bunnyshop shopping fashion blog

What Would You Do With $100?

And we're talking pure shopping - no bill paying, no food buying, no charity donations. Seriously, imagine that someone walks up to you, gives you $100 bill and says you have to spend it on STUFF or something horrible will happen to your family. What do you do?

We imagine - well, we hope - that our reaction would be wildly different if our family were being threatened. But we've come to learn that we are very good at shopping, but piss poor at buying. We hem and haw over decisions, we analyze from every angle possible, and we almost always second guess ourselves - this is how we bought 3 pairs of shoes last night, and have 2 to return today. Even though we can rationalize the entire purchase (3 pairs for $100; 2 are direct replacement pairs), we absolutely cannot commit to it. We think there must be something better out there to spend our hard earned money on!

So - we want to know. If you have to spend $100 on shopping, what would it be?

MXMJ sunglasses, $98 (we've seen them in person, they're far cuter than the picture above would lead you to believe)

-LB

So We Know This Is a Little Crazy

But we keep thinking there's a prize in it if we get some five-star rankings. On the Martha Stewart site. Where we believe (but are not sure) we entered a contest for "painted rooms." If anyone wanted to click through and check out our "studio" \ whatever, our new paper cuts, and those screenprints we're obsessed with, we'd be much obliged.

Harper's Bazaar's Advice: Shopping The Closet

At first we totally objected to the coverline "Shop Your Closet" (excuse us: "SHOP YOUR CLOSET") right next to this picture of Victoria Beckham, because it does not count when your closet is a celebrity closet and has all these free $10,000 dresses you forgot you owned. ("Oops!") However, we were faced with our very large closet [at our parents' house, since our Brooklyn version is about the size of an elevator on a planet where all the people are very small], and taking this advice to heart, were all: "Free Gap jeans [we bought five years ago and once were too big but now are the right size because we've eaten nothing but chocolate for the past two weeks]!" Mixed results, to say the least, but we are excited about our new ("new") jeans, and we wonder if everyone else is also scouring for similar. Can't beat free, though we're actually thinking that the Buffalo Exchange in Williamsburg might be close, given all the designer (MxMJ, Catherine Malandrino, etc.) we saw there—and that was before Christmas and the inevitable January clean-out.

Jimmy Stewart Would Never Have Let This Happen

We are pretty sure we are not the only Americans whose primary cultural comparison for the—we believe the word is "unrelenting"—bad news from economic circles is It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, we were recently asked if we felt like we understood the financial crisis, and we responded by quoting, as near as possible, this scene from the movie:

George: No, but you . . . you . . . you're thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them the money to build, and then, they're going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?

Tom: I got two hundred and forty-two dollars in here, and two hundred and forty-two dollars isn't going to break anybody.  

For a slightly less ... 1946 take on events, we share this NPR story, forwarded to us from a friend, via an interested party. The former promises it is "by far the best, most comprehensive and interesting explanation." Our reading has been less comprehensive, focusing, as it does, on ads for waitressing jobs, but we did remove our headphones feeling significantly more in-the-know than just an hour earlier. It's like the reverse of watching The Hills.

Anyhoo: This American Life on the credit crunch

Our Fall Want List

We've had a harder time justifying completely random purchases lately, what with our economy being absolute garbage. We definitely do not have the 3-6 month nest the financial people keep telling us we should have; the closest we have is a couple of credit cards with a 0 APR. Which is far different from a 0 balance. Oops. In light of that, we're making a list of things we want, and once we've done all the necessary things (saved at least part of our paycheck, paid our cable bill in full, gone to the grocery store), we'll review and buy something fun!

Our actual spending budget is far, far less extravagant than a lot of things we post, so this is our attainable want list.

We really, really like this tote from Sabina. We have been whittling down our bag closet - gone are the high end designers, and the totes we amassed from years of sample sales (eBay has been good to us). We figure, with every 3 bags we get rid of, we will stop, reassess, and buy a new one if we can justify it. Our only other tan bag is from Jocasi, and while we adore it, it's beat to shit. We struggled, going to a job interview recently, for a bag that wasn't in beat up condition. While this might be one of the more expensive things on our want list, we use and love bags so much that we know we'll get our money's worth.

Sabina leather satchel, $225

This, apparently, is the window at Bergdorf Goodman - we are not responsible for the photo. We do, however, love the colored tights. We're fully buying into a couple of dresses from American Apparel
and wearing them all the time and just changing up our tights as many times as possible. It's totally our look for fall, and $8 for a pair of tights isn't bad.

