Oh, and we do dream of Carine! What a marvelously marvelous t-shirt. It’s sort of like the post-Devil \\ Prada world needed a new international style icon without the rage issues, and we have found Carine. Lovely. Sublime. The percentage of the world’s population interested in an American Apparel ringer tee with a tribute to Carine Roitfeld has got to be something less than .00000041%, but how lovely to see their interests served. AA Carine tee, $29
11.21.2005
11.21.2005
Anna Wintour = Madame Maxime?
11.18.2005
Oh, we wish we could be a wizard’s wizarding girlfriend. We won’t go as far as this Harry Potter Legal Age Countdown Clock, because we’re willing to rob the cradle but 16-year-olds … that’s like robbing the womb. But we. Love. Him. Tss. And tonight we, and the rest of preadolescent America\Europe\etc., will enjoy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Oh, Cedric! And Sirius. As far as fictional, magical boyfriends go, Sirius Black (but not Gary Oldman-ly; more like Matthew MacFayden-ly) is it.
What we would really like is to go to some sort of wizarding school, but as this appears to be increasingly less likely, we offer instead our tribute to our very favorite British-y things. We only want to be as much of a bad-ass as J.K. Rowling, possibly the only woman on the planet with the bank account to tell Steven Spielberg and his absolutely cracker Haley-Joel-Osment-should-play-Harry idea to fuck off.
Anyway, clothing is not exactly a medium, but it sort of is, so here goes:
1. Alice Temperley. If we were a member of the Bloomsbury Circle, and all our friends were sleeping with each others’ husbands, we’d wear this dress while we stood in the meadow crying about it, but we’d really just be crying for dramatic effect, because it would be impossible to be wearing this dress and be truly unhappy. Sigh. The Rosa silk dress, $1492
2. The Washed Black Baxter Skinny Jeans are like Stella McCartney without the annoying Stella McCartney-ness. See? We loved her last weekend, and now we are fatigued. We are such fickle cranks, really. About $70
3. This is like the nine millionth time we’ve mentioned Jocasi, but we adore them, and they just opened an online store, and we don’t get how repetitive we get, because they are so bizarrely wonderful. The Kepis medium, about $125
4. Love the Paul Smith stripes. Love bikinis. Love everything about it, except the fact that it is winter and we have nowhere to go swimming. Paul Smith bikini, about $100
5. We are not proud of our adoration for personalized Smythson stationary anymore than we’re proud of our adoration for Cedric Diggory, but there it is.
II. Music. No Kelly Clarkson.
1. “5 More Minutes,” Mull Historical Society. Please, please, please listen to this song, because you will love it more than you can even imagine.
2. “Do You Want To,” Franz Ferdinand. We tire of the ambiguous sexuality but we adore the Dior Homme.
3. “Fit But You Know It,” The Streets. This song is like the “Ignition” of last summer, but British, and sort of funnier, though “Ignition” was pretty funny, because doesn’t R. Kelly, like, piss on people?
4. “Apocalypse Please,” Muse. Oh, we wish we could be this sincerely operatic.
5. “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor,” Arctic Monkeys. We hate to dance. This makes us think we might like to dance.
III. TV
All we will say is: Season. Finale. Extras. Funniest ever. Not The Office Xmas special, but excellent, and when Maggie finally cleans her apartment, we wept for her. And us. And our own bedraggled apartment.
11.17.2005
J. Crew. That’s where we go for sweaters, and jeans, and little tweed handbags, or when we’re feeling very nostalgic for the New England prep-school life we never had, with Jeeves and Pinky. Hrm. Jeeves and Pinky. We even tried with that one, and it’s one part Internet start-up, one part junior Mafioso.
The point is that until now, J. Crew has not been the place where we would go for, say, ocelot-print calfskin coats. That cost $2500. We mean, seriously, it just gets more ridiculous with each sentence, right? It is, by the way, “exclusive” to J. Crew. That’s like saying “herpes” are “exclusive” to, say, Paris Hilton. Just because she’s got it doesn’t mean we want it.
And seriously, it’s not like we’re so anti-fur or something — we mean really, tell it to the cow who donated the hamburger we just ate for dinner — but really, the fox that gave its life for this was seriously wronged. Seriously. Apparently it’s called a “trapper,” and it is meant to be worn on the head. Whatever. ($450.) It’s like, What the fuck could that possibly be? This is just the craziest looking thing we’ve ever seen.
Except, perhaps, for the cashmere sweater with the elephant on it ($148).
