2006 May » Bunnyshop

And Now For Something Slightly Different

05.23.2006

What do you wear to your sister’s wedding? Something that says, “I may not have a house, or a dog, or a permanent job, I may spend most of my free time with people who (a) are five to ten years younger than me and (b) are drinking me perhaps literally under the table, but I have a passport and discretionary income devoted to buying clothes rather than paying mortgages even though it is only discretionary in the sense that I am ignoring the fact that it should be devoted to paying off student loans, so fuck you, you doubters.” But without the, you know, defensive tone. Seriously: It’s dress-buying time! And democratic principles being supremely supreme, it’s going to come down to a vote.

The choices: left, Missoni; right, Matthew Williamson. Votes, comments, and other suggestions all welcome.

And Now For Something, Part II

05.23.2006

If you have any interest in seeing how one of America’s biggest hip-hop talents made utter mincemeat out of yours truly (ours truly? the royal we fails us again), and you have some free time, please take a look at our (er, my, whatever) interview with Kelis in the new issue of the brilliant, brilliant Nylon magazine, which is somehow available for free online. (We are saying Nylon is brilliant, not our \ my piece. Argh.) Just flip, the accuracy of “flip” depending on the speed of your Internet service, to page 108.

Ask the Stylist: The Graduation Dress

05.22.2006

In today’s Ask the Stylist:

I will be graduating from my undergraduate college in the beginning of June and was wondering if you had any suggestions for a dress to wear? The dress I was hoping to get, a strapless chiffon dress from J. Crew, is now sold out. Thanks!!

Well, it’s true: J. Crew, for all their nightmarish ocelot-print disasters, makes beautiful party dresses, and it is highly annoying that they would not have enough of them for this particular occasion. We will assume you go to a college other than the one we go to, where anyone wearing something other than a marching band vest, cowboy boots, and home-crocheted hot pants will—well, we don’t even know. Look out of place. Welcome to art school! is what we like to say. By the way: Art School Confidential: to be avoided. At. All Costs. In fact, here is a brief story from that film: We were innocently eating popcorn, as you will, at a movie, when we heard the guy sitting next to our friend say to his own female friend (if you can follow that), quite loudly, “I will not tell her to stop eating popcorn. That’s what you do at a movie—eat popcorn.” We would like to say that we stuffed all this popcorn in our mouth and then spit it out all over her head. We didn’t. We stopped eating. We were ashamed at our lack of moxie.

Anyhoo, our stylist somehow attended a supremely normal school—in fact, one where girls where pearl necklaces to football games. (“I wouldn’t know, since I never went to football games,” she says, but we’re sure it’s true.) And here, her picks:

“Graduation is one of the most fun events to dress for, because you can really, truly wear whatever you like—it’s your party as much as it is everybody else’s, so the sky’s the limit. But since you said you were most interested in a chiffon strapless dress, I tried to keep my recommendations on a similar wavelength.”

“I am absolutely wild about this dress. It’s totally sexy but also totally casual. Perfect for parent-less events.” Foley+ Corinna silk tube dress, $379

“As we said before, J. Crew makes terrific party dresses—equally good for a wedding or a graduation dress. If they’re out of the chiffon version, maybe this linen one will work. It’s navy, not black, and beautifully shaped. A big, contrast-y color chunky necklace or a delicate silver one [BS recommendation: Sarah McGuire] would look beautiful.” Ainsley strapless dress, $128

“Still, if you’re asking, you probably decided not to go with J. Crew. Anthropologie is equally easy to get to and obviously makes loads of great, not very expensive dresses. This is my favorite of their strapless ones. I love the way the red dress pops against the dark blue and white.” Reminds us of Grey’s Anatomy: silver and black balloons. If you know what we’re talking about, you know what we’re talking about. Everyone else, we apologize. Punchline dress, $148

This isn’t a chiffon, but the double-layer gauzy skirt has the same sort of delicate effect. Black can be a little severe with the wrong accessories, but it can look equally streamlined and sophisticated with the right ones. And of course, if you’re moving from a daytime party with family to nighttime party with friends, it’s perfect.” C&C California Gauze Strapless Dress, $110

“This dress is just this side of Far From Heaven, but I think it’s adorable, and depending on the vibe of the event, it could be perfect. It’s a little grade school recital, but it has that stealth sexiness I’m so into these days.” Kay Unger bow dress, $330

“Unless you feel like the white is a little too June wedding, this Shoshanna dress is a beautiful choice—it’s hard to see, but that’s crochet.” Shoshanna strapless dress, $330. [P.S.: We asked the stylist to choose something from Samantha Chicago, and this was it—so, with the discount code "bunnyshop," you can get 15% off this dress (or anything else), meaning it'd only be $280.50.]

