Couture Clash

Oh, we wish we'd stop punning. But in the big-news-especially-if-you're-feeling-the-whole-nautical-thing category: Jean Paul Gaultier's mini-line for La Redoute. They're v. French. They don't mind the nautical stripes. They seem to embrace them. Weird, we know, but Jean Paul Gaultier for under fifty bucks? We're into it. It's like Lagerfeld for H&M without the shrieking magazine staffers wielding shivs beneath their skim lattes.

And love, love, love these stiletto mules. $54.99. You know the porn nurse on the cover of that Blink-182 album? These are her shoes.

What the hell is La Redoute? They're part of Pinault Printemps Redoute, which also owns Gucci, YSL, Balenciaga, and Stella McCartney. And they're really French, not faux French like Au Bon Pain, which in the midst of that whole freedom fries madness proclaimed their native-born status in explanatory Xeroxes taped to the windows. Thus endeth our researching efforts for the day.