Still, though, we have love, mad, mad love, for J. Crew, when they are doing nice, non-elephant-involving basics, like this cashmere t-shirt-styled sweater ($138). In fact, we had this exact sweater, and we wore it every day, like a toddler, and only stopped when we accidentally dribbled toothpaste down the front, like a toddler. And even then we just sort of wiped it off and wore it on the plane home, because it was that perfect weight, and we loved it until some ass at the Avis counter stole it from us. Or we left it on the plane. No idea. Still miss it.
And honestly, we can’t account for the model’s stance here, but we’re totally into the idea of a puffer with a furry collar ($248), even if we like Vince’s better.
And PS: It’s not available on the website anymore, but they have a gorgeous green knee-length coat in the stores that’s absolutely swoon-worthy. Lovely silk lining.
PPS: What the fuck is this?
11.16.2005
If we were an anorexic, trust-funding 14-year-old, we’d be all over Alessandro Dell’Acqua. Seriously, this is what the girls are wearing when we have nightmares about being trapped in some neverending Halloween party, with, like, Nicole Richie popping out of a cake in a negligee and autographing a copy of her book. It’s worse than that eye-slitting scene from Un Chien Andalou. It’s worse than stuffing your head in a toilet. Or an oven. Nicole Richie and the book, we mean. Not Alessandro Dell’Acqua. It’s just so expensive and cut so much like lingerie that it’s sort of off our radar, except for the purposes of this post.
Seriously, if we had enough money to afford this limited-edition sequin jacket, we’d buy a nice little used Saab convertible. If we had enough money to afford this, and then actually purchased it, we’d get our heads examined, because it is just that gaudy, that Vegas, that circus show (for $4700). You know what we really hate? We hate those commercials for Vegas where the couple’s like “We totally fucked each other, all weekend, and now we’re going to be all nauseating about it.” Ugh, barf. It’s like, er, we’re vacationing in Maine, where they do not use extended food metaphors for sex. Bleccch.
11.16.2005
The only thing wrong with this Paul Frank t-shirt, suggested to us by a marvelously astute friend of Bunnyshop, is that it actually replicates the hated Ugg in that line drawing, but perhaps there was no other way of successfully making the point of how hideously ugly they are.
Now. Okay. We are just so ashamed to mention this, but we are going to say that we would, possibly, and with deep, endless regrets, consider wearing their Adirondack Boot II, in a blizzard or similar. It is hideously ugly, and no one could make the mistake of thinking it was adorable, unlike the regular Ugg. This would be a purely functional decision. They are warm. Sigh.
11.15.2005
We don’t know what’s in the water over at Scoop, because they have all these wonderful things on sale. So wonderful, in fact, that this was supposed to be one of those situations where we wouldn’t actually write about them until we’d safely purchased them, because we are just that greedy. We really are. And then we dropped our wallet down, we swear to God, the one-inch space where there’s a gap when the elevator doors are open. The elevator shaft ate our wallet, and if that’s not a divine suggestion to lay off the spending, we don’t know what is. At least until Friday, when our new credit cards show up.
But moving on from our psychological deficiencies. These are Chip & Pepper, and they’re almost half off. Half! The thing about saving money on clothing is that we always feel like the money we’ve saved can, and should, be properly reinvested in additional items of clothing. It’s a win-win situation, really.
And these “Mulberry Street” Salt jeans are — wait for it — $25. Twenty-five dollars. That’s $100 off. However, this is possibly because of the high rise, which, on second thought … there’s no two ways about it, they just make you look a little bit fatter than lower ones. So, whatever. But still. $100 off! We admit we would get excited about, say, poo, if it was 80% off. Problematic.
We have been obsessed with this Diab’less tunic since it first showed up last spring: It’s so brilliantly ’80s, so perfectly Flashdance. It is made for knee-slides across high school gyms.
Seriously, if there’s one thing we hate (and there isn’t; there are so many things we hate, like those guys in yoga class who moan as loudly as possibly for 90 minutes and sweat all over the floor), it’s girls who are like, “That bag is so last season.” OK, we’ve said and thought that, but we wouldn’t mean it. This Marin bag is Fall 2004, so it is officially out of season, but so is salmon, and we’re having that for dinner. And we’ll love it, just like we’d love this bag. And it’s half off. $600 is a lot of money, but it’s also a lot less than $1200.
We’re generally opposed to this shape — it’s sort of designed to make even normal boobs look droopy — but the sheer amount of fabric here might assuage. Eh. We’re actually not super enthused about this top. This is the kind of top we see on girls we hate, the kind who wait behind ropes at bars we hate. But then sometimes we like their tops. We’re not sure how much love-hate class-warfare we can invest in this shirt. Daslu halter top, $365 down to $73.
