The French-style pastry shop in Toronto invited a number of local creative talents – including Virginia Johnson, Rollout and Steve Krug – to come up with beautiful packaging for the delectable treats.
Delicate, sculptural, truly delectable macarons. You would expect no less from a fourth-generation pastry chef whose family hails from Lyons, the French capital of gastronomy. After Nadège Nourian established her first café-bakery in 2009, on Toronto’s Queen Street West, she was inspired to develop a project that would involve artists in various fields. She and business partner Morgan McHugh gave six creatives a blank slate to reimagine a box to hold 16 macarons. The limited edition packaging displays imagery from cartoons to a trompe l’oeil; each box also includes a favourite flavour chosen by the featured artist. With the exception of Los Angeles footwear designer Jerome C. Rousseau, all of the collaborators are local.
The retail shop on Queen Street West in Toronto has been a mainstay of the neighbourhood since it opened in 2009.
A watercolour of orange blossoms by textile artist Virginia Johnson embellishes the first box, launched in August. Custom wallpaper company Rollout designed a package based on its popular Worth wallpaper, with a repeat of X‑rayed human skulls. A white-on-white box by photographer Steve Krug and creative director Jennifer Weaymouth, released in September, is a seamless 360-degree design. Their solution was to create a surrealistic tea party populated by various creatures, with a band of pink tying it all together. Krug says they chose a vibrant accent hue to pay homage to the pastries: “They are so colour saturated and explosive in flavour, we wanted to hint at what’s inside.”
$38 a box
