Of course now we can't find it, but the Times just named this headband the accessory of the summer. And $4.50! We are so sad we've already lost ours. At that price, however, replacements are not so annoying.
American Apparel headband, $4.50
These amazing how-tos from Hermes were suggested by Cat—we meant to show them here and promptly forgot, which was a huge mistake, because they are so adorable. No? We still can't get a head scarf to stay on, but at least we feel like we can try.
Find part one here and part two here.
In today's Reader Mail:
Dear Bunnyshop,
This is ridiculously basic, but I am so bewildered: I keep seeing girls around me who have the ability to tie a scarf in such a way that it stays on their heads. I cannot do this! I so want to do the head-scarf summer thing. Please help!
Love,
T.
Argh! We have absolutely, positively, no idea. None at all. But we bet someone out there does. Bobby pins? Hairspray? Tape? We shrug. With aggravation. Teach us!
Above: the dandelion scarf from the super-fab designer Virginia Johnson, $98
We are so torn by J. Brand's new organic cotton mini-line! ("Mini" as in two choices.) Why are they not skinny? Why? We don't, we just don't get it. We're shaking our head, and moving on. Luckily, we're totally into this idea of wide(ish)-legged jeans at the moment, but we don't know why you don't make your big eco move with your brand-signature style.
We love this dress. We wish it were a couple inches shorter, but otherwise, we're in organic-cotton love. Linda Loudermilk wrap dress, $280
(Not organic cotton, but in hemp:) Like the dress above, from Beklina, one of our new favorite sites. Hand-printed scarves, $45
C&C California have a load of organic-cotton tops (as we would suspect they might), of which this is our favorite. C&C California organic cotton dress, $110
This tote bag design is a little bit more ... hippy than we tend to go, but lately we've been watching a lot of Jesus Christ Superstar so maybe it's all good. And if we had a nickel for every time we've bee called a "free spirit," we'd be writing this from our mansion-house. Organic cotton tote, $29
In today's Reader Mail:
Dear Bunny,
I see that you were recently in Paris - le sigh! I leave for Paris this weekend; it's my first time there. Since you manage to be sassy and fashion-y while being totally reasonable, I want to know: what are the must-pack items for gallery hopping, landmark visiting, marathon meals and general wandering about?
Lots of love,
C
Toronto
Oh, we just love the travel-y questions! First, we must say, our top top top recommendation for Paris will always be: Caves Saint-Gilles, a tapas restaurant in the Marais (our favorite neighborhood, btw.) It is amazing. It is so great we spent a birthday there, and our friend K. spoke Spanish to all the waiters, and it was amazing. We don't even mind using that word twice, it was that great.
We spent our time in Paris on the border of the 4th and the 11th, and we prefer this part of the city to any other. Maybe it's not the Louvre, but we love love love the Promenade Plantee, an elevated park tres pres de la Bastille—it's the prettiest thing in Paris, especially at this time of year. We were there a week and a half ago, and it was fucking snowing. But we've been there this time of year in years previous, and it's been perfect.
If you have any interest in contemporary art, we beg you not to miss the Sophie Calle show at the National Library.
Shopping wise, you have to hit Colette, Spree, and basically everywhere in the Marais—we are paper freaks so we adore Papier Plus, also in the Marais.
Anyway, this is clearly supposed to be about clothing. Three things hit us on this most recent trip:
1: We saw a million girls in swing jackets. Anthro swing set jacket, $118
2: High-waisted, wide-leg jeans. We didn't think anyone actually wore these, but we saw them all over the place and were totally jealous. 18th Amendment Colbert jeans, $218
3: Scarves. We could practice for a thousand million years and we will never be able to wrap a scarf like a French woman can. Topshop scarf, $30
In today's Reader Mail!
Dear BS:
I've been thinking of making an investment in a good watch for some time now. I've searched to the corners of the Internet, but cannot find "the one" anywhere! Looking for something substantial with a leather band. Something fun and colorful; yet grown up. Any advice on where to look? Is a watch an obsolete investment piece anyway?
A. in Austin
So this took like nine million years longer than these usually take. We don't know anything about watches. This is true. We lose them, so we stopped buying them. Plus, we have a cell phone. We're wondering if cell phones were as bad for the watch industry as Netflix was for video stores. That said, we actually think not: They seem very responsible and go-getter-y. Two qualities we could use a bit more of.