We Love Colors solid color tights, $8

We definitely, definitely have our reservations about buying leather from Forever 21. We don't know that we actually would - definitely not sight unseen, seams unexamined. But this style is everywhere, and it's cheaper than it'd be on eBay. We're going to see if it's in our nearest store when we're there next and check it out. It could be awesome. It could be garbage. But. It could be awesome.

Forever 21 leather zip up jacket, $150.80

These might actually be one of the first things we buy off of our want list. Dear Friend told us about these jeans from Free People - she says they're super comfortable and they fit really, really, really well. They're not quite a steal, but they're definitely well under premium denim prices. We're really feeling the light wash; we love our dark denim, but we're a bit tired of it. Plus, we've ruined like 3 bags and 2 coats with dye transfering. So not cool.

Free People Stretch Skinny Bootcut jeans, $68

-LB

We've Said It Before and We'll Say It Again...

We love Ryan Howard.

Phillies shirt, $34.99

-LB

BS Hearts: Shabby Apple

We love sites where we actually find things we want that don't cost a million dollars. This might seem like a small task, but we've found there's a very fine line between spare and overrun, and not many sites in between have anything we want and/or can afford. A friend of ours sent us a link to Shabby Apple (kind of an unfortunate name if you ask us, but then again, ours is nonsensical), and at first we were meh. The photography is nice, but it's really hard to judge a dress from the bust up - but as we looked around, we realized we really like some of the stuff.

They offer free shipping on exchanges, the prices are reasonable, and the styles don't suck. Some of them are definitely not our taste, but we found more cute than bad by a longshot.

We like the Gypsy dress above for a few reasons - we're really into this ship gray, we like the sleeve detail, the bust has a hidden closure so you don't have to be all exposed or layered like mad. And we've already figured out 4 pairs of shoes we can wear it with. And it's $68.  Granted, we haven't seen or felt it in person - it could be atrocious. We just might have to try it.

Gypsy dress, $68

We're really feeling this dress - in warm weather, with sandals. In cool weather, a scarf and smart boots. Heels can dress it up, too. Plus, we really like how much fun the model seems to be having.

Cleopatra dress, $68

Once you turn the color down, this dress is super cute. We're thinking with a pair of camel (colored, not the animal) boots and a scarf. We're on a big scarf kick because it's approximately 40 degrees in the office we're in. Nonsense.

Buttoned-Up, $88

The site definitely has some room for improvement - the accessories pages show products that aren't actually available, we don't think every dress with a collar should have them stand up (well, we don't think any collar should pop, but that might just be us), their sale section just takes you to a necklace. But we like the beginnings - good assortment, decent prices, free exchange shipping, so we'll give it a shot.

-LB

We're Mad at Posh For Two Reasons

So Victoria Beckham launched her line of dresses at Fashion Week, and we have to say, we are not surprised. As far as celebrity launches go, she's top of the line - it definitely doesn't look like complete crap, it's not quite Paris Hilton's extended-size shoe line or whatever. Posh did what every girl wants to do - she made a line of clothes that will look perfect on her. Apparently, her design team forgot to remind her that no one else looks like her - so severe, skin tight dresses that make 14 year old models look hippy probably aren't going to fly off the shelves.

We appreciate her efforts, but it seems to us like a well-tailored, sharply sewn American Apparel; one dress looks straight out of a 1982 hair metal video. We don't think it's particularly innovative, on trend, or wearable at all (though, we will completely admit that a vast majority of fashion could be considered unwearable in the real wold). Having worked in fashion, and knowing several designers, we would offer that she's made her statement; now she needs to make something people can wear.

Unless, of course, her point is not to sell dresses, and just to reinforce Posh for Posh's sake, and only the fabulous need apply. I definitely wouldn't doubt that. We definitely aren't trying to hate on her - but if someone offered us the choice between a VB dress and, say, something from a Project Runway contestant, we'd opt for the latter. Posh's dresses just seem to be lacking...something. Personality, maybe?

 

Our other issue with Posh? We got our haircut very short over the weekend, and we received more than one message yesterday asking if we'd seen Posh's haircut and how we have the same haircut. Our calves have a larger circumfrence than Posh, and while we appreciate that she does her thing well, we are NOT Posh Spice, we are not trying to BE Posh Spice, and we had our hair cut first.

So there.

Check out the entire Victoria Beckham dress collection and let us know what you think!

-LB

We Find This Vaguely Shocking

From the Juicy Couture sale at Rue La La. If we missed anyone looking for a Rue La La invite—sorry! We thought we got everyone! Email us!

OMG We Need a Lion STAT!

Just in case someone out there has not seen this.