bunnyshop shopping fashion blog

Reader Mail! The AA Question, and Not the Kind with 12 Steps

Ok, we know we've been sporadic at best with our posting lately. It's like we're in the last weeks of high school, post finals and college acceptance letters. However, it's not that we don't care; it's quite the contrary. Your regularly scheduled writer is toiling away on our redesign, and we, well. We have a job that is rather demanding, and our 2-man team recently just dropped to 1. We are busy beyond all belief, and when we're not being paid to look at a computer, we generally refuse to.

We are doing the best we can, and we thank you for sticking with us. We will, however, always continue to take reader mail; let's face it. Readers get answers, we get off the hook in trying to think of what to talk about. Totally win-win.

Today's question!

   

Dear Little Bunny,
     I have a $35 credit to American Apparel, and I don't know what to get. I looked; most of it seems pretty         plain or basic. I know you talk about them a lot - what would you recommend?
    Thanks!
   
Now, we have made our love for the Leisure Dress very, very apparent. We won't mention it again at the risk of boring our regular readers (but we will note that we have 4, and wear them throughout the summer and winter). At $34, it fits the bill.

We've also talked about our love for the Deep V Neck shirts, but none of that is really exciting, or new. We're very intrigued by some of the recent arrivals, though - and we're going to hit up our local store to try them on. If someone gave us $35, here's what we would buy.

We almost can't quite believe how cute the Organic Baby Rib Cross-Back Sundress is. We know the cream scarf-belt is what's really lovely, but even without it, the dress has a great line to it. We think the top is perfect for the season, the skirt is full (or at least looks that way), and we genuinely like the color. Add some sandals, and you're all set.

OBRCB Sundress, $39 (ok, not quite $35 but it's like $35 and a latte)

Now, we post this with some hesitation. We've tried this bathing suit on, and we learned very quickly that anything but black was see through, and that if you're long-torsoed or tall SIZE UP. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, SIZE UP. We know several people who swear by this suit, Penthouse mention or no. We'll try it again; bathing suits are expensive. The only others we've seen in this price range are at Old Navy, and we can't handle any more stars and stripes bikinis.

Triangle Top One Piece, $38

We have no idea where we would wear this romper, but we know we'd want to wear it everywhere. We love the material, we love the color, we love the seemingly easy fit without being sloppy.

Tri Blend Romper, $28

-LB

We're Pretty Sure You Only See This At American Apparel

We mean, who knows, maybe we're being naive, but we're pretty sure it's been a long time since we went into the Gap and saw the bent-over female half of a mannequin on its toes, in leggings and athletic socks. Dirty, dirty! And yet we still are right now, at this wearing, our favorite American Apparel hoodie! Obviously we are not so morally compromised, but still.

Our (Early) Fall Look

Fall is basically our favorite time of year, save for the getting colder and darker bit. We love the new fashion, we love sweaters, we love love love boots. We love tights and skirts, and we love not feeling a bit naked every time we step out the door.

Unfortunately, for us, we have a hard time differentiating between Fall fashion (as in the clothes you start to see in, like, July) and ACTUAL Fall, when daytime temps are in the 60s. These are months and months apart; add to it an office that's barely above 60 degrees, and it's a bit of a mindfuck. What to do?

We have a solution, we think, and it comes from none other than American Apparel. Our love for them is completely documented and unabashed. Our only complaint is that often things there are a bit too short, or tight, or street corner appropriate - but all of this is combated by sizing up. It was a hard thing for us to accept, but we tried this last week and actually said HUH really loudly in the dressing room.

It's this stupidly simple, but seriously cute and versatile, polo dress from American Apparel. On the site, all of the models looks like they're barely breathing, so we recommend sizing up (unless you are teeny and/or like the very fitted look). We bought ours in Asphalt, and as we get more comfortable in it, we plan to branch out into bright colors.

We love that we can wear it with tights, no tights, stirrup tights, heels, flats, flat boots, legwarmers, sweaters, no sweaters, scarves. Honestly the options are seriously endless - and at $34 a pop, you  can have a few in your arsenal.