This watch above is as close as we could find to that requested. Burberry Heritage Collection watch, $419.99
This reminds us a lot of the one above, but, like, not $400. Wenger Alpenrose, $59.95
We believe Lil Bunny recommended this watch a few weeks ago. We agree. Swiss Army Officer's watch, was $295, now $99.97
Our taste runs very much to the men's Swatch. This is the Wheeling, $155
We like the face of this one more than the band. Marc by Marc Jacobs round face watch, $250
Okay, so obviously we couldn't pass this up: courtesy of B.:
American Apparel Coupon Code:
TEENVOGUE08
Discount: 15% off expires March 31, 2008
Hurrah! We don't know why we're always so suspicious of discount codes, but we just tried this one (suspiciously), and it worked! Double hurrah! For some reason, every time we go away, we end up spending about $80 on things at American Apparel we can "wear on the plane." We are sure we are going to do this before we go to Miami this weekend. We are hoping we plan just the tiniest bit in advance to take advantage of this lovely discount code. In any case, here's what we'd buy.
We have been very happy with our AA pantyhose, and now it's 15% off. Opaque pantyhose, $14
Last night we dreamt we were on a roller derby team, and we were wearing shorts quite like this. Satin charmeuse roller shorts, $22
And this was our roller derby top. Satin charmeuse night jacket, $45
We love this dress even though it's not particularly flattering. Tri-blend pocket dress, $36
And we really just want a normal, stretchy tank top. This will do nicely. Cotton-Spandex camisole, $16
Saw this on the Sartorialist (so brilliant!) and then on the Fashion Spot. When we were in Utah our Nylon editor noticed that we wear our contacts morning ’til night, and we had to tell this whole story about how we left our glasses in China, etc etc, which didn't even matter because we'd bent the fuck out of them. These and all the other cute classes out there are somehow encouraging us to go back to the glasses shop, once all this Fashion Week madness is over. So many times when glasses are better! On airplanes, late at night ... okay, those are our best two. But still.
Okay, so honestly, how could we not love a site with photography like this?
Also, the warm things. Of the many lovely warm things—and there are many!—this is our favorite. The Carmen, $40
In today's Reader Mail:
Dear BS:
So I know this has nothing to do with shopping, but I really want to know what everyone's is. Will you tell? And then, hmm, do you have any fashion resolutions too?
Love,
C.
Oh, as we were saying: We freaking love the resolutions. Last year our resolution(s) was to go to Australia, Stornoway, Croatia and Zanzibar. Sadly, we did not get to any of those places. We did not even get particularly close. Ooh, can't be too sad about that, we guess. Anyway, our resolutions include, and we say "include" because we have about 500, to go to those places, and to buy a piece of furniture that would allow us to be in our apartment and also sit somewhere that is not (a) the floor, (b) an egg crate, or (c) our bed. We also want to do a lot of yoga, and learn to cook something that is not a member of the pasta family.
Fashion-wise, we need to supplement our wardrobe with items of clothing made of fabric other than denim. We need to accessorize more. We were so annoyed that this necklace above cost $32, but we are realizing now that it makes $5 t-shirts look reasonably nice. And we need to stop buying broken clothing. We will admit here, this once, that this one dress we bought, under extreme duress—we actually bought it thinking it went one way, and realized, as we were going out the door, that we had been wearing it backwards. And that we hated wearing it the right way. And that a button was missing. Broken clothing. Aggravating. 2008. We hope for better!
Above: hammered necklace, now $16
Because we still have a few more of our lovely Madewell t-shirts here, we will give away two more, at random, from the commentators below, if you'll be so nice as to share your resolutions—whether fashion oriented or otherwise.
This is an adorable Madewell scarf. Now: the resolutions! Winners announced promptly. (For a change.)
We have the most boring gray winter coat and it just absolutely demands a felt rosette. Don't rosettes make you think of that poor PR girl Jeffrey Sebelia kept being so horrible to? These are quite big, by the way—maybe nine inches high. We're guessing, and we have no head for measurements, but we're trying.
Gewoon rosette, about $25
Ahhhhhhdorable, is what we're thinking. We are definitely of the position that a clever $32 necklace is really and truly every bit as good as a $1000 not-clever necklace. We are just absolutely, positively convinced of this.
