Guests were dropped at the shipping entrance to a downtown building and taken through a subterranean tunnel of sorts to enter the event space, the the bank vault in the basement of the Suites at 1 King West. (The building, now a hotel, once housed the head office of the Dominion Bank of Canada.) “This location was so indicative of Secret Obsession. When we found this it was extremely intriguing to us. There’s a lot of caged elements and the idea or concept of unlocking something. It was really very fitting for this particular brand," Mahshy said.

"The fragrances are really fun, and we wanted to get the girls involved in the event," said Kim Husted, director of marketing at Coty Canada. The lounge—held in the Jam Van, a 24-foot vehicle designed for experiential marketing events—promoted the new scents in high schools, malls, movie theatres, and nightclubs in Toronto and Montreal over the three-day period. The mini tour started October 2 with a media preview.

Designer George Argyropoulos collaborated with Andrea Gray Design on the venue, which includes four distinct areas. The restaurant's main room, overlooked by a small bar, is filled with zebra wood tables and cream leather seating. Two curved banquettes sit against a stone wall at the rear of the room. The space seats 130 and holds 250 for cocktails. A separate, dimly lit bar—with walls covered in dark paisley wallpaper—is accessed through the main room. The intimate space has a small bar and custom metal tables.

Accessed by three guest elevators located in a pre-event reception space, Baillie Court can be partitioned into three smaller rooms (thanks to a series of retractable walls of perforated Douglas fir panels) and will feature a contemporary design with wooden accents. The venue will hold 450 for receptions and 300 seated. A second event space, called Jackman Hall, will hold up to 200 for lectures or corporate meetings.

The 65-seat pub is decorated in shades of black, tan, and red and has vintage, soccer-related prints on the walls (including one of Bob Marley). Booths with mounted television screens and cork fabric seating can accommodate groups of four or six, and the space can hold 90 for receptions. Soccer matches from around the world are provided by international sports broadcaster Setanta.

This year, Yoko Ono's three-part installation Imagine Peace will be displayed at Liberty Village, and Kaeja d'Dance will hold performances, accompanied by video and art, in the stables at Casa Loma. Berlin-based Project Blinkenlights will create "Stereoscope," which will transform 960 windows of Toronto City Hall into a constantly changing screen of graphics which are automatically generated as well as affected by public interaction through a variety of interfaces located in Nathan Phillips Square.

For a new twist on repurposed materials, artist Katharine Harvey will hang a blanket of water bottles on the Ontario Power Generation building to create the look of a waterfall. To make the night more manageable, the event's Web site has six suggested itineraries, with categories including TechnoArt (focusing on technologically-based works), small-scale projects in the Intimate Encounters collection, and Art on a Grand Scale, which may be viewed by large numbers of people from numerous vantage points.

When Keiko Okutsu, development associate of events at the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation, needed 30 purple bouquets the day before the Unicorn Dream Dinner fund-raiser, she turned to Fa the Flower Shop to deliver the floral arrangements on time and on budget, for $35 to $50 each. She says the company helps her cut costs by letting her return vases after an event and by creating centerpieces that double as gift bouquets. “It’s important to give creative flexibility, so I give Fa a budget and tell them the things I can’t budge on, like colour scheme and style,” says Okutsu. “Then I let them do what they do best, which is design great arrangements.”

"It’s growing in every way—in awareness and attendance, in designers and sponsorship," said FDCC president Robin Kay, who noted that more than 35 sponsors have signed on to support Fashion Week, during which more than 70 designers will showcase their work in 38 shows on two runways (a first for L'Oréal Fashion Week). We asked Kay how the event has evolved and how she envisions its future.

You have implemented some major changes within the past year. What's your goal?
To be a really great Fashion Week that designers want to come to and show at and sell product. Fashion Week is a calling card for the industry, for designers to sell clothes, for reporters and writers and photographers, and retailers and buyers. It’s a huge, huge industry that was absent in Canada…I came to realize it because I was a designer, and when I stopped and looked up and saw there was nothing happening in this country, I really thought a Fashion Week would be the best attention grabber. It’s been inspirational for the city. It’s wonderful to link art and commerce, to link sponsors with the event and to build our country’s fashion economy. That’s what’s exciting for me.

Invitations: "Constant Contact creates printable electronic invites that don’t show up as junk mail in inboxes, and people can bring the printed invites to the door. Members of the insurance industry often have many e-mail blockers, so it’s easy for exciting invites to get rejected and sent into junk mail. Constant Contact enables our invites to reach the right people and not get lost."

Audiovisual Production: “Westbury National Show Systems does our staging, lighting, and sound. We had Mikhail Baryshnikov come for a private dinner at a private home, and Westbury set up the lighting, the sound, and the microphones for the M.C. Westbury is consistent, always on time, and doesn’t require a lot of instruction.”

When it launched 33 years ago, TIFF ran about 100 films in five or six cinemas and attracted an audience of 35,000 people, Handling said. This year, the 10-day event—which runs September 4 to 13—will screen 350 films in 35 cinemas, with more than 360,000 people attending, including more than 500 special guests and stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, who'll be here to promote Burn After Reading. We checked in with Handling to see how this year's proceedings are coming together.

What makes TIFF unique?
I’ve been to virtually all of the major festivals in the world, and there’s nothing that comes close to the full package that you get here just in terms of the films that come, the major talent that comes, the major directors that come, the public side of the festival, the way the city embraces it, the way that the corporate sector gets involved, the way the politicians take great pride in the event at every level—municipal, provincial, and federal. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a festival where there’s that sense of ownership from every single constituency that we’re trying to service. And that makes me feel pretty amazed actually, and wonderful. But that’s unique to Toronto.

The C.N.E. is in its 130th year. How do you keep things fresh?
It's a balancing act. We couldn't have a C.N.E. without a food building; we couldn't have a C.N.E. without a midway; and now you would say we probably wouldn't have one without a SuperDog show. But then you've got to change things up. We had the human cannon ball for three years; and that was a great show, but we thought it was time to change; and that's why we decided to move to the escape artist this year. So it's about providing new things, providing a really fun, full experience, and hanging onto some of the traditions people really love and want to see.

Lifestyle Incorporated—under the direction of creative director Erastus Burley—has produced events for companies such as Pepsi-QTG, Frito Lay Canada, Nissan, Bell, Telus, and Yahoo Canada. "Our alignment with the Jetstar Group only further cements our expertise and industry credibility, allowing clients to engage their audience through innovative experiences, environments, and initiatives," Burley said.

In The Toronto Star, Christopher Hume criticized the city for failing to close key streets to motorists and suggested that public transit should have been free for the evening. (The TTC ran all-night subway service on portions of its two main lines and encouraged riders to purchase a $9 day pass to get around town.) “Above all, Nuit Blanche revealed the growing gap between the people who live in this city and those who run it,” said Hume. "Torontonians are light years ahead of their leaders in understanding what it means to inhabit an urban centre."