Ten years ago, a modelling agent happened to spot 15-year-old Jana Broughton in her Coquitlam high-school yearbook, and within a week, she was whisked off to the photo studios and runways of New York City. She’s never looked back.

Kids go green From organic duds to “low-tech” toys, Pebble Baby & Children’s Store (2675 Arbutus Street), has almost everything environmentally conscious parents could want. Owner Jordan Proulx offers sustainable goodies for shorties without gouging parents. She’s also big on kids using their imaginations, not their joysticks.

One of fall’s biggest accessories trends isn’t python bags or neon sunglasses, but pearl jewellery as your granny’s favourites get a style revamp, with a little help from Sex and the City.

Amy Stewart and Denise Wilson, two local wool designers, have crafted extra-chunky fuzziness for fall in scarves, shawls and wrist-warmers, made with giant knitting needles larger than your average turkey baster.

Fiona Garden photos

Vancouver designers and storeowners are showing a new face of South Asian fashion, which fuses historical traditions of vibrant colours and luxurious fabrics with an updated, global approach to marketing and style.

Styling by Luisa Rino

In her seminars, which she gives regularly in New York and Los Angeles, and occasionally in Vancouver, Liza Deyrmenjian offers creative types hard-nosed business tips.

In an increasingly digitized world, Vancouver schools and the fashion industry are keeping up, with fashion-arts programs now requiring students to train in patternmaking software.

Jewellery designer Teresa Smed doesn’t just make old things new again, she makes them rock ’n’ roll. Think Audrey Hepburn raiding Cyndi Lauper’s trash can with Karen O.

Women searching out summer-reading material will want to sniff out Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (Henry Holt, 2008). In it, the New York Times’s perfume critic illuminates the invisible facets of the multibillion-dollar fragrance industry, and compares the conception and execution of two perfumes, Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès and Sex in the City star Sarah Jessica Parker’s Lovely by Coty.

Mario Moretti Polegato is an unlikely fashion entrepreneur. As a young man working in his family’s Italian wine business, he never expected to head a global shoe and clothing empire that sells products in 68 countries. He didn’t anticipate that his efforts to patent his products in China would be studied around the world. Or that his fame would bring invitations to speak at English-speaking universities, including Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus.

Despite all the celebrity testimonials from stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah, and Jessica Alba, many people are still confused about what body shapers look like and what they can do for the average person.

Suzette Soloman has launched a line of funky, First Nations–inspired casual clothing for the fall 2008 season that push traditional designs forward to keep them relevant.

Bets are on that hundreds of brides-to-be will swoon over Keira Knightley’s long, draped, emerald-green dress in Atonement. And then, as they regain consciousness, they’ll think, “Hmm, now wouldn’t that look good on my A team?” (A meaning attendant).