Coach Purses

In December Glamour chose me as one of their Blogging Babes. I was thrilled to be chosen and kept in such great company on Glamour’s website. Other Blogging Babes featured include Natalie from Fashionista, Julia from All about the Pretty, Leslie from Racked, and Wendy from Nitro:licious.

Glamour has been a longtime favorite fashion magazine of mine so this was a great honor. You can read my interview with Glamour on their website, in which they ask me some questions to find out more about me and what PurseBlog is about. This was such a fun piece to be part of, thank you to Glamour for including me!

Read the full interview here.

As I mentioned last week, finally, oh finally, the retail stores are stocking their shelves with all sorts of amazing new handbags. My must-have bag of the day has to be the Michael Kors Skorpios Pleated Crescent Hobo. I’d like to even say that it could be my bag pick of the week, but seeing as though it is Monday, I don’t want to jump the gun yet.

All I do know is that this bag is a staple, a must-have, a classic.

For being a girl who loves simple, understated elegance it might seem a little odd that I only own one black handbag. To me, black handbags are like little black dresses, you might have one you use more than another, but you can never have enough.

I’ve been in the market for a new black bag for quite some time now and I’ve already put this bag on my list. It was the pleated body that initially caught my attention. But, it was the single braided shoulder strap and goldtone hardware that locked me in. The dimensions are pretty nice too: 16″W X 11″H X 3½”D and 11″ drop. Of course, there is plenty of room, but at the same time, the bag isn’t overwhelming. In fact, even if you are a petite woman, this bag won’t overwhelm you. Buy through Saks for $795.

I fully admit that I’ve never been the recipient of a Valentine’s Day gift from a real Valentine; this is excluding the bouquet of wildflowers my lovely father sends me every February 14. And just last week, I received a wonderful care package from my mother including a plastic lunchbox with a printed smattering of pink and white hearts. That was very interesting, but in the case that I do have a real, live Valentine this year, this is what I’d love him to get me. But keep in mind, pals, the flowers are enough. Remember that you’re talking to (erm, reading about) a girl who was massively excited by a plastic case.

1. Purple Irises: Part of the reason why I love my wildflower bouquets is because they often come with some irises in a vibrant shade of purple, my absolute favorite color. I know, purple foxgloves can appear in these bouquets as well but I find them alarming because they are tubular and can induce poisoning. Sorry to ruin the mood, guys. Buy through Beyond Blossoms.

2. Alexander Wang Darla Pyramid Clutch: This clutch is neither pink nor red, but it’s my current clutch obsession so I see no objection to including it on my wish list for the most lovable of days. It represents the birth of my now-growing love affair with Alexander Wang, so despite its rugged, pebbled, and studded exterior, it’s symbolically perfect for the holiday. Buy through Shopbop for $490.

3. Hunter Stripe Socks: Since I have an inordinate amount of stuffed creatures from my childhood years, and apparently stuffed animals are commonly given on this day, I’ll substitute those for a lovely pair of socks. I know, they’re two totally different things, but I need some new long socks and these ones nearly knocked me down by their softness a few weeks ago in Nordstroms. Since I don’t wear pink, I’ll happily take the navy and yellow version and tuck them into my obscenely high Sam Edelman Zoe Boots- that’s right, the ones I asked for in my Chanukah Wish List. Buy through Nordstrom for $14.90.

Through the miracles of modern medicine and heavy-duty antibiotics, I have thrown off the chains of the worst bout of strep throat known to mankind (or at least to Amandakind) to come and recap the latest episode of Project Runway (sorry, Real Housewives fans – I was face-down in a bottle of Nyquil while I was supposed to be recapping that, but it, will be back next week, swears).

This week was another mash-up of classic ProjRun challenge archetypes, this time with “real women as models” on a collision course toward “unacceptable and inappropriate product placement.” We’ve seen challenges in the past where a designer made a “real woman model” cry and where the designers had to incorporate a paid sponsor via car-part dresses, so the bar has been set high for a challenge of either type, let alone one that combined elements of both. Did it live up to the car-crash possibilities? Eh, not quite, but there were a few fantastically ugly dresses.

