Role:
digital editor + content manager
montecristo magazine
As Vancouver’s internationally-inspired luxury lifestyle quarterly, Montecristo is an authority on home and home-away-from-home. Discerning locals and visitors alike will find some of the city’s finest writers, illustrators, and photographers within its pages, enthusiastically sharing the latest on fashion, culture, food and wine, travel, art and design, local craft and business, architecture, and history. The editorial embraces community and unique storytelling to share the best of the City of Glass.
aspen and telluride, colorado
Without warning, someone is spraying champagne, inciting a room-wide frenzy.
“If you hike the bowl, you’ve definitely earned a trip to Cloud Nine,” declares Lea Tucker, international public relations, senior manager for Aspen Snowmass. Reservations are a necessity at the small mid-mountain fondue restaurant, where generally there are two seatings, the latter of which cements Aspen’s reputation as a party city and sets the bar for all other après to follow. The food is good, yes, and first timers may note that almost every diner has paired their meal with a bottle or two of Veuve Clicquot. The volume of the music steadily rises—“Pour Some Sugar On Me”, naturally, followed by “I Love It” by Icona Pop featuring Charlie XCX—and patrons begin to dance on chairs and benches.
industrial design rebel tom dixon
Tom Dixon melds the rawness of factory-stripped materials with cheeky British style.
A rebel at heart, Tom Dixon left art school by the wayside and haphazardly became a self-taught industrial designer. Following a motorcycle crash that left him with broken limbs and a bruised ego (he was distracted by a beautiful girl), the Brit took up welding to repair his bike. “As a direct consequence of knowing people superficially through the club business, it was a very organic evolution to becoming a business. So I added a couple of guys to do the welding and I ended up with 17 people in a big warehouse in South London that were engaged in making stuff.”
return to willow stream spa
It is often the case that a sequel cannot retain the soul and gravitas of its predecessor—although The Godfather II comes pretty close.
One revisit of late that did not disappoint was a trip back to the Willow Stream Spa at Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim. With new items on the spa menu, as well as classic pre- and post-treatment delights, there was much to look forward to. As you ascend from the sparkling lobby up to the fifth floor, a rich wood and forest green marble reception area awaits, a sleek reflection of nearby Stanley park.
astrologer danielle blackwood
What began with psychic dreaming has expanded into an archetype of her own: the cosmic communicator.
Imagine, for a moment, that you were suddenly able to see through your third eye, as though it had the ocular abilities of your first two; as though the mudra you’d been practising during your last yin yoga class broke through to some other plane, opening your ability to see what might be or what is truly possible, highlighting patterns in your life and layering them on top of what is directly in front of you. A new level of awareness might join your thought process and consciousness, making you keener to act, more resolute, and in tune with what the future had in store. Danielle Blackwood is your third eye.
azuridge estate hotel
Secluded moments are the property’s specialty: a climb up the water tower to drink in Alberta’s big, beautiful skies.
A short drive southwest of Calgary on Highway 22X, nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, is the stately hamlet of Priddis, Alberta. A dusting of snow outlines the pavement’s shoulders along winding back roads, pointing visitors to the area’s best kept secret, Azuridge Estate Hotel. The 13-hectare property is sprawling and meticulously landscaped (a quality evident even in winter). Two main buildings are adjoined by a cascading water feature and a multi-story water tower, a vantage point from which to contemplate the quiet: deer tiptoeing out from the brush, rolling hills covered in frost, snowy peaks in the distance.
dream weaver: nani marquina
During a visit to Vancouver stockist Inform Interiors, Spanish rug designer Nani Marquina ponders her legacy.
“We always buy products and objects that make us happy. It’s great to see this kind of object on the floor because it creates an environment, we live on them. There is a real connection with the products,” she reflects. “It’s a mix of the function of the product and the emotion created with an art piece.” For Marquina, collaboration with artists, designers, and craftspeople are part and parcel to her brand, and they seek her out frequently. What she in turn looks for in those partnerships is a sensitivity to the material, to nature—a feeling of warmth.
More articles for Montecristo Magazine.
Editors: Jim Tobler, Kristin Ramsey, Amanda Jun, Sara Harowitz