Forever 21 is the Topshop of America: so much stuff! So little money! (Meanwhile, Topshop (in SoHo) is like … eh, it’s just somehow not as exciting, the one here, compared to the one in London.) But this is about Forever 21. Whatever the weirdness with the Bible references on the bags, and God (speaking of) knows how many times we’ve gone in and left empty-handed, we remain solidly pro—and so we went to the Jersey Gardens branch, hopes high and expectations equally so.

We could have easily spent $100 on disposable accessories—jewelry, clutches, shoes, etc.—but in our opinion, this isn’t what they do best—actually, we’d say that H&M does better, or Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie at increasingly higher price points. (Or, of course, millions of industrious Etsy sellers.) Our mission was to find a shirt, which could be worn with shorts. Wide net, as it were.

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We’d never heard of Eryn Brinie until we saw it in the MIA-cover edition of NYLON, and now we sort of love it. We stopped in the SoHo store in the middle of last week’s heat wave, so it was unbelievably empty, and we got to spend all our time with the floaty, fluttery clothes more or less by ourselves. Feminine! That’s what we think when we think Eryn Brinie. We also think: suitable for the office! Not so much of a draw for us. But we aspire.

Above: floaty and feminine, right? This is the Isabella blouse, $80 (and PS, the shop is currently having a 30%-off midsummer sale, so it’s actually $56)

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We love Society for Rational Dress—not least because they have women of all ages wearing the clothes on their website. (All we want is what men of all ages have: belief in cultural relevance after 21/30/35/40/50/60/70/etc.) They are named for, and this we believe is fascinating, the Rational Dress Society, which, in the 1880s, agitated:

against the introduction of any fashion in dress that either deforms the figure, impedes the movements of the body, or in any way tends to injure the health. It protests against the wearing of tightly-fitting corsets; of high-heeled shoes; of heavily-weighted skirts, as rendering healthy exercise almost impossible; and of all tie down cloaks or other garments impeding on the movements of the arms.

Brilliant! We could not agree more. And these are three of our favorite pieces from them, now in stores:

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We cannot overstate our skepticism—except to say that it was total—when L.B. sent us an invite to sign up for the Shop It To Me alerts. (What is it, sign up ten friends and get $50 in free shopping? We know how this works, L.B.) First of all: stupid name. Second of all: if there is one thing in our life we need less of, excepting Butterfinger’s new “Snackerz” snacks, it is email from companies trying to sell us something. (Go. Away! We see you, we think you are from our friend, and we are happy, and then it is just stupid buy-this-something-horrible emails, and honestly to god we would burn the message if it were paper and not electronic.)

However—and this is a considerable however—we have found ourselves not totally hating this service. You tick off your favorite brands—ours included regular suspects Vince, Theory, Marc by Marc Jacobs, etc. etc.—and then there’s some kind of Internet magic, and then they send you this email that has a whole bunch of those designers on sale, from places like Shopbop and Neiman Marcus—so, the usual suspects. We are not-hating this so much that it’s inspired us to bring back our sale of the day page. It was literally taking us hours to find things we like—now, they come to us. This is sounding much too much like an ad, so we recap: We hate the name, and the sign-up process was annoying and too long.

We’re apparently much more comfortable being negative than being positive. Oh, this is a character indictment! But in context: useful. Above, all those sale items are from French Connection. This is the Rothko sequin dress: was $248, now $135.99. This honestly looks nothing like any Rothko painting we’ve ever seen, but fair enough.

So! We’re reporting from Miami for the next couple days. We love Miami, because we always get to see people dress like they would never, ever dress in Manhattan. Er, maybe in the Meatpacking District. But definitely not in Brooklyn. One of the emails we got when we figured out how to use the wi-fi was from Topshop, which said “Welcome to Miami,” which we thought was weird. But: fun collection! Not as glitzy as the actual Miami, we’re thinking, but fun, nonetheless.

We stood in the taxi line behind three Danes we are sure were international DJs, and all we wanted on earth at that moment was to be a fluent Danish speaker, because at least they weren’t showing their boobs off everywhere, if you know what we mean. Eh, it’s what happens when you travel on your own. We got over it.

