Ikea Catalogue on iTunes.

This watch really caught my eye, it’s just beautiful. I’m scared to find out what the price is:

I love this book! Perfect for a renegade office meeting.

Walls Notebook available through B&N and Indigo.

Back in April I wrote that Club Monaco Hates Men. Turns out they had some plans to balance out the removal of menswear in their locations and just revealed them: the Bloor/Avenue location of Club Monaco will expaned the menswear section, and offer non-CM clothes as part of it’s offering. I think this is a great idea – can’t wait for the grand opening!

Note: This post has been updated. It incorrectly, noted the new store as menswear only.

Sharp Magazine posted this article a while back about Top Men’s Stores in the country. Here are the ones they listed in Toronto:
GotStyle
Nomad
Sydney’s
Klaxon Howl

Two other stores I like are Uncle Otis and Quattro.

AskMen created a series of articles about watches. The first, is about the Chronograph – a mainstay of current watches which are big and bulky. The picture is of a Tag Heuer Carrera Chronograph, one of my favorites.

The rest cover the bases in terms of watches:

The Chronograph
The Power Reserve
The Repeater
The Perpetual Calendar
The Moon Phase
The Tourbillon

This weekend I spent a rare day at a mall. Along with my traditional trip to the Apple store I stopped by some clothing stores too. When I walked into the Club Monaco store I was grumbling to myself how stores usually keep all the menswear tucked in the back where it was hard to see, however a salesman saw me looking and immediately let me know that Club Monaco isn’t selling menswear anymore.

At first, I was a little shocked, as I have some good items from CM – however he clarified for me that the Yorkdale store will no longer be selling menswear – it is being modeled after a concept store in New York which is for women only. The Bloor and Avenue location will be opening a Men’s department…in the basement.

Not a great strategy to win new male clients, or keep existing ones, if you ask me. Banana Republic relegated the men’s stuff to the basement in their Bloor location years ago but reversed it. I hope CM doesn’t forget they do have male customers.

Like the DayDate II and DateJust II, Rolex has updated their Explorer. The Explorer II features a larger bezel and more contemporary design.

CB2, Crate and Barrels modern sister store, is coming to Toronto. It’s first location will be the SE corner of Queen and Bathurst. It should give EQ3, which I consider a bit of a CB2 clone, a run for their money.

Diesel, while being quite expensive for casual clothing, is offering their products without crazy cross-border markups. I was admiring the Jispa jacket from their spring/summer collection. Priced at $365 CAD in Toronto and $350 USD in the USA, the markup is only 5%. I wish all retailers had such low Canadian markups (Williams-Sonoma are you listening).