Career Shift: After working as an editor at Canadian House & Home, Chatelaine, and the now-defunct Chocolat, interiors stylist Janette Ewen left Rogers Publishing early last year, while continuing her television appearances on shows like CityLine and her regular design column in The Globe and Mail. But it wasn’t until she got a call from Optimum PR in May asking her to design a promotional event for gin brand Bombay Sapphire that she realized her skills could transfer to another field. Now she’s focusing on events, particularly product launches for consumer brands.
D.I.Y. Style: Describing herself as “very crafty,” Ewen has turned the D.I.Y. projects she demonstrates on TV and in print into event decor. “I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty and build stuff myself,” she says, referring to a Parisian-style fruit counter she constructed with a carpenter for an internal launch event for Metro Supermarkets. Her magazine background introduced her to several manufacturers and suppliers, with whom she barters for better deals on items like carpets and signs. “She’s really resourceful and sources reasonably priced items that look really good,” says Natalie Cerny of Parallel Communications, who worked with Ewen on the July media preview of the One of a Kind Show, a consumer exhibition for local artisans. “She was fully responsible for coming up with the holiday windows theme for the preview and putting together an amazing event.”
Pure Imagination: In September, Ewen worked on her biggest event to date—the launch of three new Clairol products for Procter & Gamble at the Queen Street West restaurant Nyood. After deciding on a theme of “shimmer, shine, and gold,” Ewen divided the space into three areas, including a dressing room with a vintage dress and dollar-store champagne glasses spray-painted gold. “I’m such an ideas person, so events are a great fit,” she says. “When else do you get to design a 1930s stylist’s dressing room?”