I feel as though now is the appropriate time to revisit the First Universal Rule of Project Runway: Never listen to your model. I introduced this rule back when the models referenced were professional clothes-wearers, but it’s also true when the designers are tasked with creating a look for a “regular” woman, as they were in this episode. It never helps anyone, and it certainly didn’t in this episode.

To say that that was the only thing that didn’t help these designers would be…an understatement. The challenge was sponsored by Campbell’s, who brought in a bunch of women who had been touched by heart disease so that the designers could make red dresses for them to wear to a Fashion Week gala in their honor. Except, catch #1, only one of these women apparently got to go. And also, catch #2, Campbell’s branding had to be included in the dress.

Not only is it super grinchy to keep hopeful women that have been afflicted by health problems out of their party because they were randomly assigned to a crappy designer, but why in the world is Campbell’s, purveyor of soups filled with enough salt to choke a horse and gross globules of chicken fat, associated with a charity that promotes heart health? Most of their products are like heart-disease kryptonite. On top of all of that, why force the designers, who mostly seemed to like their clients and want to make them feel good, to include Campbell’s branding in a dress that one of these nice ladies was actually going to have to wear to a fancy Fashion Week party, at which she was already likely to feel like a bit of an outsider without a soup can on her dress?

The stupidity of it all made me seriously rage-y, and the Campbell’s cross-promotion made the warm and fuzzy potentially of a charity challenge basically null and void. If anyone out there knows the greedy people that run this show, can one of you tell them to take their hands out of the cookie jar for, you know, at least one or two episodes? It’s become a tad mind-numbing. I don’t want a soup dress. Ladies that have had heart problems don’t want soup dresses. No one wants an effing soup dress.

I wouldn’t have wanted some of these dresses even if they hadn’t been soup-based, however. Even some of those made by the designers in the top three, which were Maya, Mila and Amy. It was a good week for people with Serious Fashion Hair – we also got a clip of Mila and Maya flat ironing their black bobs together, and I wanted to plop down next to them with my GHD and do mine, too. They probably would have made me get up, however, because I hated Maya’s dress. HATED. IT.

It looked like someone had taken a giant glob of poop and just smeared it right across the dress. The ruching and draping were wonky, the heart-shaped sash was the color of excrement and looked completely tacked-on, and it wasn’t flattering on her model, who should have been relatively easy since she wasn’t particularly large. If I could confiscate her hair until she made something better, I would do it. For some reason, though, Princess Michael Kors just let the poop comparison float right by him without saying a word, which makes me think he might have been distracted by a lonely bottle of spray-tan, glinting in the stage lights somewhere off camera.

I also didn’t adore Mila’s, but it had some construction elements that actually worked in its favor. She chose to sew two giant stars into her dress for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (since they aren’t a part of the Campbell’s logo, as she suggested), and the overall affect was as if her model had Scarlett O’Hara’d the flag of…a country whose flag is red and white with large stars. The stars placed at the hip, however, was actually quite slimming, which is why I’ll let the giant one that tried to eat the rest of the dress slide.

The conclusion here is obvious: Amy won, and she won by being the only person out of our dozen designers who made a dress that I would even consider leaving the house in. It wasn’t super special, but it was pretty and flowy and comfortable-looking enough that, in my estimation, I could wear it to a gala and hit both the buffet and the open bar heavily. Not that I’m recommending that sort of behavior for a woman with heart problems, of course. I merely have problematic tonsils, and my pre-op instructions say nothing about any of that.

Now we have to talk about the bottom three, but really, the line between the bottom three and everyone else was so slim that it seemed hardly fair to only single out these poor souls. But singling out is what reality TV (and life, honestly) is all about, so it was Anna, Jesse, and Jesus. Jesse made a mostly unflattering little dress with an entirely unflattering little white coat on top, but his dress did manage to flatter his model’s ample bosom. As we all know, an ample and flattered bosom turns Heidi into a drooling but well-intentioned boob zombie, so he got to stay.

And then there was Anna. Poor, sweet, well-intentioned Anna. She had an awkwardly shaped model, I wouldn’t deny that fact, but she made a dress that made her look just about as awkwardly shaped as humanly possible. It was not pretty, and I mean that in the most literal, non-figure-of-speech-y way possible. Beyond that, I’m mostly at a loss for words as to what to say about this dress. We all know how odd that is for me.

