Fashionably Great: a Q&A about winning the P&G Awards with Ilana Weitzman, enRoute editor-in-chief
Two Spafax publications (Fairmont and enRoute) were nominated for P&G Awards and enRoute ended up doing quite well, winning two awards overall. The P&G Awards are normally dominated by fashion titles. How did our magazines break through?
As travel lifestyle publishers, we’re able to create fashion writing and photography from a very different angle. I think the judges appreciated that. For our Best Cover win, for instance, we had commissioned two incredibly talented fashion photographers, Leda & St-Jacques, to do something very unconventional: shoot a model in front of the iconic Orange Julep in Montreal, with a pack of French poodles. (And yes, that was a fun wink to the sophisticated, French character of the city.) It’s a mix of highbrow and lowbrow that’s really striking; it’s certainly not your regular fashion shot or cover. The same could be said of senior editor Jean-François Légaré’s stories, which swept the editorial nominations. His winning feature looked at how emerging fashion designers can help brand cities like Amsterdam and Toronto. Many of the fashion magazines wouldn’t necessarily produce a piece on that scale, or with that innovative an angle.
What does it say about our magazines that we can “compete” with the major fashion titles in this country and win major awards on their turf?
I think it says something not only about the quality of our photography and our creative roster, but also the depth of knowledge about everything from fashion to art to science that we have in-house. As a group, we cover a lot of diverse areas of interest and do it very well.
The awards were attended by a who’s who of the Canadian fashion industry hosted by the fabulous Queen Latifah. We have to ask: What’s she like in person?
She’s very lovely, very funny and very natural. She had a script but most of the time wasn’t even reading it. Not to mention that she’s stunningly beautiful.


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