Oddball Paul the Pony necklace, $32
We have shown these before and we could hardly love them anymore than we already do.
Hugging polar bear wallet, $30
And we file this under things we absolutely do not need but for $6 really don't have to get too anxious about it.
Small wooden pin, $6
In today's Reader Mail:
Hi BS,
I am a 20-something creative career girl in love with over the knee socks (I claim it comes from too much Gossip Girl viewing). Is there a work-appropriate way to wear OTK's without look too school-girly? My office work attire is creative/pretty much anything goes, but I don't want to look too young or un-professional.
Thanks!
SarahOh, the knee sock. We remember the last time we wore knee socks, and the way our friend B. told us not to. To this day, we're not entirely sure why, but the fact that he did put us off them forever. We remember that same night our friend K. told us he liked them—
Okay. So the funny thing is that while we were typing this, our friend B. called, and we finally asked him, after six years, if he told us to stop wearing knee socks because they made our knees look fat, which has long been our assumption. He just said we were being stupid, and in fact, rather than fat, they made us look "slutty." That, for some reason, doesn't bother us one bit.
This is all sort of morally cloudy for us. In any case, as far as work appropriate goes, we are the last people on the fucking planet to ask, as we've gone on record as backing rompers as suitable office party wear. Last week we had to attend an exceptionally business-y business function, which meant buying a dress we could not afford, and we were so depressed about buying a dress for this function, which means buying a dress we would never have picked out independently, that we started crying in Topshop and sent off all these angry texts about how we hate wearing pants, which in that case was code for any sort of clothing one would wear to a business function rather than, say, a party which encouraged the wearing of things with sequins.
Anyway: We are pro, pro, pro OTK knee socks. We much prefer them in the image above, especially next to the shorts and colored tights. (We love colored tights, and we love shorts, but somehow not together.) But as for work appropriate: We leave that to everyone else? We're thinking it obviously depends on the work vibe at your office, and we can say with confidence that we would wear them tomorrow if we were still working at the fashion magazine we used to work at, because everyone there just wore what they felt like, and because no one seemed to mind too much if they got fired, which basically no one ever did. But a job you like? We leave it to everyone else to comment. We're totally interested in the answer, by the way.
Our favorite OTKs:
Topshop over-knee socks, about $14
And then the super-luxe ones. We've been looking, ineffectually, for these at a US online boutique, but we're still at it:
Wolford overknees, $22
In today's Bunnyshop Hearts:
Dear BS:
I know you think American Apparel is totally pervy, and it is, but aren't these eyeglasses cool? I love them.
XO,
G. WE do, in fact, think AA is totally pervy. We do, however, wear much of their clothing, so so much for putting our money where are morals are. (This was amply demonstrated last week, when we tried to make our friend K. shop at Walmart, where she steadfastly refused to do.) Anyway: We like these alright. But just alright. We sort of prefer their vintage sunglasses collection. They are a bit hipster-ish to us. Here is another, more hipster-ish view:
She looks quite happy, but we don't quite trust them. Above: AA's unisex Vue eyeglasses, $50
We are pro-unisex frames, though. When we get our glasses replaced, after seven years of abusing our old pair, we are getting these, which are amazingly Daniel Liebeskind-esque, and we could not be more excited about them. Miracle of miracles, they were also one of the cheapest frames the store carries. Specsavers plastic frames, about $80
We cannot describe what moved us to take this photo at Old Navy yesteday. First, they have great dog accessories. How random is that? Dog accessories. At a clothing store. It just doesn't happen all the time. And! Fair Isle-y scarves. This is not reinventing the wheel. It is not Alexander McQueen. But sometimes you just need a scarf.
Fair Isle scarves, $16.50
They are also having metallic clutches (for some reason, invisible online) that remind us a lot of one we got from Marc Jacobs last year, but actually for about the same price, which is weird. Did we mention we left our MJ one in a Mongolian cab, with our passport in it, and then when our unbelievably dashing friend met us, with it, and the cab driver, we were all hugging the cabbie (as we would, without hesitation, any NYC cabbie), he, in this case, was all, Why are you hugging me? But in Mongolian. You know (we hope) what we mean.
We recently broke our favorite watch. It wasn't so much that we were in love with it - just that we had it for approximately a hundred years. It would always faithfully tell time, it never stopped, it held up to our abuse. Even when we would go shopping for a new one, or see nice ones in magazines, we just couldn't do it.
