2006 August » Bunnyshop

Field Trip: Shoreditch Art Party

08.23.2006

This weekend we went on a little walking tour of Shoreditch.

For some reason, every time go to an art party in East London, it is always like two dozen people standing out in the cold, drinking beer and looking grumpy. Obviously we are going to the wrong parties, lacking, as they always seem to, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss making out. Or, who knows, maybe they were there, but we didn’t stay long enough to see them. Here is what the parties we go to always look like:

This was quite depressing as we were very excited about the art project the party was ostensibly celebrating: Shop Local by Bob and Robert Smith. We believe in shopping generally, when done smartly and not in desperation, and even more when it is done locally, and he made four big signs advertising quite small Shoreditch businesses. Someone we know very well who wisely turned down the party but foolishly turned down the art said, "How is that art? Why isn’t that just a sign?" to which we said, "Well, if the intent of the sign were merely to advertise the business, then, fine, it’s just a sign. But obviously he’s doing something more interesting here, so besides the aesthetic qualities—really, I think they’re quite striking and lovely—there’s a political commentary as well: They ask you to think about the idea of shopping locally, why you haven’t done it more, what that ends up meaning for the community as a result." Hey! $20,000 of art school, totally paying off!

Moving on to subjects that terrify us less than our pending student loan payments. Above is a picture of the sign for the electronics store, and here is another picture from the project, for a local eel and shellfish shop. Our photos are terribly out of order today.

And we love this bag (at top). £15 is pretty steep for a carrier bag, but … Shop Local! Hmm. It’s a lot of money. But it’s really cute. Argh. This could go on for many days. Fair Trade, fair wages and all that.

To see the show: Peer Gallery, 99 Hoxton Street
To buy the adorable, limited edition Fair Trade bag: Peer Gallery’s bag info page

Gray Jeans and Booties = BFF

08.23.2006

Gray jeans, gray jeans, gray jeans. We wrote that three times, which is about once for every 1000 pairs we saw on the street today. And, we must say: so much better than—if not blue jeans, than maybe black leggings, though, in the right circumstances, we still like those as well. But: gray jeans + black booties (mind, we hate the booties, but fair enough) =

Paula Abdul was just on X Factor and though we are sure she was completely sober, the editors gave her a two-minute sequence where she was just hysterically laughing on the floor. Totally sober, etc. We were looking through Shopbop to find out which gray jeans they carry, and it turns out they carry all of them. Sounds good to us! From left to right: Radcliffe NW1 skinny ($181), Hudson stretch ($176) (by the way we would like to say here that we are simultaneously fascinated \ repulsed by the Kate Hudson \ Owen Wilson news), Habitual skinny ($183), Paige skinny ($179), and J. Brand 10" ($159). Honestly, we have no idea why we aren’t in the premium denim business, because you know none of these cost more than $10 to make.

These are the ones we see everywhere we go: Topshop’s Baxter jeans. These are sort of a summer weight which explains the slight lower ($45 versus $75) price.

These are our favorites at Urban, which has quite a range of gray skinny jeans. We’re going to say that this photo doesn’t make us think skinny jeans are flattering on everyone, and when they’re not even flattering on models, the whole thing seems a little built to fail, no? Sometimes we are like, yeah, skinny jeans, they’re so cool, and others, we’re like, where are our boot cut jeans, and why aren’t we wearing them right this minute? Lux gray jeans, $68

Honestly, we hate the booties. However, if forced, threatened with some sort of large pie, we would … well, booties. We’d rather have short boots (in the sense that we’d rather have mumps than measles). These are the closest to the booties we saw all over the place, however: Zinda ankle boots, $100

Last Days of Summer Sales: J. Brand Jeans

08.22.2006

Everybody says they don’t believe the no-whites-after-Labor-Day thing, but for some reason, absolutely every pair of white jeans is on sale at the moment. Whatever! Maybe we will find ourselves in Australia, and blissfully free of such confusing constraints. J. Brand 12" stretch jeans in white, were $159, now $111.30. Also in a sort of medium blue, and other, non-sale colors.

