

Alas, I missed owner Andrea Tsanos’ openings in late September — she had two, because she has so many clients — but I do manage to chat with her and get the goods on the goods, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Make that the jewellery horse’s mouth.

Tsanos has been designing and hand-making sterling silver and semi-precious stone jewellery for five years now, and it’s always been her private fantasy, she tells me, to open her own boutique.

Happily ensconced in the former space of designer Diane Kroe (who recently moved to the Beach, in case you’re wondering), Tsanos carries her jewellery line along with a healthy mix of antique decorative elements and furniture in store.

There’s also a permanent gallery showcasing various stone and mineral specimens — people are loving these so well that Tsanos has decided to sell some of the pieces that aren’t really rare.

An addictions therapist at the Centre for Mental Addiction and Health for 17 years, Tsanos started designing by fluke —a colleague wanted to buy a piece in a fancy shop and she thought she could make a nicer piece for less. One day she wore one of her creations, a necklace, to work and people wanted to buy it right off her neck.

So she sold it right off her neck.

The biz grew from there, through wholesaling, shows, and home parties.

The new shop features her jewellery displayed on mirrors — the whole joint is sparkly, Tsanos tells me, another incentive for this glitter fiend to get her butt there soon — everything from necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Designs are bright and bold and prices range from $25-$500 or so.

1693 Avenue Rd., 647-343-9069 [url]www.stonefox.ca[/url]

[attach]2297[/attach]Gents, I know I haven’t given you much attention, so I’ll make up for my lack right now:

If the slim suiting of the 1960s appeals to you and you’re not scared to don purple and pink and paisley patterns to boot, check out the new Simon Carter Carnaby Street collection available exclusively at Tip Top Tailors in Canada (five stores within the GTA).

I attended the September 22 launch at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre’s Tip Top.

Amid a sea of black suits, white shirts, and maybe a few pinstripes, a few peeps in the crowd stand out, for better or worse: one gent in a scary drab taupe suit; another with an equally scary 1970s ’do and jacket; and, then — glory glory — a bearded silver-haired man with a gorgeous grey paisley suit jacket and chic-ly knotted scarf.

Not surprisingly the latter style dynamo is Carter himself, who’s flown across the pond to introduce his collection to the several hundred or so people who’ve attended the event. The jacket is also his, though from another collection, alas.

As personalities like Rick Campanelli from Entertainment Tonight Canada and Russell Smith, novelist and Globe and Mail columnist, model dark-hued wool suiting and sprightly striped cotton shirt combos, I learn that Carter has been dubbed the King of the Cufflinks.

He’s known for his Aspirin cufflinks, which actually hold pills, and disappointment reigns supreme to know no such cufflinks are here. But there are others in the collection for about $65 a pair — some purple stripe-y ones look like British hard candies gone psychedelic.

I’m digging the suits, which average $499 — all wool, slick, and with gorgeous silky paisley lining in the collection’s signature pink and purple hues.

There are also lovely, 100 percent silk paisley ties (around $65-75), and the cotton shirts, about $80, come in blue stripes or checks, purple stripes and paisleys and pink patterns.

It’s nice to be at an event where not every one is 25, and that’s certainly the case here. Only prob is I’m not sure the audience is the target market. As a chick, I love the Carnaby Street collection — for me, if I wore suits, and maybe for the metrosexual types who hang out in the financial district by day, and the King West resto strip by night.

Just not sure I’d go out with a dude wearing a pink striped shirt and a purple paisley tie, that’s all.

Yorkdale Shopping Centre store, 3401 Dufferin St., 416-787-5679 [url]www.tiptop.ca[/url]