The Crazy Plate Lady
The Crazy Plate Lady
It’s … #Plart! Let’s Plarty!
In case you were wondering what is going on, let me tell you first who Jacqueline Poirier is, better known as… The Crazy Plate Lady !
Jacqueline Poirier first started working as a waiter few years ago at TOCA, restaurant of luxury hotel The Ritz-Carlton in downtown Toronto.
Her manager knew she was an artist. When he saw her painting at one art show hosted around the city called Art Battle, a live painting competition held monthly in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and other cities across the country, asked her if she would like to do some creative work around the restaurant, such as painting on plates. He wanted to get the restaurant out of the stale environment, and see a little bit of colours around.
She initially started painting on four plates, recreating the four seasons.
The outcome was phenomenal and guests were immediately asking if they could buy the plates.
The restaurant realized it was the beginning of something and asked if she could find other artists to paint the rest of the dining room plates.
As she was so excited about the idea, she decided to take over and paint all of them herself.
120 plates over a period of 2 weeks, the restaurant’s dining room was transformed completely.
Now, it is part of the restaurant and dining experience.
Guests can buy the plates, right off the table or ask for a personalized one during their dinner.
Often, when they are celebrating birthdays or anniversaries, she surprises them with a custom plate.
What does this… not so crazy, but more of smart, creative lady as to do with our hair salon? Let us explain more.
Our salon coordinator, Ivan Bruna, was looking for a good photographer in the city to redo the head shots for the whole salon team for our website.
Finding the photographer was not the only problem, organizing make-up, hair, time and the complete team needed to be present all on the same day for the shots.
A couple of attempts were made. They were not successful as the team could not be all present on the same day due to their busy schedule and even photographers were problematic with their timing and reliability.
Ivan had previously seen the work of Jacqueline Poirier on websites like The Chick Canuck – by Toronto fashion blogger Gracie Carroll, one of the salon long time guests – and was following Jacqueline’s Instagram for quite some time – @thecrazyplatelady –
One day, scrolling down her Instagram page, Ivan started seeing plates with faces of famous people.
They were all dramatically realistic and detail oriented.
That was where the idea came from.
Why not draw all the team members on plates, use the results as head shots for our website and hang the plates on the salon walls afterward?
It was an exciting idea and also Peace, the hair salon coordinator for the daytime, approved.
She was actually in charge of letting all the team members know to get ready and glam up on the following day: she will get the shots to send The Crazy Plate Lady for consideration.
Right after the shots, we sent a letter to Jacqueline.
It was a Friday.
3 days of eagerly wait, we got her response: it was a Yes!
