bunnyshop shopping fashion blog

Ork Posters: Bunnyshop Hearts

Of all the billions of things we want to buy online, there are very, very, very few we see and then purchase within seconds—"seconds" as defined as the amount of time it took us to find our credit card. This is one! How could love this more? Actually, we can answer that: We'd love it more if the designer was like, 'fuck you, other cities,' etc., but apparently there are versions for San Francisco, Chicago, and others. Still. We're working on being less partisan.

This gets the five-star Bunnyshop recommendation! Ork Posters Brooklyn poster, $22

Cool Wedding Invitations: Apparently, They Exist

Say it was literally your job to find trendy wedding invitations. (This is, as it happens, a true story.) And you looked and you looked, and there was plenty of the regular letterpress stuff (which, don't get us wrong, we totally love), but then you found Oslo Press, and their printed on wood veneer wedding invitations. This one is "printed" (engraved?) on maple. Something new! We love it.

Prices are all on request.

Fred Flare's Next Big Thing and Good On Paper

We are so entering Fred Flare's Next Big Thing contest—the ultra-exciting design contest formerly entered by Jay McCarroll and Amy Sedaris.

From their site:

What is THE NEXT BIG THING?
The NEXT BIG THING is an annual design competition at fredflare.com where we invite our customers to present their creations for possible sale on our website. This year we’re selecting 27 of our favorite items to be featured in an exclusive online boutique that will also include designer bios.

Entries are due May 2. We are just putting the word out. But we will add here that one of the past winners is one of our super favorite designers: Lisa Wong of Good on Paper.

There are loads of things to buy \ love but this is, at the moment, our fave. Bunny notecards, $16 for six

Today's Contest Semi-Finalist Entry

Today's entry to the contest: Winner takes home some lovely Embittermints, an excellent Madewell t-shirt, and some of our favorite ManGlaze nail polish. Everybody votes on Friday.

From A.:

1. I am addicted to the new Doctor Who tv show (being shown on BBC America and some PBS stations). The old show was campy and cheesy and I never watched it but this one is super well-written and hilarious in my favorite British way. Also, the Doctor is sexxay. Watch it and you'll see.

2. SO hard to pick a favorite book, right now I am re-reading the Lord of The Rings series and wallowing in how good it is. So I'm a sucker for well-written British stuff. Sue me.

3. I know Eleanor Grosch is old news now that she's designing for Keds and Urban Outfitters but I fell in love with her screenprints on her website. And now she has t-shirts too! I want about six of these posters as soon as I find room (and $$) for all of them.

Eleanor Grosch's Black Swan poster, $30

Independent Designer of the Day: Morris & Essex

We also love that these are made in the artist's studio in Buenos Aires. We are sooooo going to Buenos Aires, and as soon as possible.

Morris & Essex set of nine silkscreened cards, $28

BS Hearts: Diana Fayt

Calendars! So useful. At least for those first two weeks in January. At which point we're all, "Whatev" and go back to writing shit down on pieces of paper we lose immediately. Until then, though! Hope springs eternal, along with the (soon-to-be-shortlived) sense that anything is possibly, including us remaining faithful to one calendar for twelve months. It won't happen, but we can dream.

This is our favorite of everything we've seen. Diana Fayt calendar, $30

Sentiments Best Expressed in Boxed Card Form

Oooh, we always forget to say thank you. 'Please,' too, while we're at it, but we're thinking about thank you today. (Amazingly, this is not a post left over from pre-Thanksgiving that we forgot to put up.)

First, we want to say: holiday gift cards purchased in boxes. So much easier than making them ourselves. (Even though that it is exactly what we're going to do. Hopefully, we will improve on our tally from last year, which topped out at three.) Usually we look to our ever-favorites Snow & Graham, but today we're punishing them for not having finished their website by now. (We wait. And we wait.) So in honor of our last week in San Francisco, at least for a while, we head instead to Paper Source. Mmm, maybe they are not quite as cute as the ones we will make (er, so we say, anyway), but they are quite cute. Actually, we'd like them a lot better without that text ("Merry Wonderland" to us is just like saying, "I was going to say 'Christmas,' but then I got all freaked out about it") but still, pretty design, no?