These Michael Kors boots are $370 down to $69 and even if they came with a free ice cream sandwich, we wouldn’t buy them.
11.14.2005
Precious metals: best in small packages. From jewelry stores. We don’t like bars on streets frequented by pseudo-hipster junior-yuppies where there are prostitutes on the corners of said streets. But driving past both the bar and the corner this weekend, we realized that the one thing women on both (a) the corner and (b) the line to the bar had in common was a large metallic bag. This is just one more reason why we will continue to prefer our metallic bag in small doses.
Like this Lauren Merkin clutch. Subtle. And bronze. In bag form, if not in Olympics, often preferable to gold.
And then this gold Lorelei snakeskin clutch is very bling — oh, God, what a terrible word. But it is very bright, isn’t it? And sometimes bright is just what you’re looking for, and in those cases, this may be precisely right. Silver and gold, etc. It’s not metallic and therefore remains outside the scope of this discussion, but Lorelei’s black eelskin clutch is de-lovely.
Hobos can also be pleasingly small, in their handbag, if not human, forms. This is a BCBGirls “Boogie Night” hobo. They define its carrying capacity as “holds at least a magazine, a wallet, and water bottle.” Is that the official standard for bag capacity? Not a book, a sandwich, and a Dr. Pepper? It’s weird. Also, this bag is, we believe correctly, described as “bronze.” However, there’s another called “titanium,” but it’s black. Titanium isn’t black. It’s not like we think we’re so smart because we know titanium isn’t black, but seriously, could no one there look this up? We did. Titanium is “a strong, low-density, highly corrosion-resistant, lustrous white metallic element.” Not black. Not to be nerds about it. Which we are.
Kooba. If it’s good enough for Sienna Miller, it’s good enough for us. Except Jude Law. He may be good enough for Sienna Miller, but he’s not good enough for us.
This Marc Jacobs quilted bag is so rich it makes us think of that saying “You can never be too rich or too thin,” which is like saying “You can never be too much of an asshole or spend too much of your time puking up your lunch in the office bathroom.” In other words, it’s a lifestyle we’re in no particular rush to emulate. But … sparkle. Honestly, we’d buy it, wear it once, feel like an ass, admire it as some sort of art object once or twice, and then be pissed that we spent $775 on this bag and not on a small car or something.
11.11.2005
This is the link that will get you all the Stella McCartney \\ H&M on eBay. Fashion profiteering. Love it.
The woman in the photo above is quite possibly a 14-year-old Estonian model, and yet she looks like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man: This, in short, is the problem with puffer coats, particularly with long puffer coats. With short puffer coats, at least you’ve got the lower half of your body to prove Stay-Puft-freedom; with longer ones, you’re one step away from being held aloft over a campfire.
For years we have resisted the siren call of the long puffer. But now, we are cold. And they are warm, and so, we imagine, some sort of arrangement must be worked out. It may involve tights. Anything to prove the lack of actual marshmallow filling. Above, the Theory quilted puffer, $400
The best thing about this coat is the way they were nice enough to add in that fitted-y quilting to suggest that the wearer might have been born with human, rather than marshmallow, form. The worst thing about this coat is that there is a bizarre notation informing us that the “fur is brown on coat not black as shown.” Honestly, we’re not sure if we need to be wearing a raccoon around our neck. It’s just that there were so few puffers that even began to make the cut. Raccoon. Sigh. Andrew Marc Kara puffer, $575
This is as sleek as it’s going to get. In fact, this may be our favorite of the lot, even if it means we’re defining “puffer” a bit loosely. Like, without the raccoon collar. So be it. Miss Sixty Hue jacket, $289
This is really more like a blanket with a belt than an actual coat, but it has a certain lost-in-Tibet-ness about it that’s somehow charming. Like, you’d be walking down the street, lost in your own little world of blizzards and the invading Chinese, which would all be quite disturbing, but you’d know you’d be impervious to it all because you were lost in your humungous coat cocoon. This would likely be less effective on the subway, where your coat might suffocate whoever had the misfortune of sitting next to you. Win some, lose some, etc. Diesel Slamanytos jacket, $250
This is the one, and absolutely only, time we are going to feature a “JLO by Jennifer Lopez” piece “unless and until” (Dr. Phil, yum) she actually starts sketching out designs and you know, makes her own clothing. Fashion lines: They’re like the vanity license plate for megalomaniac pop singers. But if you’re going to buy a white puffer, $126.99 is really the price to pay. JLO Faux-fur-trim long down puffer coat, $126.99