Our New Contest, and Fashion Babylon

08.22.2006

Consider it a month of Project Runways. Or … we don’t know. Sort of like Devil Wears Prada, but without all those strange "I’m really a better person than this." All we are saying is that we did, in true and utter actuality, work at a fashion magazine for four years (!) and we learned more about how the fashion industry … well, let’s just say we read Fashion Babylon in about three hours, and the ratio of time spent-information gleaned … er, we’re not sure if that’s low or high. Low, we think. Anyway, the book is completely fabulous, full to the gills, as it is, with gossip and anonymous slander and

The nice thing is that it was 3-for-2 at Waterstone’s, and we wisely managed to use this to our advantage, for once, and we have a copy of this masterwork to give away to our most deserving reader, "most deserving" in this context being defined as the reader who submits the most useful skincare regimen. We have lately found ourselves fascinated by skincare regimens, especially when they are not our own. Send us yours, and, of course, only do so if you are quite pleased with it. Crap skincare regimens should be avoided. Great skincare regimens will be published here, and then either voted on or deemed by us to be best, depending on our energy levels next week, and the winner will find themselves in ownership of this not-available-in-the-US book. However, if you really do not like the book but still want to indulge our ridiculousness, we could swap one of the treats currently on their way to being on their way to past participants. We will say here though that the book is by most standards the better prize, which is why we are only giving away the one.

Moving on, here is our favorite skincare regimen. "Regimens" are not
the same thing as "regiments," and we do not know why we keep typing
the former as the latter.

We alternate between Philosophy’s Purity and this charcoal soap from Lush, which we definitely use whenever we are traveling, because every time we get into a plane we get off it with Purity foaming all over whatever bag we stupidly put it in. Charcoal has the distinct advantage of being in solid-soap form, but Purity’s our choice when altitude is not an issue. Philosophy’s Purity, $32

We love Kiehl’s rosewater toner ($15), but we also skip it when we are flying. The last time we ignored our own advice we ended up with half of it soaking into our cell phone, which was totally awesome. Taping the plastic lid down seems to solve the problem, but honestly, we’re too lazy to really go all the way with that.

Nothing to complain about here. Kiehl’s cryste marine moisturizer ($45). Lovely!

We absolutely swoon over our Fresh FreshFace primer ($30). It has cucumber something or other in it, and instead of feeling like you are getting crap all over your face, which is how we feel with all foundations and most primers, we feel like we are walking into a cool, cucumber-scented breeze. Or something. Really, it’s lovely, and it ensures that we never have to deal with foundation, because it makes our nice ….

tinted moisturizer from Becca do all the coverage work we need. This has an SPF 20, too, so we find ourselves motivated to do our entire skincare regimen instead of rolling out of bed and slathering on some sunscreen, or more likely, completely forgetting it until we are sitting down on the train and spending the rest of the day obsessing over sun damage. Becca Luminous Skin Color, $40

So anyway: That’s ours. Send us yours—as complicated or as simple as you want, just whatever you do to get your skin ready for the day. Really, if it is like nothing but Dove bar soap and a washcloth, that’s just as cool. Our favorite gets the book!

The Last Days of Summer Sales: Oscar de la Renta Pumps

08.21.2006

We’ve been going a little too apeshit with the summer-shoe buying lately, to the point that we recently handed our credit cards over to someone to the firm instructions not to return them until next weekend. This is all the result of walking into Topshop and finding not one but two pairs of on-sale shoes that we were quite excited about, and then spending half an hour fiddling with them, trying to figure out which ones we liked enough to spend the money on. We decided and took the sample up to get the real pair, and the sales girl was like, "Those too?" And we were like, "No," feeling at least somewhat proud of ourselves. So she goes and gets the ones we’ve chosen and then we realize everything’s buy one, get one free, so we have to make her go back down to the stockroom for the others, feeling like totally errand-making twats.

So: If we had not just wiped out our summer-shoe-shopping savings, we would at least seriously mull these very-much-on-sale Oscar de la Renta cork platform pumps, were $545, now $189.99.