Merry Wonderland cards, $14

And then, for all those presents we are about to get:

Like, hmm. So we will say thank you to Lil' Bunny, for taking care of all our shit. She rocks!

Paper Source thank you cards, $15.50

The Gift For Someone Who Has Everything

We have only been in Smythson of Bond Street once. We were floored by the sheer luxury of this place. We were with someone who was thinking of getting business cards embossed with a gold (like actual gold) bee. 100 cards would've only cost 200 pounds. So, say, $400. For 100 cards. We kept our hands in our pockets and stood very, very still so as not to dirty anything.

We then got a request from someone in our family for a Smythson journal for Christmas. We, as a general rule, cannot say no to this person despite how outlandish the request. We called up Smythson, ordered a journal, and had it sent. We are fairly sure it's still in its box, in a closet.

Either way, we recommend them for extravagant gifts for the person who has everything.

We are fairly sure if we kept our passport in the pink passport cover, we would have  a hard time misplacing it. We are just saying, though. They also have a pet passport cover, and we are entirely unsure if it is a joke or not.

Crown passport cover, from $180

-LB

The Small Object

We had never heard of The Small Object until, one day at our former job, our boss put a tiny wood bottle on our desk. It was not filled with alcohol (or Diet Coke) - or anything, actually. It had a little cap.  But we had no idea what it was for. Next to it sat a little stamp of a guy who kind of reminded us of the men you used to make using your thumb print. We did not see our then-boss leave these for us, so we were unsure what they were, where they came from, or what they were supposed to DO, exactly.

Our then-boss came back from wherever she was and cleared up the mystery. She'd ordered some things from The Small Object and gotten us presents! Ooh, how we love presents.

Anyway. We love this stuff. We had so much fun we stamped everything with our little man. When we quit that job, we made goodbye cards and CDs and stamped the little man on it. We think we may even get a bro tattoo with a friend of ours involving these little men and the word 'patience'. If you knew our friend, it would make much more sense. We don't know WHY we love these guys so much - we know if we met them in human form, we would probably look at them with a strong look of disgust. But in stamp form, they're a-ok. Plus, who wouldn't love panda snowmen on tags? Or anything, really?

Saw See Sew Needle Case - $6

Snowman Panda Gift Tags - 10/$5

And what better way to profess your love than with these fabric valentines? And at $5 a pop, it'll make you choo-choo-choose your favorite, not a whole harem of favorites!

The Everyday Valentine - $5

-LIL BUNNY

School Supplies

We confess. Even though we are not in school anymore, we love shopping for school supplies. The smell of paper at Staples makes our heart rush just a little bit. We once spent an hour obsessing over which pen to buy at Target to best address envelopes. Sadly, the pen sucks. But this is about things that do not suck.

Our favorite notebooks are Moleskines. We have one for work, one for notes, one for keeping track of things that we never keep track of. At $15 each, they are not inexpensive. But we always feel good rushing off to a meeting with our Moleskine Large Journal; ours is graph lined, but we love all of them with all of our hearts. What makes them even better is that they're easily available through most paper shops, bookstores, and loads of places on the internet.

Large Graph Moleskine Notebook, $20

Since we have already admitted to having an expensive notebook (when we could easily get 1 subject wide-ruled ones for free), we will cop to our silly desk expense. Pretty file folders. We love all things organizing - though we can never organize ourselves. We like folders and flex-files and little pockets. Trays, folder holders, we love it all. We like these Cavallini folders a lot, too. We, however, would only buy them if they were on sale (as were the ones we bought). But we have moved them from job to job and they've withstood the test of time (or being stashed in a tote bag smushed in a trunk).

Cavallini World Map File Folders, $18 for 6

One thing we will always drop money on are thank you notes. We firmly believe in pretty cards, good cardstock, and a nice handwritten note. Crane's has never failed us.

Triple Hairline Thank You notes, $12 for 10 cards and envelopes

-Lil Bunny

A Bit From Glasgow: Paper Goods from Mmmg

Oh! We loved being in Glasgow, clearly now one of our favorite cities, except for the day we spent lying blankly on our bed, reaching for the aspirin and counting the five—five!—diseases we should now not get: rabies, tetanus, a variety of hepatitisi, and tick-bourne encephalitis. If we get any of them, we will be very, very angry.