Until one fateful morning. We were doing wind sprints (horrid things that they are) and POP. CLUNK. It was not Batman, or a Roy Lichtenstein painting come to life. It was our beloved watch, tumbling to the ground, band broken. We picked it up and continued running. It made this clunk-clunk-clunk sound while it hid in our kangaroo pocket. We were so sad that not only was it 7am and we were sweaty, but that our watch had finally bit it.
So! Never one to shy away from a reason to spend money, we spent the next day trying to find a watch. We once worked in a store that sold only watches, so we know a bit more than we'd like to admit. We wear a watch every day, and we don't believe in changing out our watches to match our outfits. We have one friend who does this, but he also matches his underwear to his socks to his shirt. We find it all a bit weird. So for us, a watch has to be simple, understated, relatively classic, and functional! It is probably the most conservative thing we wear, and we understand that.
Ok, honestly, we just got incredibly sidetracked because the ball-bouncer on the other side of the cubby just had to DISCUSS how to spell Oregon. Our brain just blew up.
Anyway. Simplicity. Function. Two key things in a watch. That's why we were so, so, so excited when we found the Swiss Army Officer's Watch discounted on Amazon. It's normally $295, and never goes on sale. We were REALLY hesitant to buy it at such a cheap price, but once we realized it's discontinued, we felt better about it. This is pretty much the watch we've always drooled over but could never justify buying.
We don't want to say 'deal of a lifetime' because really, it's a watch. But if you need one - and you like this - I've never seen it at this price before and probably won't again.
-LB
We are truly indebted to the wonderful Canadians who bailed us out of a horribly Canadian-free hole. (Long story.) And so: Canada week! We are only hitting a few highlights of the vast and wooly nation, but we open with this—well, possibly very fucked up story, from Toronto's Wildhagen. (A full recount is here.) We are thinking \ hoping they will not mind us reprinting their message here, and the photographic evidence:
Wildhagen introduced the Krys Cap for fall 2006. We sold over 150 in Canada and a few dozen in New York through Barney's department store. The Gap introduced the Jockey Cap with wool detail for fall 2007. The Gap's design and product development team located in New York City.The Gap's Jockey Cap is IDENTICAL in every respect to our Krys Cap. We are not flattered. We are a small business with a child and rent. Wildhagen will request fair compensation for our design.
E-mail them for more hat information, or just stop in their shop: 575 Queen St. West 2nd fl, Toronto.
In today's Reader Mailbag:
Dear BS:
Enough with the spring stuff. What about fall 07? I have begun to see people wearing loads of the bright-blue tights, like from the Balenciaga show. I wanted to see what you thought of these. Also, my legs aren't exactly model-skinny, and I feel like this is the sort of thing that the women's magazines would be like, "Don't wear these if you weigh like over 90 pounds." I definitely weigh more than 90 pounds. Can I wear these? Please don't tell me no!
Love,
JK
Our dear JK, if we listened to everything women's magazines had to say, we would be sitting on the floor of our kitchen, crying. There are some we love, some we like, and some we think should be burned immediately, though not in that nasty book-burning way. Our position is this: We have, believe us, been there, and been scared out of wearing something we were really excited about because someone—whether it was a magazine or just some random Mean Girl—scared us out of it. And then, inevitably, we will see someone wearing the item in question, and maybe that person got the same bad advice we did but she saw it for what it was (bad advice), ignored it, and wore whatever she wanted to. And ohhh, we burned with jealousy, because she just clearly did not care what anybody thought, and was totally fearless, and looked amazing. So! Wear the blue tights! We will even link to some:
Solid colored tights, only $8! (And they have practically every color on the planet there, so we highly recommend it.)
Wear them. We demand it! Unless you don't want to. Then, it's okay.
Hats. We generally hate them. However, when you have bangs, and no blow dryer, they may prove to be shockingly useful. We actualy sort of like this one. Despite the hat-phobic-ness.
J. Crew straw hat, $39.50
Yay! It's Marc Jacobs bazaar time again. We came home with: MJ London tote bag, MJ gold compact, and MJ silver-y wristlet, which we're thinking is almost practically a neutral color. All for around $25! "It's not like Marc's slaving away antagonizing over this line," the cashier guy said. To which we were all, "No shit! Really! You don't say!" We don't mind, though, because we think it's all pretty adorable, and it was all sold alongside t-shirts benefiting the Martin Luther King Center. Can't complain super-much about that.
