Today, and every day, we invite you to revisit stories of creativity, leadership, innovation, and achievement from women in Canada and beyond.

Photo by Ted Belton

The Director’s Cut: Kaniehtiio Horn Uses Comedy to Combat the Trauma of Anti-Indigeneity

The profound racism and countless tragedies Indigenous people have experienced over hundreds of years are no laughing matter. Yet for actor, writer, producer, and director Kaniehtiio (GANYE-dee-yo) Horn, comedy is a force that can be used to better the lives of herself and others. “How would we get this far if we were just walking around angry?” she remarks from her home on the Kahnawà:ke Mohawk reserve south of Montreal. Comedy “is part of our survival. I’ve grown up hearing laughter in the craziest times.” She remembers being a little kid going to sleep while the adults gathered in the other room talking about politics, yet there was still lots of laughter. “If we weren’t able to laugh, then that would be really, really sad.” —Bernadette Morra

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Photo by Garrett Naccarato

Yellowjackets Star Sophie Nélisse Is on the Rise

For Nélisse, this spring also brought the release of Irena’s Vow, the film adaptation of a Broadway play about the courageous actions of Polish nurse Irene Gut Opdyke, who risks her life to shelter a dozen Jewish people from the Nazis during the Second World War. It is Nélisse’s first time portraying a historical figure, and she worked with a dialect coach to get her character’s Polish accent just right. “It was definitely a challenge and intimidating to give an accurate representation,” Nélisse says of Opdyke and her “beautiful story of hope and selflessness.” —Truc Nguyen

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Photo by Kayla Rocca

Tamara “Solem” Al-Issa Dives Below the Surface With Her Ceramics

From the beginning, Al-Issa’s attraction to ceramics has been more than surface level. “I’ve always been interested in the anthropological side of pottery and how it historically tells such detailed stories about civilization,” she says. The primordial nature of ceramics and its history find form in Al-Issa’s vessels, which often give subtle reference to the traditional styles and shapes of her family’s roots in Syria and the Philippines. —Lauren Gallow

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Photo by Grant Harder

Lila Is the New Vancouver Restaurant That Puts Friendship on the Front Burner

There is an inimitable warmth and ease that exists between true friends. It suffuses the space around them, enveloping those in their orbit with a soft glow. To sit across the table from Meeru Dhalwala and Shira Blustein over cups of hot chai is to share in this unique energy. Their 14-year friendship is the bedrock on which the idea for their restaurant Lila was founded. And its popularity right out of the gate is a testament to the breadth of their combined skill set, fusing Dhalwala’s award-winning culinary prowess honed at Vij’s and Rangoli with Blustein’s remarkable talent, as seen at The Acorn and The Arbor, for creating a front-of-house atmosphere that encourages guests to put away the cares of the world and linger over a beautiful meal. —Joie Alvaro Kent

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A Canadian Contemporary Lifestyle Brand Rooted in Iranian Heritage

Toronto-based fashion and lifestyle brand Golshaah began as an experiment. An architect turned fashion designer, Golnar Ahmadian started her label, Golshaah, in 2019, initially as a platform for interior design projects, and later a space for fashion styling, before creating a fully fledged fashion brand with the first knitwear collection. —Lauren Walker-Lee

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Celebrating Canadian Beauty With a New Brand Director

It started, as so many of the best things do, in a WhatsApp group—a chat that was set up a year or two ago by Canadian founders of indie beauty brands after a real-life get-together. “It was just about sharing resources, what’s working, cheering each other on, which is really nice,” explains Jayme Jenkins, co-founder of Everist.

The group contacted PR pro and media relations expert Katie Green (herself a founder, though of a fashion brand, &Or Collective) and things went nuts. Within days, they had a website, Shop Canadian Beauty, a directory of brands. It includes virtually every type of beauty product you can think of. —Aileen Lalor

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The COS Aesthetic: The Creative Mind Behind the British High Street Brand

COS opened its first store in London in 2007, expanding globally to now nearly 50 markets, and despite belonging to the H&M Group, it operates on its own. Gustafsson has been with the company since the beginning. “My personal aesthetic is very similar,” she says when asked how COS is an extension of her and her lifestyle, “and I think that’s probably why I’ve been working with the brand so long.” There is a quiet confidence to Gustafsson and the clothes she creates. The brand is the go-to for a European ideal of cool—wardrobe essentials defined by an understated elegance, just as the name Collection of Style, or COS, in short, suggests. —Claudia Cusano

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Crépu: Our DNA Returns, Honouring the Rich History of Black Hair in Canada

Canada’s largest celebration dedicated to Black hair, Crépu: Our DNA, made its debut in 2023 at SAW Centre, a local art gallery in the city, with high demand from people wanting to see the designs, photography, presentations, and the ever-popular hair art runway—the first of its kind in Canada. Among the audience members were Alexa Lepera and Sarah Jaworski, assistant curators at Ingenium—Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation. —Ozioma Nwabuikwu

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Photo by Peter Ash Lee

South Korea’s Women of the Sea

On the volcanic island of Jeju, 100 kilometres off the mainland of South Korea, generations of women dive deep below the ocean’s surface in search of sea urchins, abalone, and other sea life. These women, called haenyeo, freedive up to 20 metres down without the use of oxygen masks to spear their prey, often serving as the primary breadwinners in the semi-matriarchical society.