“I wanted to add one cute budget choice, just in case you’re looking to spend a little less money. I wouldn’t expect to get many wears out of this, but this eyelet dress from Alloy could probably make it through one event in really good shape—and at $44, there’s no chance of a broken heart if you spill punch on it.” Eyelet dress, $44

OK, so that’s it for this week’s edition. Have a question for our stylist? Keep her from drowning herself in Diet Coke. Send it over immediately.

Our New Discount BFF: Samantha Chicago!

05.19.2006

Thank God for Samantha Chicago, because we were really just about to end our stay in San Francisco by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. We have nine months of British, French, US and American Vogues to throw away. That sounds sort of pretentious. We just spent three minutes trying to remember how to spell “pretentious.” Less pretentious: We just spent the last thirty minutes washing mold out of glasses we “stowed” in our closet, for some reason long forgotten, and just re-found. We don’t know what we were thinking when we left them in there. It was probably something like, “How could we forget leaving these glasses in such a bizarre place?”

Anyhoo: Samantha Chicago. We love them, because they have beautiful things, and because they are offering all of 15% off anything they sell. We are very excited. We love them. We hope you will, too. We are sure, in fact, that you will. Someday we are going to completely sell out and try to make the case for loving terrible, cheesy things, but today is not that day, thank goodness.

These are our top five things from them: now available at 15% off, with our treasured little discount code, “bunnyshop.” Sans quotes.

Holy shit, we just love this. We love Paul & Joe. We are so moving to Paris. Actually, we love both of these. Argh, sometimes we just want to be Amelie and live in Montmartre, and the rest of the time we are horrified that we think this. From Paul & Joe: the Artemis top ($220, now $187) and the Tralala navy cape ($264, now $224.40). Honestly, we may have buy it just to own a Tralala cape.

We were going to do another whole column on Havaianas. That is how you know we were scraping the bottom of the barrel before lovely Samantha Chicago came around. Have we ever mentioned how we went to yoga once with a pair of size 6 black Havaianas, and when we came out, there was only a pair of size 7s there? What do you do then? If you’re us, you walk back home in the 7s, feeling icky. But still wearing them. Like, to this day. Havaianas, cherry print: $20. Minus 15%. Equals … tss. Er, oh tss. Er, $17!

Generra’s cotton stuff isn’t cheap, but so few things are. And unlike, say, some less expensive things, this lasts and does not pull and look ugly three days later, thank you very much H&M. Snap henley in green ($72) and we totally love the Grecian tank ($72). Both now $61.20.

Shoshanna’s tops do nothing for us, the bust-less, but her bottoms are fab. Did we just say fab? Jesus. Argh. They sort of are, though. Shoshanna white pants, $231

Speaking of bottoms: We have no booty. If we did, we would wear these every day. Booty-ful boy shorts, $20

Remember! Discount code = bunnyshop. There will be more suggestions next week. When we are live: from: Brooklyn!!

Our Brief Salute To San Francisco

05.18.2006

Honestly, we’re so tired our head is lolling around, and we completely spaced on buying dinner so now it’s either orzo at 2:30 in the morning or stealing roommates’ food. This is because we are packing, and when we are not packing, sleeping. Seriously, the letters are swimming in front of us.

Anyhoo, this is our brief salute to the things we saw in San Francisco we wanted to buy, and occasionally did. More often did not. But occasionally did. For example, above: We love this. It’s from L.A.M.B. We like to imagine Gwen Stefani buying groceries and doing aerobics in it.

Here it is, not in a store window: L.A.M.B. rasta tank dress, $425

We know, not a great picture. We did what we could. This is a deer t-shirt from Little Paper Planes. We love it.

Our favorite is totally the deer with the puffy sleeves. We feel ourselves getting increasingly sentimental about woodland animals the older we get, sort of like with sunscreen and lutein.

Sue London ballet flats. Apparently and annoyingly totally impossible to buy online. For retailers, click here.

The Nana Doc medium. Sort of like Jocasi, but made in the Bay Area. Tonight, that’s enough to get in the column. Zzzzzzz. We do love it, though, sort of like we love the dog: in that casual, but whole-hearted way.

Reader Question Wednesday!