So due to vaccination-related illness we only really had one day to get around the city, which was annoying but made much easier, really, by our trip on our favorite red double-decker sightseeing bus. We can't help it. We love them. See the city, sit in one place. Honestly. It's heaven. It's not the complete experience, but in our opinion an excellent beginning. Anyway: One of our favorite stops was at the excellent shop Hitherto, and we were so excited to come back and suggest lots of things to buy from their online store. Which, as far as we can tell, and we may be wrong, does not actually sell things.

So! Our favorite line from there, and we had quite a few really, might have been Mmmg. It is easier for us to remember when we think of it the way they intended, as "millimeter milligram". We have to say, it is not super-much easier to buy online here, but it is possible, by emailing onlinestore@mmmg.net. Fortune favoring the bold, etc. Because isn't that a cute notebook? Winner notebook, price about $5

Mm, did we mention that about half the site is in Korean? This is the "pocket book." Fun! And Korean. So extra style-y fun. Pocket book notebook, about $7

The silver-y-serious-y vibe here is so nice. Er, we really are scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Anything to avoid saying "fun" again. Past Present Future notebook, about $9

And if we were throwing a Valentine's Day party, which we would never do because that "holiday" is asshole-ish, we would give these to our valentines. Stating again we are totally against all of that. Lucky cards, about $3

Bunnyshop Hearts: Adorable Letterpress Design

Obviously we are partial to the one with the bunnies, but the bridesmaid card is funny, too:

We would like that envelope filled with cash, thankyouverymuch.

Set of 4 bunny cards, $10, and single bridesmaid card, $4

Bunnyshop Totally Hearts: Paper Source

We saw this comment:

LOVE LOVE LOVE the Paper Source. Have made all kinds of programs and invites and holiday cards there, way before they had the nice kits. They do have an excellent website. Makes Kate's Paperie look like Hallmark.

And this may may be the truest thing we have ever read, so we thought it was worth reiterating: Man, do we love Paper Source. We grew up near New York City, and so you are all: Kate's Paperie! It is the solution to all things paper-y! But then we moved to SF, and discovered Paper Source, and realized that KP was the false idol or golden calf or whatever religious metaphor we are not totally on top of: It does not compare, in any case and in our opinion. Paper Source has like the best paper-by-the-piece ever, and K's, when we went last week, hoping for something similar to PS, was really very unsatisfactory, even though we tried to keep an open mind. And we will also say that we have spent the last week debating whether it was too over the top to drive the four hours to the nearest Paper Source in DC. (It was, but only just.)

We will also say the best thing we have ever seen at PS, besides the paper-by-the-piece, and the rubber stamps, and the ribbons, and everything else, is their letterpress stuff. We are too student-y to afford their rates (they're not cheap), which is why we have spent maybe twice as much trying (and somehow failing) to use an actual letterpress (something else we highly recommend, particularly at the San Francisco Center for the Book.)

Our picture does nothing even close to justice to their lovely invites. See their DIY letterpress area here.

Snow and Graham Gift Wrap

Sometimes you require super-duper nice gift wrap. Our favorite is currently from Snow + Graham.

We are so all about becoming gift wrap designers.

Snow and Graham single-sheet gift wrap, $2.75

French Style Icon Week, Continued

Once again, we are enjoying the French style icons rather than the American vapid morons. It is very funny, this note from S., in general, and also how it sort of very self-aware-y nearly-but-doesn't fit in both categories.

Marie Antoinette (the original).

If I could wear powdered wigs and pearls, I would.
On a date.
To work.
To the supermarket.
To the dry cleaners.
To the bakery, where I would eat cake.

It is so painful when you do the Google search for "Marie Antoinette" and get like 30,000 pictures of Kirsten Dunst. The original, we are thinking, would spin in the grave. Er, headless, or whatever.

And now, to the retailing.