Project Runway Picture of the Week

08.21.2006

What’s that saying that’s, like, "They came for the Communists, but I did not speak out, because I was not a Communist"? Right. We always enjoyed Laura’s random eruptions of bitter-cranky-quack-quack-quack. Until she attacks our stupidly maligned home state: "New Jersey looked as awful as it ever did." Er, yeah, haven’t heard that before. Brilliant and biting, that. Seriously: Stay uptown. We don’t want you. "Go shove some Harry Winstons up your nose"? Vincent is brilliant, for once.

Ask the Stylist: The Birthday Dinner

08.21.2006

Back from her seemingly never-ending vacation, our stylist has returned. This week’s question:

My birthday is coming up, and my girlfriends (ranging in age from 23 to 43) want to take me out. We are starting with a casual dinner and then heading out club hopping. I need something to wear!

Some things about me. My body isn’t where I’d like to be. My boobs are also larger than I would like. So I’m not comfortable showing a lot of skin, especially my arms. I do, however, like my legs, from about mid-thigh down. I really love fashion and want to be fashionable, yet classy and comfortable. I want to look awesome and cute!

Being small of chest, we once asked a friend of ours, large of chest, if she ever got sick of people like us telling her how much we wished we had her problems. "It makes me want to rip people’s heads off," she said, and so in that spirit of cross-chest understanding, we will refrain from doing it here. And we will delay no further in going to our house stylist for help:

"This may seem challenging, but I promise, it’s not. You’ve done exactly the right thing in identifying what you want to accentuate, and there are plenty of beautiful clothes that will look wonderful on someone who can show off her legs. So you don’t want to show off your chest, and you wouldn’t mind some coverage for your arms. The first option just has to be a kimono dress, which I’ve seen in absolutely every store window I’ve passed the last few days. There are styles available at all price points, and I recently saw two, both black and white, at H&M and Forever 21, not to mention Target. (I’ll get to that in a minute.) You’re probably already thinking to avoid tight, short arms, or, worse, cap sleeves, which do only the stick-figures among us much good. A kimono sleeve is drapey and beautiful, and in almost any material it’ll disguise without ever appearing to disguise—it’ll just look natural and gorgeous."

"Paul & Joe makes beautiful kimono dresses, like this one. This one is very pricey, and I can barely say how much I hate those shoes, but the basic tenets hold true: The sleeves loosely, prettily mask, and the skirt falls just to maybe below mid-thigh. The neckline, too, is quite chaste and should be comfortable. Paul & Joe’s sizing can be tricky, so you’d have to see if the bustline worked." Orjaune split-sleeve tunic, $435

"If you’re looking to break the bank, there’s this Paul & Joe kimono ($870) or this silk Viktor & Rolf kimono dress with unbelievable gold sequin detailing (about $800)."

"Much, much less expensive is Paul & Joe’s kimono for Target—at $29.99, that’s about $400 off from the first P&J. There are some things not to like here: The cotton is quite heavy—it might be too hot for comfort in Florida—and the length is probably too long to best accentuate your legs. But the kimono sleeves will still do their job, and with the right shoes and some really great, fun accessories, this could offer 99% of the bonuses of the above at a small fraction of the price." P&J for Target kimono dress, $29.99

[Best photo we could get, sadly]

"Forever 21 has a great black and white kimono dress that I saw in the store as recently as last week, but unfortunately it’s not available on their site. Instead, they have this chiffon kimono top ($17.80), which maybe you could dress up with a cute tank top and some sophisticated jewelry, but maybe not. H&M has something very similar but of course their website is utterly useless."

Casual Friday + Reader-Submitted Beauty Suggestion

08.18.2006

Fridays in August: not a lot going on. We keep calling people, and getting their voicemail. If it weren’t 65 degrees and raining outside, we’d go to the beach, but it is, so we’re going shopping. Or to Snakes on a Plane. Yes. The Snakes. Snakes! We feel like the entire country is telling the exact same joke today. Oh my God, Samuel L. Jackson was just on TV, and he says: "A lot of people don’t like flying. A lot of people don’t like snakes." This is going to be the best movie of all time.