05.17.2006

Today’s question:

Luella For Target Raincoat: I’m interested in purchasing one of these. Do you know where I might find one?

Unfortunately, we do not. This is the case with a fair portion of our reader questions, in that we can locate the questions (our inbox) but not, tragically, the answer. Even with eBay, that final refuge of lost purchases, there are 0 items found for luella target raincoat. Whatever.

Luella for Target is dead. Long live Tara Jarmon for Target. Sort of. Because, well. We sort of. Like this coat. The way we like Dateline. We don’t really like Dateline, but we probably wouldn’t bother to get up and change the channel if it was on. Especially if they were doing one of those catch-the-perv dragnets. Honestly, it’s a little confusing. We don’t entirely get the styling with the white shorts.

Doesn’t this look like an awful lot of pink? Princess seam dress in oxford rose, $39.99. We are pretty sure we would feel more favorably re: this dress if the model’s skin and the dress color weren’t almost exactly the same color. That sort of freaks us out. We’re also really not sure about the bust line.

We would definitely chuck the bow here and replace it with a much bigger, better one, but hrm. Really, the Reader Question Wednesday today should be: Exactly how much can we expect for $39.99? Perhaps not too much? Strapless dress, $39.99

Hrm. Well, there’s always Luella clearance. This is so Britney Spears Second Pregnancy Dress. However, Target is calling it Luella’s empire voile dress, now $27.99

We were feeling very meh about the whole bubble skirt \ leggings situation, but it’s so preferable to the version with the denim mini-skirt (see yesterday) that we don’t mind much anymore. Balloon skirt, $13.99

Er, whatever. Possibly the best option: Save the money, but the real thing. We know. It depresses us, too. We don’t feel like this about the H&M collabs, tho who knows what’s going to happen now that it’s all Viktor & Rolf-y. Luella Suzi tote bag, $1250

Have a question for us? We promise nothing. Tss. But we’ll try. E-mail us here.

Because We Cannot Improve On The Original, We Quote Directly From British Vogue

05.16.2006

If this were about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, we’d be all barf, erg, vomit, etc. But because it’s Kate Moss, it’s sort of awesome:

“MONEY really can get you almost anything you want—even a snog with Kate Moss. At least, it can if you’re Philip Green. The retail gazillionaire reportedly bid £60,000 to play tonsil hockey with the British supermodel at a charity auction in Annabel’s last night—before foregoing the privilege and letting Jemima Khan do the work for him. The resulting kiss, which went on for more than 60 seconds according to one eyewitness, created what will surely be one of the most talked about photo opportunities of the year – though nobody is allowed to publish the pictures after Green apparently insisted they be sold exclusively for charity.”

In With the New, Out With the Parabens

05.16.2006

We recently went home to see our bestest of best friends, who, at the time, was exceptionally pregnant. “Parbens,” she said. “Do you know about parabens?”

“No,” we said. We remember distinctly looking in her refrigerator at this point, for some type of cake. “Why about parabens?”

“Do you know they’re in all your beauty products, and they’re going to give you all sorts of disgusting, disfiguring diseases at some point?”

“Is that point now?” We thought, but did not say, this, because we were scared, at this point, of parabens, the disfiguring, her, and at the prospect of no cake in her fridge. There was, tragically, no cake. There was, however, some heated gesturing, NPR linking, and paraben-describing. “If we go to Friday’s,” we remember saying, “there will probably be cake there.”

“You shouuld really write about this on your blog,” she said, and so, in exchange for the cake-trip, we offer five lovely, paraben-free, disfiguring-free, face things.

The older we get, the more we find ourselves drawn to products involving serums. Serums! Like truth-telling, love-inducing, or in this case, “age-defying.” Juice Beauty green apple antioxidant serum, $45

This is the product our BFF shook in our face as we looked for the cake. Caudalie Vinoperfect Radiance Serum (love the serums!), $78

And: Caudalie Beauty Elixir. Elixirs! Even better than serums. From the product description: “Inspired by the “elixir of youth” used by Queen Isabelle of Hungary, this precious elixir smoothes, helps to minimize the appearance of pores, and gives complexion a burst of radiance.” It’s like, Mm, we are paraben free, but we did need to mix in some hearts of virgins and eye of frog, hope you don’t mind. $15 (small) or $49 (big).