Rhodia! Very French. Not super expensive. Rhodia notebooks, $3 - $9

Formerly mentioned:

The Charlotte Gainsbourg Giveaway Winner, Plus Our Favorite French Things
Our Newest Style Icon: Charlotte Gainsbourg

Bunnyshop Hearts: The Inevitable

We saw this walking out of Borders this weekend, and we were absolutey captivated by the latest HP promotional poster: Severus Snape! Friend! Or foe! Which is it! We demand to know! Oh WHY does July 21 have to be so very far away?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, $18.89

Memorial Auction For Kim Family

It is rare that we hope we will not be able to afford something, but here's hoping the bids in the auction benefiting James Kim's family go up to the stratosphere. Nearly everything in the auction is adorable, and we recognize some of the artists \ designers behind it from Kati Kim's Doe boutique on Haight Street, which has always been one of our favorite stores in the city and, apropos of nothing, always seems to be the first place to get Nylon in SF.

Our favorite, by the way, is this collection of paper goods from the suitably named Good on Paper. Current eBay auction bid: $163.50

When New Year's Resolutions Demand Their Own Notebooks

We have no idea what it is about New Year's resolutions that demands that they be written down, with a new pen, in a blank journal, one we will likely only fill the first four pages of. Tss. Still! New journals: more suggestive of fresh beginnings and exciting new developments than a bushel of crocus. Eh, we like crocus, too.

We like most of the vintage-wallpaper designs from Hargreaves-Gervis ("as seen in Elle Decoration and British Vogue") but this may be our favorite: "Notebook 11," about $60.

The Season Of Giving [To Ourselves]

Holiday season. More fun when you are buying presents for yourself, we're thinking. We've always thought, we should say.

All we're hearing re: Smythson is their new designer-designed line, like this one from Missoni. This is possibly too much design for us. Fashion Diary by Missoni, about $410

We sort of like the Zac Posen one, but still we're thinking it takes up a little bit too much space in our brain. ZP Fashion Diary, about $410

We guess what we're thinking is that the limited-edition line gives us a little bit of a headache. Maybe we would buy it for a friend, if we had a friend we loved $400 much. Do we? Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But this is about buying for ourselves—even saying that, we feel a little dirty, but we persevere. Persevere in our greediness. We love this fashion diary, for what it is, which is a ridiculous indulgence. We will put it this way: If we found $400 on the street, and we were forced to spend it at Smythson, we would definitely spend it on this. Smythson Fashion Diary (featuring "Smythson edited fashion title section including fashion show dates, fashion council listings and fashion guides to London, Paris, New York and Milan. The city listings include fashion, jewellery and accessory shop addresses, places to eat, drink and stay, city maps, national holidays and key days and dates as well as year planners for 2007 and 2008"), about $350

The Kate Spade Sample Sale

We had been saying all these nasty things about the wares at the Kate Spade sample sale when our computer suddenly crashed, and we lost all these things we had just said. We were wondering if this would somehow make us feel guilty about saying those nasty things, but really, it just makes us feel even nastier about them. We don't know, she just feels a little 1998 to us. Nevermind the registration rigamarole, if that is, indeed, how you spell such a crazy, crazy word. We see things like a $325 (now $174!) nylon dog carrier and we think, perhaps we are not the target audience here, preferring, as we do, dogs that can support themselves by use of their furry little legs, rather than a nylon dog carrier.

This, above, would make an excellent graduation present. For jobs that come with signing bonuses. Katherine Elyce personal organizer, was $225, now $124

And this would be an excellent art school graduation present, for someone who is about to apply that $100,000 art school education to a temping job. Linen medium journal, was $22, now $12

This was once our "nice" bag. We are no longer so enthusiastic about it. Nylon messenger bag, was $190, now $143, and nb: "May have irregular interior stitch."

This would be another good present. Though: "baby canvas"? Surely this canvas is not made from babies. Is the canvas quite young? Mystifiying. Baby canvas frame, was $55, now $31

Being a (Relatively) Better Person in Three Easy Steps

We recently discovered a birthday card in the bottom of our backpack, addressed and written to an exceptionally dear friend. Who celebrates her birthday in December. (This is related but not central to the fact that we recently dropped off our godson's T-Rex Mountain: "Christmas in March!" we said, while we wondered if he would notice that we had forgotten the requisite four AA batteries before or after we left.) Anyhoo, this birthday card was not stamped, despite the fact that we had told our friend, and indeed believed this was true, that we had mailed it three weeks ago. But: no. Delightful.

