After 25 years as Canada's leading fashion magazine, we deserve a party - a big banquet studded with stars from coast to coast. But, as any party planner knows, putting together a guest list is a hair-raising, sleepless-night ordeal - even for a fantasy dinner such as ours. We've compiled the perfect combination of the fashionable and the innovative. Let the bun fight begin. (Illustrations by Monika Suteski)

MELISSA AUF DER MAUR

Why her?

When you play bass for a living, you spend a lot of time on a stage where the spotlight is shining on someone else, and Montreal-born Auf der Maur has laboured for some of the wildest: at 22, she joined Hole for five years of gleefully dissolute performing with Courtney Love; after that, there was a spell with the last incarnation of Smashing Pumpkins. Possessed of a solid grunge resume and what has to be one of the all-time great Goth names, Auf der Maur released her first solo album, Auf der Maur (Capitol/EMI), in June and it's a thing of beauty; melodramatic, over-the-top Goth histrionics spot-welded to a collection of hooks and riffs that would make a merely mortal stadium rocker hang his mane in shame.

Seat her next to: Leonard Cohen. He'll give her lyrical advice; she'll be anything he wants.

STEPHEN CIPES

Why him?

Canadian wine has become hot stuff and there's nobody cooler in Canadian winemaking than Cipes. The Okanagan's cheerleading sage and resident mystic ages the wines in a gargantuan eight-percent-scale concrete replica of Egypt's Great Pyramid - something you might dismiss as a spectacular affection were his wines not as terrific as they are. His Summerhill Pyramid Winery has become an international destination and most of its wine gets snapped up at the front gates. Originally from New York, Cipes has adopted the Okanagan as home. He's not the classic face of Canadian wine, just it most attractive one.

Seat him next to: Frank Gehry: They can talk about symmetry in built forms.

JONI MITCHELL

Why her?

She's to Canadian songwriting what Christopher Plummer is to Canadian acting: the best there ever was. (Hey, Bob Dylan covered *her*.) It is rumoured that her latest album, The Beginning of Survival, is going to be her last, but even the slowest songwriter in the world, Leonard Cohen, put out two records of new material between the time he was her age and the age he is now, so there's hope. She's' been around long and influentially enough to be idolized by a superstar like k.d. lang. For the rest of us, Canadian musical history is merely inconceivable without her.

Seat her next to: Michael Ondaatje. They can trade dark metaphors.

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER

Why him?

He's to Canadian acting what Joni Mitchell is to Canadian songwriting: the best there ever was. At 76, he was still pulling 'em in on Broadway this past spring in King Lear. He also played Aristotle for Oliver Stone in this year's big-screen Alexander (Warner Bros.). The secret to his success is as simple as it is rare among actors: credibility. Whether playing Lear or a Shaespear-quoting Klingon, Plummer has always looked like he belonged exactly where he was. He should have gone into politics. Well, American politics.

Seat him next to: Denys Arcand, and expect nothing short of a blockbuster to develop.

FRANK GEHYR

Why him?

As the designer of the Art Gallery of Ontario's new extension, Spain's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, and a Wyborowa bottle, Gehry has become arguably the world's leading superstar architect. He'd like to design low-incoming housing but, as he told a Newsweek reporter, "People seem only interested in the 'Bilbao effect' thing. I hate that. I'm only an architect, no matter what anybody says - a humble architect.

Seat him next to: Yabu Pushelberg - form meets content.

LEONARD COHEN

Why him?

He's been an immortal for so long, it's hard to believe he's aged. Canada's uncrowned poet laureate, sovereign ladies' man and patron saint to gravel-voiced singers everywhere turns 70 this month. He spent several years living as a Zen monk on Mt. Baldy in California, and has a new album, Dear Heather (Sony), out late this month. In the meantime, be prepared for the tributes. In May, Brighton's music festival in England featured a concert with performers from Nick Cave to Laurie Anderson covering Cohen standards. Closer to home, Cohen's Hallelujah is the centrepiece of k.d. lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. They all came so far for beauty.

Seat him next to: Guy Maddin, another Man in Black.

GUY MADDIN

Why him?

It's a nice piece of irony than a guy who for years turned out eccentric, seat-of-the-pants art-house films in an abandoned Winnipeg factory should finally have made The Great Canadian Movie. Saddest Music in the World (TVA International) has it all: the where mythological scope and breadth of Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the winsome nostalgia of Mon Oncle Antoine, the frigid landscapes of The Sweet Hereafter, the emotional resonance of Roadkill and a sense of humour located somewhere between Strange Brew and Naked Lunch. Uniquely and fabulously Canadian, Maddin make s a good case for the idea that the spiritual and intellectual centre of this country is really the Dominion Bridge Building in Winnipeg.

Seat him next to: Belinda Stronach. She could serve as his muse; he can help her with her image.

K.D. LANG

Why her?

With her new album, Hymns of the 40th Parallel (Nonesuch/Warner Music), lang comes full circle. She has always gone where her voice leads her, and where it leads her this time is deep into the Canadian musical psyche - or at least the musical psyche of anyone born here after 1950. Hymns is an appropriate title for an album of covers presented this sincerely; she sounds like she's laying bare the musical soul of a nation. Thus, Neil Young's After the Goldrush, Joni Mitchell's Jericho and Leonard Cohen's Bird on the Wire.