Nobody ever went wrong sending little sample packets to writers, and so: Bluebasins Bath & Body. We actually received a litlte informational kit from them the same day as the paraben\cake discussion. It was good timing. We especially like Rosie’s Shea Butter Bath Melt, which looks exactly like we would want our homemade butter bath melts to look like, if we could get around to making them.

Also, the green tea tree oil soap ($6.95). We fell a little in love with our yoga teacher when he did adjustments with tea tree oil moisturizer. That sounds way more NC-17 than it should. Did we mention the lack of parabens here?

We freaking love this coconut-y Natural Wet Shine for Lips from Carol’s Daughter. It’s sort of like very Hawaii, but also prom, but also an idealized, wonderful beach prom. Oh, the childhood we never had! “Petroleum-free. Paraben-free. Mineral oil-free.” Etc. Also in less interesting mango and strawberry flavors.

Ask the Stylist: The Problem With Leggings

05.15.2006

We spent the weekend with a higher percentage of our family than we usually do, this being the weekend for it and all that, and we experienced two moments of great pride. One: the matching camping bear t-shirts we wore with our similarly-aged family member. Seriously: Why did they have to go and make that TV commercial about the bears poo-ing in the woods, when all they needed to do was send them camping? Bizarre. Two: We say to our mother, “Did you see the season finale of The Office?” To which she replied, “I only watch the British one.” It was like anglomanic hipster know-it-y-ness, but it was from our mother, and she was being sincere. We could not have been more proud.

We like the Amerian Office. It is not the perfect flawless diamond of the British version, but it is very funny, which CSI is not. To, however, this Office finale—we know we are like six days behind everyone else, and if you haven’t seen it but plan to purchase it on iTunes soon, please turn away now—we must say: As soon as Jim and Pam are together, the show must end. Do not jump the shark, people. Or the inter-office romance. Tim and Dawn: They earned it, and we love them. Jim and Pam. We are old enough to remember Dave and Maddie, and we will be so pissed if that happens to them.

OK, so like three people cared about that. Did you notice that last week sucked here on Bunnyshop? Everyone who helps us was on vacation somewhere exotic, and we are in the process of moving, in the sense that “process” refers to the week when we stare mournfully at a pile of crap on the floor and then decide that we’ll throw it in a box and store it in a friend’s closet. This is why we can’t find our running shoes, and believe they may be in a basement in Paris.

Anyhoo, hopefully at least one or two more will be interested in the answer to this week’s Ask the Stylist quandary.

I have a style-related question for you and your stylist and am leaving it in the comments section because I’m too lazy to e-mail it: now that leggings and miniskirts have become ubiquitous mall-fare, what is your current stance on them? Are leggings acceptable anymore?

And now, from our stylist, recently returned from her fully expensed South Asian adventure.

“I’d bet money you already know the answer to this question. Actually, there are two: One, yes, leggings are completely passe. In the sense that those really avant garde girls won’t wear anything anyone else is wearing, leggings became passe sometime between the instant they started showing up on runways and when Urban Outfitters started selling them.”

“That said, what we’ve all realized is that leggings are quite comfortable, so why wouldn’t you wear them, whenever you want? Basically, if I’m in a situation where I’m going to be judged by fashion-minded people, and I am in a position where I need to care about what they think, I would not wear them. However, in nearly any other situation, I’ve decided that they’re comfortable and part of my wardrobe until I get tired of them.”

“For me, the most passe look is the ex-Sienna Miller look: denim mini-skirt, black leggings. I’m also over the most ’80s interpretation, with an oversized striped t-shirt. Can’t take it.” That’s the American Eagle utility mini-skirt, $34.50

“What I’ve been wearing is just a whole soft-jersey overload: I’m totally into the skort [see top] from AA with leggings underneath: There’s something sort of roller-skating-waitress about it I’m totally into.”

“And though I have a couple pairs of black leggings, I’m really into bright colors, especially their royal blue and this kelly green.”

“In short, the answer is sort of what it always is, which is: Why deal with the fashion fascists? However, if you must—and sometimes we must—bow to their avant garde wishes, and move on.”

Do you have a question for our stylist? We totally hope you do. E-mail us here.

This Is What We Want More Than Anything

05.15.2006

Except a Saab. And a beach house. And a dog. And so many other things. But very, very high on that list: white jean capris. These Paper Denim & Cloths are about $200 more than we wish to spend on our fantasy purchases, but they are also perfect.

These Old Navys are not as cute. But they only cost $24.50. The fact that we would still buy the ones from Anthro is the reason why we have credit card debt instead of a house. Caveat emptor.

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