We are weary of being horrified by our own inability to send a birthday card within six weeks of the recipient's actual birthday. We are weary of being ignorant of rate changes in first-class mail. We recently went to our parents' house, where we saw a half-dozen Valentine's Day cards, addressed to and signed by various family members, excluding us and including the two cats and dog. Needless to say, we were not represented in the calvalcade of cards.

And so: We plan. A key plan, involving three steps:

1) The purchase of a half-dozen birthday cards from Snow & Graham, of varied designs, shapes, and sizes.

2) The purchase of 20 first-class stamps, apparently available at $.39 each.

3) This useful folder from Cavallini & Co., perfect for keeping birthday cards and stamps in one place, together, commingling, toasting each other, occasionally smooching. As they should.

Today's 60 Second Gift Recommendation: Because Paris Is Nicer Than Here

Notebooks from Cavallini. Sure, we'll write like three pages and then lose them somewhere, possibly in a movie theater, but we'll love them all the same.

The BS Christmas Lists, Continued

Another letter from Santa's letterbag. Why, oh why, is the first thing we think, when we see Santa, pedophiles? Damn you, SVU. You have seriously fucked us up.

Anyway, letter:

Dear BS:
I actually want quite a few things this Christmas. First, I would like Juicy Couture's faux-rabbit jacket ... I don't know why, and I'm sort of embarrassed about it, but I still want it.

I also need these penguin cards right now, but that is more of a need than a want. Don't you love them? I love them.

And then I would really like this Bing Bang necklace.

For the immaterial thing, I would like to make out with the actor who plays Octavian in Rome. Is that weird?

----

Please, please, send your Christmas lists to us, with the things you can buy at the mall, and the things you can only dream of: bunnyshop@mac.com.

The BS Christmas List

Because we anticipate doing nothing this weekend except (a) sitting on a plane; (b) shivering violently due to lack of East Coast-appropriate clothing and \ or reluctance to actually wear the Abercrombie coat we purchased prior to their production of "Baghdad Ass Up" t-shirts; and (c) gaining weight, we present our official Christmas list. For ourselves, of course. And if anyone else would like to comment with their own choices: We would be interested in what people want, when those people are not (a) kids, because seriously, they get enough attention this time of year, or (b) gamers, who all want that xbox or xBox or XboX or whatever.

1. We'd start with a Saab convertible, but that perhaps that goes too far. Nothing says "gift that keeps on giving" like some magazine subscriptions, and these are our favorites: Vogues (UK and FR), Domino (house porn), Elle (US), W, and Nylon. And, if we could, the Sunday Times (UK) Style section, which is possibly our favorite fashion publication in the entire world.

1a. And then we'd them all in maybe a dozen of these delightful magazine files from Anthropologie.

You know, seriously, we wouldn't mind if nobody gave any gifts at Christmas. Wouldn't it be nice, maybe? Just carols and holiday-appropriate Muppet movies?

An All-Media Salute to Harry Potter

Oh, we wish we could be a wizard's wizarding girlfriend. We won't go as far as this Harry Potter Legal Age Countdown Clock, because we're willing to rob the cradle but 16-year-olds ... that's like robbing the womb. But we. Love. Him. Tss. And tonight we, and the rest of preadolescent America\Europe\etc., will enjoy Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Oh, Cedric! And Sirius. As far as fictional, magical boyfriends go, Sirius Black (but not Gary Oldman-ly; more like Matthew MacFayden-ly) is it.

What we would really like is to go to some sort of wizarding school, but as this appears to be increasingly less likely, we offer instead our tribute to our very favorite British-y things. We only want to be as much of a bad-ass as J.K. Rowling, possibly the only woman on the planet with the bank account to tell Steven Spielberg and his absolutely cracker Haley-Joel-Osment-should-play-Harry idea to fuck off.