Seat her next to: Douglas Coupland. They can compose a western-Canuck Gen-X theme song. Dietary note: No beef, please.

ALEXANDRE TRUDEAU

Why him?

An extremely reluctant celebrity, Trudeau doesn't just want to be a documentary filmmaker; he wants to be the kind of documentary filmmaker who's constantly in danger of being chewed up by his subject. Last year his film, Embedded in Baghdad, aired on CTV, telling the story of his time with an Iraqi family during the 2003 bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq. His current project takes him and his camera to Israel and the Palestinian territories; The Fence is a tale of two families on opposing sides of the security barrier.

Seat him next to: Anybody. Let's just hope he gets back in one piece.

ARTHUR MENDONCA

Why him?

Because he's eye candy. Because he's a young hotshot fashion designer. Because at 28 he's not just the next big thing, but the big thing, period. Because he's stayed in this country and introduces his collections in Canada. Because he's putting Toronto on the map as a fashion hot spot, which may convince more budding designers to stick around and make Toronto an even bigger fashion hot spot. Because he stopped the show at the Toronto Fashion Week fall extravaganza in March. Because he's hot. Because he's a Ryerson grad.

Seat him next to: k.d. lang. He can talk clothes; she can listen.

DENYS ARCAND

Why him?

No important Canadian filmmaker has been marked by confounded ambition and yet recovered as gracefully as Arcand. His career has been a parade of projects mourning the impossibility of principled or conscientious action in modern society, culminating in The Decline of the American Empire (1086). That was followed by other notable flicks, such as Jesus of Montreal and the forgettable (sorry, Denys) foray into English, Love and Human Remains. It took almost 20 years, but Arcand seems to have finally gotten the cynicism out of his system and, in Les Invasions Barbares (2003), he has reached some kind of apotheosis; with the death of his alter ego Remy, you get the feeling Arcand has drawn a long personal struggle to a close. What now? He's just turned 63, an age after which Robert Altman made more than 10 features. With an Oscar under his belt, Arcand should have no trouble raising the money he needs to do whatever he wants. Where he takes us should be a place worth going.

Seat him next to: Shalom Harlow - Chaplin meets Paulette Goddard.

RYAN GOSLING

Why him?

In a field dominated by pretty boys such as Ryan Phillippe and poster boys such as Heath Ledger, Gosling comes on like a glorious breath of polluted air. He has not taken the easy-teen actor route (teen romance, teen comedy, teen slasher, teen Shakespearean paraphrase) but an edgier series of roles: a Jewish-American Nazi leader in The Believer, an intellectual killer in Murder by Numbers and a less intellectual murderer in The United States of Leland. This summer, he was finally rewarded with a role that will earn him fans rather than admirers: a romantic lead in The Notebook (Alliance Atlantis), where he gets to fall for Rachel McAdams and turn into James Garner.

Seat him next to: Bonnie Fuller. Let's see what he's really made of.

STEVEN COJOCARJU

Why him?

Montreal native Cojocaru used to write for Flare. Of course, life has been all downhill for him after that. Since then, he scored a gig as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, became a regular contributor to The Today Show, served as West Coast style editor for People and was famously set on fire by Donatella Versace. All this and much more is talked about in his tell-all cat-scratch memoir, Red Carpet Diaries: Confessions of a Glamour Boy, available at better bookstores everywhere and everyday bookstores everywhere else.

Seat him next to: Joni Mitchell. Maybe she'll set him on fire as well.

GEORGE YABU AND GLENN PUSHELBERG

Why them?

Since setting out in 1980, Toronto's Yabu and Kitchener's Pushelberg have become proprietors of one of North America's leading interior-design firms, Yabu Pushelberg, with a mind-boggling list of international clients. Specializing mainly in retail and hospitality space, they've developed a design philosophy that eschews trendiness or an established corporate look, preferring to match customer ideas to local exigencies - an acknowledgment that, in the design process, the most important interior space is in the client's head.

Seat them: across the table from the Caten twins.

SHALOM HARLOW

Why her?

She's a fabulous one-woman course in the geometry of modeling. Look at her - in every picture, she is an algebraic gathering together of angles, a human being as quasi-mathematical perfection. How she's able to translate that into a film or dramatic TV career will make for fascinating viewing, because film acting is turning modeling on its heads: on the runway, you channel your energy into the clothes; on the big or small screen, you project your energy directly to the viewer. Harlow knows where the camera is. Will 'The Jury' last long enough for us to find out if she can master it in this medium as well?

Seat her next to: Leonard Cohen. If she can master him, she can master us.

BELINDA STRONACH

Why her?

Whatever you may have thought of her aspirations to lead the Conservative Party of Canada, Stronach's in politics for the long haul now as the newly minted MP for the Ontario riding of Newmarket-Aurora. It's a sign either of her fiercely independent will or that some political-party distinctions don't really mean very much, given that her father, Frank Stronach, ran in that vicinity for the Liberals in 1988. But the really big revelation is that Stronach has jumped into the music business as the silent partner behind the artist-development company Big Bold Sun Music. The name came courtesy of a 'New York Post's' gossip columnist, although the paper saved most of its profundity for the moniker they gave her: "sexy Canadian billionaire."

