Sales! They are all we cling to as we address the end of the summer, and what is to come. (Presumably, autumn.) Last chance, in our opinion, for a whole raft of sales, before we truly address ourselves to fall shopping. (We’re in complete denial about the changing season.) But: coming up: Fashion Week! Fashion Week parties! Thanking God we are not working a Fashion Week RSVP line this season! Also: Sweaters! Tights! Shoes that do not involve flipping or flopping!

As the saying goes, it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere, which we liberally translate to mean, it’s always summer somewhere. The dream lives on.

Our top favorite sale: Net-a-porter and this fall-appropriate 12th St by Cynthia Vincent dress, was $270, now $162

2. From the awesome Candy Store, the Stephanie blouse from Soni & Cindy, was $192, now $158

3. From Bird, this silk Alexander Wang dress, was $635, now $319

4. Fred Flare and the artist rose tote bag, was $20, now $14.99

5. Topshop and Kate Moss skinny jeans (more wearable than they look), were $90, now $30

6. Anthropologie and the Shadow & Light shift dress, was $188, now $99.95

7. Basic Boutique and the Madison Marcus pleat dress, was $242, now $72.60

It’s the last day for Shopbop’s (pre-)fall sale with discount BOPFORFALL with that whole bit of cascading discounts.

That is just our PSA announcement for the day. Our real question is this one—our lovely reader E. is going to LA!

Do you have any good addies for me? Are there places I must have been or my trip was useless (:-p). I’m also a big fan of Ralph Lauren jeans trousers. I do not like the brand but damn these pants laaaaast. I bought 2 pairs 5 years ago and they still look amazing… A pair of Levi’s lasts me tops a year. So I was hoping for some tips on where to get those/ maybe excellent alternatives/… .

We will admit: We know LA much less well—a lot less well? we have no idea—than SF or NYC. SF, we’d say Candy Store, Paper Source—er, and other stores that are not about stationary supplies. But LA? We come up with Fred Segal, and that’s that. (And we hate Fred Segal.) We know there are readers with better ideas than that one, so fill us in! And we’ll supply another small prize—your choice of any of the previous three! (We’d vote for the Nivea deodorant because it is fucking unbelievable. Strong language for a deodorant, but there were are.)

Our non-fashion-y photo above is, we believe, the Disney Concert Hall. Help a sister out!

We always hate these ads with those little instructional quotes: “The new bell leg is the jean silhouette of the season. Wear it long, so that your hem skims the floor.” We saw this as former Gap Kids employees—the Gap basically taught us how to dress, as unbelievably worrisome as that sounds—but we do not believe the new bell leg is the jean silhouette of the season, and we do not appreciate the fib-telling.

Today’s small contest:

We love these small wipes! V. convenient. Just tell us your jean silhouette for fall, or your new favorite denim brand. Winner takes the wipes! And an array of British chocolates.

And yesterday’s winner: Jess! Be sending the delivery address!

Barf, Dan. Barf.

We just do not and will not understand the whole concept of invite-only sample sales. Why would any company (like this one above) want to tell us that we’re on a waiting list? What about that makes them think we care that much? We just. Do. Not. Get it.

We just sent three emails that had out-of-office returns. Either everyone in the world is on vacation, or we work for a bunch of slackers. Anyway! Moving on. It’s the week of the small giveaways: little things we (a) are bringing home from the UK and (b) can afford to buy. (This is a small subset.) Today’s small prize: Boots Botanics Cleansing Body Scrub. Hey, Elle loved it. So there we are.

Yesterday’s winner: Claudia! Who suggested Flight of the Conchords. In their honor, we share this video:

Can we say, our best money-saving tip ever is: Our cell phone bill a couple months ago was so staggering we hesitate to share it here (the first figure was a 5!) so we put our account on hold, and we’ve spent August using Skype and pay phones. We know, it’s like 1988. And 2010. Skype has a plan where all outgoing calls in the US are $2.50 a month. All we know is that our phone bill has dropped about $522.50 a month. Eventually we’re going to have to reconcile with T-Mobile, but we’re holding off on it.
Which brings us to: What is your best tip (if any) for painlessly (as possible) saving cash but still doing fun stuff? Winner takes the body scrub!

We’re convinced 90% of the people we work for are on vacation this week, so we’re having a few tiny contests. First! We announce the winner of our Jocasi competition from like nine years ago! It’s … Elisabeth D.! There is no great surprise in this, as her question had the most votes \ comments, but still, at least we have finally made it official.

Moving on: today we will give away one amazingly lovely bottle of Nivea deodorant. We love this so much, we swear, we don’t even need perfume when we’re in London because it’s so nice. It’s the last week of summer! We just can’t pull it together any more than this.

Comment your answer below and we’ll pick a winner at random tonight. Our question for the moment: What TV show’s return are you most looking forward to? Our answer is: Battlestar Galactica! Or maybe—actually, two of them are on right now, Mad Men and The Closer, and Project Runway, even if we are not too excited about this season’s contestants. Oh! The Shield! The Shield is going to be amazing.

Anyway—we thank Jocasi for the supply of their amazing bag, and we look forward to giving away one of our favorite small treats. This is still our favorite—but we can’t wait til their new fall bags come out. Jocasi Montana bag, was about $240, now about $165

Today, our Kindest Friend has her last day at a job she’s been at since, quite possibly, the beginning of time. It’s been a bit of a stressful time for her – loads of thinking and overthinking, committing and wavering, and the nagging questioning bit that we ALL go through that whispers, ‘Have we fucked this up?’

We’ve told Kindest Friend that the steps she’s making are hard, but are key. It’s always good to move on and grow, and leave behind unsatisfactory situations. When we left where Kindest Friend is leaving, someone told us that we would never be able to flourish in the same, small garden (or something). We didn’t entirely understand (we still don’t, entirely – the person who told us that was quite possibly high at the time), but we think the point is:

Moving on is sometimes terrifying and awful, but the important things (like friends, family, pets) will be with you no matter wherever you go. We can say this with absolute certainty as we don’t entirely know what country one of our family members is in and we are still just as close.

We would like to raise our glass (er, Diet Coke bottle) to Kindest Friend, thank her for being a friend (down the road and back again, etc) – and to wish her luck wherever she may go. And to reassure her that wherever she may go, she’ll do well. Hurrah to Kindest Friend!

And that we’re totally getting her the NFT guide to her next city of choice. We bought one for our city and it’s actually quite helpful and definitely not lame.

NFT guides, $17.05

And we’d like to leave her with our favorite song from our favorite musical that goes something like this:

There’s a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too
And up in the nursery an absurd little bird
Is popping out to say cuckoo

Cuckoo, cuckoo

Regretfully they tell us
But firmly they compel us
To say goodbye . . .

Cuckoo!

. . . to you

-LB

Is anyone else sort of bored with the contestants this year? Is this the least productive time of year? Everyone we work for is on vacation.

Anyway: We are left with Kenley’s massive hairpieces. She is a one-women, pro-hairpiece force, no?

This is from the preview for next week’s episode. There is some amazing alignment going on here.

And we actually think this simple one is the cutest. We’re all for signature pieces. But.