Fine Jersey Leisure Dress, $34

We're going to debut our dress tomorrow with black shiny stirrup tights (which aren't so shiny, which is nice) and a pair of black flats. Our office has no dress code, but the pinnacle of style tends to come from a company with the initials O.N.

Shiny Stirrup Tights, $14

-LB

We Just Saw Someone Wearing This On The Street With A Blazer and Belt

And it looked awesome. Baffling. But we want! AA romper, $28

American Apparel Wins Our Microfinancing Campaign Contest!

As the product of immigrant(s, depending on how far you want to go back), we are very tuned in to this issue. (Er, especially when American Apparel is blogging about it.) Our American heart breaks a bit when we see countries of other nations waved at pro-immigration rallies in San Francisco, but—er, not so much "but" as a semi-colon—were moved by this:

"Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience."

We love that photo so much we had to post it four times. (It is also quite small.)

This is also our way of saying that American Apparel won the giant microfinancing campaign contest! As soon as the money clears through the system (PayPal users, you'll know what we mean here), we'll be back to announce the recipient of our micro-ly financed loan—made on behalf of the Bunnyshop community. Hurrah to every single person who clicked.

Previously:
Our Amazing Microfinancing Success!
The Bunnyshop Microfinancing Campaign, Continued

American Apparel Discount Code!

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

We Want to Know, Part 2

So, we know we've been talking a lot about this birthday we have coming up. We are going to start the celebration this weekend in our favorite city with a brunch with Dear Friend and then a shopping extravaganza with Close One. We, sigh, are not comfortable in many of our jeans anymore (we're working on fixing that), so we've been relying heavily on jeans from Forever 21 and leggings. We save the jeans for the work week because we can't wear leggings to our office (we can already hear the 'why is she wearing stretch pants' comments), so when the weekend comes, we live in leggings.

However. Our Saturday will be spent walking outside. The leggings we normally wear are not quite thick enough for this (neither are the jeans we have, really). So! We want to know. Does anyone have the Winter Leggings from American Apparel? Are they actually warm? Or should we save our $40? We have to admit, we are completely entranced by the idea of leggings that are warm enough to not feel like we are half naked.

As always, we thank our readers for offering up advice we wouldn't get anywhere else!

Winter Leggings, $38

-LB

Sale Items of the Day: Tank Tops and Rompers

American Apparel on sale! We were thinking the other day about how we have moral qualms about both Abercrombie and AA, but how Abercrombie have always seemed to us like a bunch of racist twats, while the AA thing just very pervy and dirty, but how apparently we can live with the latter and not the former. These are online-only prices, by the way.

Anyway: tank tops on sale! Stock up, we're thinking. We can never have too many tank tops. Tank top (unisex, so order a size down), was $15, now $10

And this, for the record, is the sort of outfit our stylist last year suggested wearing to a company picnic. We miss her so. Velour romper, was $38, now $19

Dilemmas, Dilemmas: Abercrombie or AA?

We are still obsessed with our new search box. Today we asked ourselves the question, after asking ourselves
where we had put the waffles and why our apartment is still such a mess: With which brand do we have more serious moral aggravations: American Apparel or Abercrombie & Fitch? They're both peddling sex (and we finally got to write "peddling sex"! Is a classic cliche we now embrace). It's only, like, AA is peddling it to art school students, and A&F is peddling it to Spring Breakers. Given our academic allegiances, we need to go with the former, but queasily. What we really want is a clothing brand that doesn't advertise at all, like that No-Ad sunscreen. All we know is we saw a yogurt ad on TV yesterday that featured not one but two models in bikinis, and it's like: Can we not immediately move somewhere there is neither TV, nor models? We will, however, keep the yogurt.

Today's searches!

American Apparel
Abercrombie & Fitch

By the way, can we just say we love this AA ad, because everyone in it seems at least almost-fully dressed? Talk about shocking. What we really think we might just go buy right now are those mustard tights, $14

One More American Apparel Related Item

We just saw this on Agency Spy, which is about to become our favorite blog for all things advertising-y. The graffiti reads: "Gee, I wonder why women get raped."

We're sufficiently convinced that we're not linking to any of their stuff today, even if we are still, very conflictedly, really enjoying our new t-shirt. Argh.