So wrapping up, we’d like to behoove anyone interested in clicking on links—just to the left! right over there! so convenient! so easy!—to do so. We know. We never did it, either, until now, and we are a link-clicking monster. Let us just say that the clicking percentage is so small that if you click, we know it, and we love you. We love all past clickers as well. Ah, so we’re one step from standing on a street corner with a tin cup, but so be it.

We’re calling casual Friday today, but next week is exceptionally exciting, if for no other reason than—well, the end of summer is the terrifying monster in the closet we will not address, but there are some nice things, like for example our stylist is finally getting off her sandy ass to answer some questions. If you have a question appropriate for a stylist, pls send it here, and we beg, note when the event is, if an event is concerned, because otherwise we will certainly miss it. And as soon as we find the motherfucking cable connecting our camera to our computer, which we have already lost and replaced a half-dozen times, we will have our new contest, the winning item of which will be a copy of the fashion tell-all Fashion Babylon. We’re just reading it now, but so far so good.

As for today, our reader-suggested beauty recommendation:

I have tried MANY, MANY lipglosses. MAC, Stila, Lancome, L’oreal, Covergirl, Bonne Belle, etc. Nothing compares to Goldie’s Color Wash Lip Conditioner ($14).

It’s like an instant face lift. It’s like a date in a lip-gloss pot. It’s like heaven on earth. “It looks like you rubbed an ice cube on your lips” said my friend. And I don’t really know what that means, but it has to be good right? Not to mention it is incredibly smooth and light, heeds a fantastic smell, has an SPF 15, a great, natural color and AWESOME PACKAGING. Because you know it’s all about the packaging. Hopefully, when I’m done with this pot, I can wash it out and store my little trinkets in it … if I were to have any trinkets I needed to take around with me in a lip gloss pot.

Ha! And we do think this is a good place to say that every time we go into Bath & Body Works, which stocks this, we are amazed at how many not-sucking things they have. It used to be our, you know, primo destination for that apple shower gel, but seeing as how they have …

Murad’s Redness Therapy Correcting Moisturizer ($34), excellent for, as you would expect, de-red-ifying the nose area, and any others…

Lovely Molton Brown shower gels, for when we are not being quite free with our application of them at our yoga studio ($16)….

and our very favorite overpriced Pear Shampoo, well, it’s not enough to make us skip Sephora, but at least we will make another stop at the mall, after the pretzels and before the Mrs. Fields cookies.

Contrast Mary Janes

08.18.2006

Cream (or black) Mary Janes with contrast piping: $150 at Topshop (above), $17.99 at Payless (below). (Which, by the way, recently dropped off Star Jones at the Hall of Obscurity.) This should not be a difficult choice.

This much cuter picture, for some reason, is not available in the larger size:

Three for Fall: Plaid Blazers

08.17.2006

Plaid! Mad about it, etc. We’re also newly infatuated with blazers, seeing as how they are warm and lovely and everything, and plaid … it’s a little too much to look at, with our summer-trained eyes, but we’re thinking that come Labor Day, along with the seasonal affective disorder, we’ll be focusing on plaid. Plus blazers. Equals the obvious.

L.A.M.B. goes a little apeshit sometimes, which we suppose is your right when you are hot superstar, etc., but this isn’t so overboard that it scares us. And we love the super oversized collar. Those arms look excessively skinny, but otherwise, we’re totally pro. L.A.M.B. Sweetheart Blazer, $485

This costs about half as the L.A.M.B. Why? Only because of the lack of the hot superstar etc.? We cannot say. Collar slightly less oversized, plaid slightly less pleasing. But love the brass buttons. Anthropologie plaid jacket, $218

Finally: the silhouette here is less curvy \ less fun, and we’re not totally in love with the piping. It is a lot harder than we thought to find three, never mind five, plaid blazers that we did not think were totally heinous. So … here we are. File under: lukewarm. We don’t know whether to be appeased or further-ly put-out that it’s now half off. Penguin plaid blazer, $149.99, was $297

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