Bulgari black tie dinner in Toronto and the One Girl Can gala in Vancouver

Bulgari Celebrates High Jewellery, April 19, Toronto

Bulgari, the luxury fashion house founded in Greece in 1884, later moved to Rome, becoming as synonymous with the city as Bernini’s famed fountains and landmarks, such as the Spanish Steps. The company’s shop on the famed Via Condotti has stood in the same place since 1905. By the 1950s during the postwar Italian film boom it would become an unofficial club house for the legends of la dolce vita with women such as Anna Magnani and Gina Lollobrigida alongside their Hollywood counterparts, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Ingrid Bergman, flocking to the shop in search of delicious jewelled creations to add to their collections. While slick timepieces and fragrances may now be the financial drivers for luxury brands with storied pasts, companies such as Bulgari are still producing collections of magnificent high jewellery. These one-off pieces are made by hand, using only the rarest and most magnificent gemstones. In Toronto on the eve of April 19, high above the city on the 31st floor of the St. Regis Hotel, the restaurant Louix Louis was the backdrop for a swish black-tie dinner to celebrate the latest high-jewellery collection. As guests, many of them top clients, finished their second courses, a stream of models clad in identical black silk dresses sauntered around long dining tables, each one with a jewelled creation from the new collection bedecking their necks, wrists and/or fingers. Among those out: Luca Zelioli, consul general of Italy in Toronto and his wife, Laura Pagnotta; Canada’s most decorated Olympian, Penny Oleksiak, who swapped her medals for the night for a Bulgari serpent necklace; fashion model Ishie Wang; and Herve Perrot, North American president of Bulgari.

Tyrone Edwards and Lainey Lui.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Herve Perrot.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Jia Zhang and Yuki Zhao.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Penny Oleksiak.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Model at Bulgari High Jewelry Trunk Show.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Luca Zelioli and Laura Pagnotta.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Ishie Wang and Deborah Lau.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

Bulgari High Jewelry Trunk Show.Ryan Emberley/The Globe and Mail

IWANTtoBE Gala in support of One Girl Can, April 19, Vancouver

On the same evening, out west in Vancouver, the annual IWANTtoBE fundraising dinner was in full swing. The event, now in its ninth year, raises funds and awareness for One Girl Can, which works to provide opportunities to end poverty and gender inequality for some of the world’s most vulnerable girls. Some 400 guests gathered for the dinner, presented by TD Private Giving Foundation. The organization’s founder, Lotte Davis, spoke, as did its incoming CEO Natasha Questel, and via video from Kenya was Celine Nthenya, a One Girl Can scholarship recipient who spoke to her experience. Later, Kenyan DJ James Kingori had guests up on the dance floor and by night’s end north of $500,000 was raised. The fund will support what the organization calls their “Cycle of Empowerment,” which consists of education, training, mentoring, internships, a leadership conference and career-placement support for their students in Africa.