Based on what we witnessed downstairs, these shoes might be the most Miami things in the Miami collection. Can we mention here that our dinner just showed up, and not only is there a pat of butter for the bread, but that butter has a little frosting of salt on top of it. This may be our new favorite food. Topshop platform shoes, $135

The funny thing (er, to us, anyway) is, we were just about to say something about how this would have to be about two inches shorter to rival the dresses we saw outside. And yet, this is officially a top. Um, not in Miami, apparently. Topshop color-block “top,” $36

And again—we bet someone could maybe remove the bottom two layers. Topshop body-con skirt, $44

And we have to say: We do not endorse this hat. We add it only so we can mention that we just saw someone wearing it in the lobby, only it was covered with silver sequins. Ooh, we know we sound all complain-y, but we’re totally into it after five months of Uggs, winter leggings, and black sweaters. Straw trilby, $40

We went back to Target to give McQueen for Target a second go—after a number of positive comments about the collection here, as a matter of fact. It was cuter than we gave it credit for after our first look (still bitter after Thakoon, we guess.) We still say the sizing’s off—nothing fit us right, anyway, if you’ll excuse the extremely prejudiced assessment. But: as we were told here, the military jacket is cute, as was the one-shouldered dress with the pink detailing—of course, sold out online, but available in stores. We’re scouring nearby locations for anything else we missed—but we’re still more excited about Matthew Williamson for H&M.

The dress above is still available, and the whole collection’s on eBay if you have the stomach for it: McQueen for Target tattoo dress, $79.99

So! All of yesterday’s votes for Target as the one-stop-shop reminded us: Thakoon @ Target’s Go International! After what we personally felt were a bunch of mediocre collections—well, we loved the color palette. We personally had some problems with fit, but all in all, we really liked this one. Everything’s relative, we guess.

We actually really love this cardigan above, though we totally don’t get how they styled it. Maybe it’s cute full length. We’re convinced it’d look so much less…waist-eater-y with jeans. Thakoon Shibori print cardigan, $32.99

Okay so: Any dress that makes the *model* look like she is about to deliver a child should be avoided, and this is a topic of discussion in the very mixed user reviews for this dress on the Target website. (It made us look like a blue-and-green striped sausage.) However: Some of them said all it needs is a belt. We really love about half of it, so we’re open to the idea. Thakoon maternity [sic] dress, $44.99

Unlike the dress above, which actually is as [un]flattering as it looks, this is, in our opinion, quite cute in person. Camo cami, $24.99

Strangely, this looks a lot better on the site’s smaller model image—er, maybe it’s not that strange, but it’s a *lot* better. Er, she does kind of look like a big pile of laundry, but we love it.

Tragically, this dress is over $500, but that’s why we’re calling it a wish list. Orla Kiely dress, about $520

Can we add here that we saw this dress in the Orla Kiely shop yesterday (which is ridiculously gorgeous and makes us want to spend all our time carving Orla Kiely designs into our hardwood floors, as someone there has done) and the sales staff totally did the we’re-following-you-around-so-you-won’t-steal thing. It’s called yoga clothes, people. Harrumph! When we find our pot of gold coins we’ll be buying our Orla from Anthro, tyvm.

Whoa! Well, our Jocasi contest rolls on: In short: send us a Reader Mail question—the most-commented entry wins the author the Jocasi bag!. Today’s question—it’s a doozy:

Dear BS:

I know this is not your usual type of question, but here goes: Just a little while ago, I thought I might be pregnant. I swore to God that if I wasn’t, I would go on the pill. I’m not—thank God! But now, I don’t want to go on the pill (all those nasty hormones). On a scale of 1-10, how badly am I testing karma if I don’t? I am very conflicted about this.

I know you usually put something to buy along with these questions so maybe you could just put up this dress that I as thinking of for my shotgun wedding.

Love,
C.

First, we want to say that we did not write this. Okay. Now that this is resolved, people-reading-this-to-whom-we-may-be-related, we move on. We would say, on a scale of 1-10, this is tempting fate a 9. At least an 8. 8.3 That is our vote. We would love to know yours! Comment below!

Above: J. Crew dress, $385

In today’s Reader Mail:

Hi BS,

I feel like I should probably already know the answer to this, but! I was wondering if you could just give us your straight up answer: Where are the last five places you spent money online? And then I would be interested in what other people have to say. I bought sheets (really cheap!) at Overstock.

Thanks!
B.

Ours are totally weird and non-representative:

The Brooklyn poster we mentioned a while back
Mini DV head cleaner at B&H
A Powershot Canon camera at Best Buy
Fancy art paper at Dick Blick
and jeans at the Shopbop sale.

We love this question. What about everyone else?

If we thought about it, maybe we would have bought this dress: School of Women dress, was $154, now $61