These haenyeo, or women of the sea, are the subject of Peter Ash Lee’s photographic collection, The Last Mermaid. —Elia Essen

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Carolina Bucci Is the Golden Girl of Italian Fine Jewellery Design

In the centre of Florence, among luxury powerhouses like Emilio Pucci, Stefano Ricci, and Salvatore Ferragamo, the name Bucci is worth its weight in gold. For generations, the family has built a reputation on the high-quality craftsmanship of their classic 18-karat gold creations. Today, Carolina Bucci is broadening that illustrious legacy with her colourful, creative, eponymous line of fine jewellery. —Sallie Lewis

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Photo by Sarah Bodri

Stepping Into a Fantastical Papercut Paradise

With sharp lines and careful snips, Toronto artist Winnie Truong builds lush botanical worlds out of paper, one unfurling leaf and quivering tendril at a time. Curious Nature, her solo exhibition at Contemporary Calgary, sees her coloured-pencil cut-outs take on a life of their own in fantastical dioramas, a wall mural of pinned wildflowers, three-dimensional sculptures, and looping stop-motion animations set to meditative music. —Rosie Prata

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Ally’s Mind Is Sculpture for the Contemporary Class

During the pandemic, she conceptualized Ally’s Mind, a line of thoroughly classic figures in regenerated marble and “updating them,” as she says, with gilded highlights. Sculptures include Milo con Maschera di Bellezza, a bust of the Venus de Milo with a gold beauty mask, and bestselling Busto Artemide, with a pour of gold that cascades from her hair. Ally’s Mind is rooted in tradition while reimagining the future. —Claudia Cusano

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The Sweet Success of Glow Recipe

Collaboration, community, and thinking are the key ingredients that have led to success for the co-founders of skin-care brand Glow Recipe. When Sarah Lee and Christine Chang met at the start of their beauty careers over 20 years ago at L’Oréal in Korea, they bonded over shared experiences. “We both have this Korean heritage, and we’d grown up being really obsessed with skin care our entire childhoods,” Lee says.

Using their knowledge of corporate global marketing, they stepped into the role of entrepreneurs in 2014. Their first joint venture was a website that delivered clean K-Beauty products to the U.S. market. Three years later, their focus evolved, and the buzzy brand as we know it today made its debut. —Ingrie Williams

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Photo by Rita Lino

Sara Roka on Her Fashion Journey From Vancouver to Milan

Roka founded her eponymous line in 2010 with a capsule collection of shirts. “Everyone said, ‘You are a shirt designer,’ and I didn’t like that,” she recounts. “So I decided to do a full collection, and it became mostly dresses inspired by a borrowed men’s shirt.” That was in 2014, and she presented at a lot of trade shows. Pitti Donna was a catalyst, and Sara Roka was picked up by leading retailers in Italy, LuisaViaRoma and Sugar. Ten years on, and Sara Roka presents two collections a year during Milan fashion week and has a turnover of four million euros, with 80 per cent of her sales outside of Italy. —Claudia Cusano

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Claudia Dey Is Powerful With Her Prose

Novelist Claudia Dey is many things: a Governor General’s Award-nominated playwright, an accomplished essayist, a clothing designer, an occasional actress—and a proud Scorpio. “My desire for dark and empty spaces, being alone in my mind or in my study, is very kind of Scorpionic,” she muses, when asked which qualities of her sign she embodies most. “That need for isolation, but then matched by a need for contact, like a contact high, from friends and intimates. What else? I guess, sensuality in all things.” Dey speaks to me from her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and their two sons. —Rebecca Peng

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Tia Wood Paves the Way for Indigenous Artists

It’s clear that for Wood, music runs in her DNA. “I grew up with a really musical family. It’s just something that was really inevitable to me. My dad was part of a Grammy-nominated drum group, Northern Cree. My mom was in this all-girls drum group called Fraser Valley, and my sister actually just won a Juno,” she says, smiling. What she doesn’t mention: she’s the first Indigenous woman to be signed with Sony Music Canada, following in her family’s legacy. —Christina Armanious

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This New Scent by Hermès Is an Icon in the Making

With Barénia, Hermès’s latest perfume and the house’s first-ever chypre, perfumer Christine Nagel put her own twist on the recipe. The result is a chic, multidimensional scent that’s classic yet thoroughly modern. It opens with bergamot and a floral note that comes from butterfly lily, a delicate flower from Madagascar that’s never been used in a perfume before. —Claudia Cusano

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The Ceramic Works of Laura Pasquino

For Laura Pasquino, the spherical form came naturally the first time she sat at the potter’s wheel. “I’ve been trying to think if there is a deeper meaning, but I guess, when you work on a wheel, you work in circles all the time, and the wheel turns and turns and turns.” Pasquino expresses herself in the vessels she creates: harmonious shapes with textural details that celebrate the imperfections and beauty of simplicity. —Claudia Cusano

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14 Canadian Beauty Brands to Discover

You could say the makings of an enriched, satisfying skin-care routine or shower ritual come not just from the ingredients but also from knowing it lessens strain on the environment and supports a Canadian business—not to mention, beautifully designed packaging that looks good on the bathroom counter and in the shower. Here, we list a few notable beauty brands to try, most of which happen to be women-owned businesses.

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