A very cool bakery website: Poilane January 24, 2009

When I think of bakeries, the last thing on my mind is finding a high tech, navigation friendly e-commerce site.  Actually, bakeries and technological innovation almost never go hand in hand in my mind.  In Toronto, it is lucky to find a bakery with a website.  I just assume that start up capital is allocated elsewhere than building an online presence.  

All my doubts vanished when I discovered Parisian boulangerie, Piolane.  I was blown away by their website.  Not only is the Poilane site interactive (you get to go into the store and select breads from the shelf and place it in your virtual basket), it is also filled with games, information, quotes, a reading list and it is easy to navigate.  There are several mainstream retail e-commerce sites that are not even this good.   The only question that is left is do they ship to Canada?

Keeping on the topic of Poilane, with a bit more digging online, I found a Poilane butter cookie recipe that was posted on  Dorie Greenspan’s blog.  The cookies look tasty and I am going to try out the recipe this weekend. 

Here is a picture of the cookies, called Punishment Cookies.  Go to the Poilane website to see why- an endearing little story behind the name.

Poilane punishment cookies (from Dorie Greenspan)

How Fashion Influences Event Design January 8, 2009

With French fashion week about to get underway at the end of January, I began to think about how far reaching runway trends extend around the globe.  Take event design for instance, it was not too long ago when lace was hot in fashion and we saw mainstream publications reinterpret the same trend in an event design context.   {Martha Stewart’s Weddings magazine in a warm, feminine table setting using lace }

 

It is exciting to see how quickly trends are picked up, exported, repackaged and executed  in events, interior design, product design and the like. 

The benefit of living in a global village is that we can borrow, be inspired by and have access to all the ideas and information we like to help create our own masterpieces/unforgettable experiences when hosting events.

Stay tuned to see the new trends for Spring/Summer 2009.