Get to the store! Is what we're saying. Otherwise, all these items are on eBay, aggravatingly for about twice the retail price:
London tote plus gold compact: current bid, $5.51, ends May 30
MJ compact, current bid $8.95, ends May 31
And P.S.: We were all excited because these shoes were 40% off in the store. We can't link there, unfortuately, but the closest we could get online were these from Shopbop. We love these. MXMJ peep toe shoes, were $325, now $227.50
The buttons on that jacket on the left just look mis-buttoned to us. No? But: take-away lesson from Moschino Cheap + Chic: terrifying bright tights are here to torment us at least through next season.
It pretty much took us 10 minutes to correctly spell "Provocateur." We were looking for the Agent of, thanks to Sadie Frost telling Harper's Bazaar UK that various AP (much better, that) bras were part of her daily wardrobe. And since we only have three at the moment, not including about two dozen [swimming] bikini tops, it was time to get some new underwear.
We are still considering the underwear. But we are terrified by this.
Most terrifying: It's sold out!
There are so many things in need of a redesign. The San Francisco public transit system, which, we are so delighted to say, features yet another bus driver who doesn't let her job get in the way of keeping up her many, many personal relationships by cell phone, while she is driving. Awesome! Or, housing for the poor. Needs a redesign. Toothpaste. Toothpaste, we were thinking, was fine as it was. And in any case we are always so mystified by the three million slightly different varieties of Colgate, all of which seem to feature the words "Whitening," "Freshening," and "Advanced" but in different order. Okay, so that could be cleaned up. But we cannot express our frustration when we returned home yesterday, so happy because we'd remembered to actually buy the toothpaste, to then discover it was "Paradise" flavored. Argh. All we ask from our toothpaste is something dentally successful, and maybe minty. That is all. We do not need a guava-flavored toothpaste. Tss.
We will hopefully counteract all that ranting by just briefly mentioning our new mini-obsession with markegård: field neck wraps. Random. Weird looking. Slightly alluring. It is so hard to find non-ass-y looking scarves. Stars and Infinite Darkness is a good source. Neck wrap, was $170, now $119
It is time to consider the bedazzling of the hairband. No? All Sonia Rykiel, above. We feel like the monochromatic-ness, especially when applied to the exuberant headbands, is definitely a good thing. These could go horribly wrong.
It reminds us of our rabbit from Pop. It is the season of the excessive headwear!
We love it when online boutiques have mini little lookbooks going on. Sort of like magazines, without buying magazines. Plus: easier to immediately purchase. It's almost like cheating. We do truly enjoy. Not very imaginative, but there it is.
We were thinking this because Shopbop's spring preview one came out today. We love the top of this dress, hate the bottom. We are mostly feeling smart because we totally knew they were about to fill out their "Bright Idea" section and now they are. Catherine Malandrino dress, but not quite available yet.
The winter lookbook is slightly more useful at this point. This picture made us buy those leggings, while the normal page would not have. Clearly the message here is that there are certain things you will like or not depending on how your bedroom is lit. Primp seagull leggings, $71
Pink Mascara as a lookbook, but it's more like a styling exercise and less in fun, themed sections. We enjoy things slightly more when they are appropriately dumbed down for us. Like Cheetohs. Is it wrong that we really like this dress? T-Bags mini-dress, $172
[We just cannot picture the rainbow tunic]
Also: Intermix has sort of a fun one with "First Resort: St Barths." Hate the Mystique diamonte thongs ($185), sort of sort of sort of (don't think less of us) enjoy the Lotus of London rainbow tunic ($368), sort of in that way you thought Jan would make out with Michael in Jamaica, but not own up to the relationship in Scranton. We basically lost everyone there who does not watch The Office. We would not wear it in this country. It sort of makes us laugh. Anyway. And on second thought, we might wear it with those thongs.
Standard Style doesn't have a lookbook but they do have a "Paparazzi" section. Okay or not, depending on your position on paparazzi. Occasionally possibly helpful but seems a little random. We just don't like the Us Weekly moral scuzz getting us dirty when we're shopping. As Angelina wears: J Brand 14" cigarette leg jeans, were $158, now $126.40