Seat her next to: Melissa Au der Maur. She can start cherry-picking artists right there.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND

Why him?

So he invented the term Generation X. What's he done for us lately? Well, most gratifyingly, try 'Souvenir of Canada' and this year's follow-up, fetchingly entitled 'Souvenir of Canada 2' (Douglas & McIntyre.) Part time capsule, part found art and part social history, Coupland's 'Souvenirs' presents an iconography of the Canadian things that really matter, from stubby beer bottles to over-the-counter codeine. For a people to whom self-esteem is a guilty pleasure, the 'Souvenir of Canada' books make for a guilt-free pride. While it's great propaganda to direct toward the rest of the world, it's mostly a gift to us. It's always nice to be reminded about all the good things you know about yourself but never spend much time thinking about.

Seat him next to: Pure Canadiana, such as a 10-kg bag of Robin Hood flour or a bottle of 222s.

EIRA THOMAS

Why her?

When do we get to see the movie? In 1994, as a 25-year-old geologist, Thomas discovered one of the richest diamond fields in the world. The Northwest Territories site has gone on to become Canada's second diamond-producing mine and harbinger of a lot more to come. Now a director of the world's largest publicly traded diamond company, Aber Diamond Corporation, Thomas as president and CEO of Stornoway Diamond Corporation, president over exploration across Canada's Arctic and will soon her her own key to the delivery entrance of Tiffany's.

Seat her next to: Belinda Stronach, who can give her tips on flourishing as a billionaire.

RACHEL MCADAMS

Why her?

As the meanest of the 'Mean Girls' and the romantic lead in this summer's three-alarm weepie, 'The Notebook' (Alliance Atlantis), McAdams is a classic example of the actress who's worked for years to become an instant success. The public record of her origins is more shrouded in mystery than Spider-Man's. If you ever want a harrowing example of research gone mad, check out the internet Movie Database's message board discussing how old she really is She plays seven years younger than she is in 'Mean Girl's and two generations further back as a Second World War teen in 'The Notebook'. What you notice is that she's mastered the actor's craft of making original irrelevant.

Seat her next to: Ryan Gosling. Might as well give the photographers an easy one.

RANDI SHINDER

Why her?

The inspiration behind Shinder's own Clean fragrances and blond-bombshell wanna-be Jessica Simpson's Dessert Beauty line is so cunning that it's breathtaking: make people smell like soap and taste like food. Mind you, any guy would have told you that if you'd simply asked him. Because, no matter how you dress it up with innuendo ("Dessert girls are warm and golden, luscious and radiant, tempting and decadent"), it's a home truth that guys aren't really interested in sex; they're interested in eating. So I have a suggestion for the Next Big Thing: Main Course for men. Make me smell like a barbecue.

Seat her: Between Dean and Dan Caten.

DEAN AND DAN CATEN

Why them?

For extra fun, invite more than one. Twins Caten and Caten crossed over to women's designs from men's in 2003 and it was like another big bold sun rising into the sky - if the celebrity buzz was anything to go by. Toronto natives but residents of Milan since 1991, Dean and Dan have steadily accumulated a superstar following (for instance, designing a good deal of Madonna's Drowned World Tour), a reputation for irreverence and a nose for staying ahead of the curve.

Seat them next to: Randi Shinder. See if they develop clothes you can eat.

MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Why him?

You know you've really arrived somewhere as an author when a choreographer wants to make a dance piece out of a couple of your novels. Author Ondaatje arrived at that spot in June 2003, when Toronto dancer/choreographer Andrea Nann built an evening of dance around readings of 'In the Skin of a Lion' and 'Anil's Ghost' at Montreal's Centaur Theatre Company. The author of 'The English Patient' has won just about every award a Canadian writer can win: a Booker, a Giller, a couple of Governor-Generals; yet, what's most fascinating about him is a sort of all-round genius or, better yet, all-round curiosity. It's the kind of facility that can lead to something like 'The Conversations', a book about film editing based on a series of conversations Ondaatje had with Walter Murch, Francis Ford Coppola's longtime editor. The book won him another prize: this time the Robert Wise Award from the American Cinema Editors. It's a rare writer who can illuminate as many facets of the art of living as Ondaatje does; he is possibly Canada's finest author.

Seat him next to: Eira Thomas. Maybe he can write the screenplay.

BONNIE FULLER

Why her?

You must be joking. The former editor of FLARE, YM, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Us Weekly and now the editorial director of American Media Inc. would hang us by our Manolos if we didn't invite her. Fuller's magazines have bridged the gap between the celebrity and the fashion model: in the same way that a model gives life to clothes, the celebrity breathes life into readers. Now her publications knock down the walls between celebrity and newsmaker as well: Pamela Anderson is more important than George W. Bush. Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black, Charles Foster Kane - these people are just pikers. Fuller is the queen of all media.

Seat her next to: The corner of the table so she can take notes when the rolls begin to fly.