Anyway, clothing is not exactly a medium, but it sort of is, so here goes:

1. Alice Temperley. If we were a member of the Bloomsbury Circle, and all our friends were sleeping with each others' husbands, we'd wear this dress while we stood in the meadow crying about it, but we'd really just be crying for dramatic effect, because it would be impossible to be wearing this dress and be truly unhappy. Sigh. The Rosa silk dress, $1492

2. The Washed Black Baxter Skinny Jeans are like Stella McCartney without the annoying Stella McCartney-ness. See? We loved her last weekend, and now we are fatigued. We are such fickle cranks, really. About $70

3. This is like the nine millionth time we've mentioned Jocasi, but we adore them, and they just opened an online store, and we don't get how repetitive we get, because they are so bizarrely wonderful. The Kepis medium, about $125

4. Love the Paul Smith stripes. Love bikinis. Love everything about it, except the fact that it is winter and we have nowhere to go swimming. Paul Smith bikini, about $100

5. We are not proud of our adoration for personalized Smythson stationary anymore than we're proud of our adoration for Cedric Diggory, but there it is.

II. Music. No Kelly Clarkson.

1. "5 More Minutes," Mull Historical Society. Please, please, please listen to this song, because you will love it more than you can even imagine.
2. "Do You Want To," Franz Ferdinand. We tire of the ambiguous sexuality but we adore the Dior Homme.
3. "Fit But You Know It," The Streets. This song is like the "Ignition" of last summer, but British, and sort of funnier, though "Ignition" was pretty funny, because doesn't R. Kelly, like, piss on people?
4. "Apocalypse Please," Muse. Oh, we wish we could be this sincerely operatic.
5. "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor," Arctic Monkeys. We hate to dance. This makes us think we might like to dance.

III. TV
All we will say is: Season. Finale. Extras. Funniest ever. Not The Office Xmas special, but excellent, and when Maggie finally cleans her apartment, we wept for her. And us. And our own bedraggled apartment.

Holiday Cards, The Return

Holy shit, it's November. When did that happen? Seriously, yesterday it was beautiful and warm and summery. Now it's not. Grarhghggh.

In addition to the crap weather, endless air travel trips (have we mentioned our Sudoku friend on our last flight ("That's not an 8, that's not an 8, that's not an 8," X six hours) who made us want to commit some seppuku, which is way more Japanese than we ever expected to encounter today), and bizarre extended family members asking us what we do for a living, November means that it's time to buy holiday cards. We will buy two dozen, write one, mail none, and that will be it, and it will be January, and we can go back to dreaming about summer. In the meantime, holiday cards.

Pop-up. Celebrate the season, indeed. Celebrate, tss. We'll celebrate when there's a season for buying ourselves as many things as possible. It's like Toys R Us and all these corporate stores somehow found this way to enact this God-mandated commandment that we buy all this shit from their stores. Seriously, it's fucked up. These cards cost more than $2 each, btw. And we still want them. It's like we don't mind we're being brainwashed. It's like we're ... Katie Cruise! $18.95 for 8.

Ha! These are awesome. Reindeer! $11 for 20.

These are also awesome, because they have that whole barely-English-speaking "Happy Merry Christmas" vibe, and for ass-y trend addicts, you can match to your Murakami Louis Vuitton. The super-best thing is that this page also offers the opportunity to "click to Japanese cute explosion!" $15.95 for 8.

Stickers! Making holiday cards attractively interactive. Stickers! This whole holiday thing, it's kind of like dating that guy you're supposed to be in love with, but you're not, exactly, but you're not not, either, so you're just sort of like ... stickers! Irritating. $15.95 for 6.

Green stripes, very mod. Not as exciting as Jarhead, which we are so excited about, but much more exciting than, say, The Hulk coming to TNT. The ribbon is a nice touch. $36 for 20

This picture is tiny, but those blue designs there should clearly be snowflakes. Snowflakes, so appropriately non-denominational. Seriously, one of these days we're just going to get gilt-edged Jesus cards. So we can be just like our evangelical extended family members, who like to ask what we do for a living and then try to figure out if they make more or less then we do. $16, tho, bizarrely, they do not note how many those sixteen dollars gets you.