The only thing that saved Anna and her poor model was Jesus’s even poorer taste level. He made a date-night dress that would have been most appropriate on an aging, slightly meth-y stripper, and not in an ironic way. I thought Nina was going to rip one of the rhinestone straps (oh yes, he went there) straight off of it and use it to choke the last drops of life out of him right there, in front of all of the other designers, just to make an example of him. Compared to that, his actual fate seems pretty easy. And well-deserved, at that.

Remember the First Universal Law of Project Runway, which I mentioned at the beginning of this recap? Well, his dress is where it really came in to play in this episode. His model did, indeed, ask for something tacky and ridiculous, and Jesus didn’t have the taste level to realize that not only was that a bad idea, but that putting the rhinestone chain straps on it actually made it worse. If he couldn’t figure that out, then it was better that he left sooner rather than later.

This week we will be bringing you a variety of bags that make perfect Valentine’s Day presents. And just in time for this Hallmark Holiday, Burberry has been releasing a line of heart print bags.

The line of bags ranges from totes to small shoulder bags. There is still the quintessential nova check pattern that can be seen on each item. The hearts then take over the foreground of each item, which gives us a splash of love.

The only item from the line that I would consider is the Burberry Confetti Hearts Tote, which is the most mature looking bag of the bunch. The rest of the lot is better suited for a younger crowd. And while a younger crowd may like the line, there is always Valentine’s Day this week, at which time this bag would seem fitting. Shop Burberry at Bloomingdales.

What do you think of the hearts line from Burberry?

So this week (and in particular, this weekend) are all about red, right? Well, according to the people that have a vested interest in selling you (or, perhaps more accurately, your significant other) lots and lots of Valentine’s Day swag, anyway. We’ll have more on V-Day throughout the week, but for a moment, I’d like to celebrate something that’s red that has blissfully little to do with anything other than good taste: the Valentino Premier Bow Hobo.

Everyone that reads this blog has probably picked up on the fact that I have a strong personal bias both the color red and almost anything made by the fine folks at Valentino, so of course I can’t help but fall for this bag.

For those that don’t follow fashion closely, red is a Valentino tradition (which is putting it very, very lightly). Under the creative genius of the company’s namesake, the color became a metaphor for the brand’s vision and an omnipresent staple in the brand’s clothes, accessories and especially their evening wear.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that, despite the retirement of the brand’s founder, Valentino is still one of the few designers that manages to do a red handbag and do it right. That’s because the company will accept nothing less than the perfect shade of red for any of its products, and that’s exactly what they managed to get out of this leather.

I’ve already explained my love for this bag’s design back when the shape first came out, so I won’t rehash those feelings, which are very much still intact. I will say, however, that the bag’s deliberative pleating is much more handsomely displayed in Valentino’s traditional red. It doesn’t even need to be Valentine’s day to appreciate that – or should I say Valentino’s Day? Buy through Saks for $1895.

In just one short hour Super Bowl XLIV will officially commence. While NFL football is not my favorite past time, it is hard to disregard the enormity of the game. For Vlad and I, the weeks and months leading up to the Super Bowl has been following us around. This year’s game is being held at the Miami Dolphins Stadium, a mere 25 minute drive from our house. With Fort Lauderdale as the official host, we have been able to see the excitement over the Super Bowl just minutes from our house.

One of our favorite displays is the large XLIV sign in the heart of Fort Lauderdale beach right off of the famous A1A strip (photograph by Vlad pictured above).

Tonight the New Orleans Saints are taking on the Indianapolis Colts in a game that is sure to have a great match up along with hilarious commercials. We have already asked you all if you coordinate your bag to your team colors when it comes to college football, what about NFL football?

What colors are your outfit consisting of and who are you rooting for tonight?

In just one short hour Super Bowl XLIV will officially commence. While NFL football is not my favorite past time, it is hard to disregard the enormity of the game. For Vlad and I, the weeks and months leading up to the Super Bowl has been following us around. This year’s game is being held at the Miami Dolphins Stadium, a mere 25 minute drive from our house. With Fort Lauderdale as the official host, we have been able to see the excitement over the Super Bowl just minutes from our house.

One of our favorite displays is the large XLIV sign in the heart of Fort Lauderdale beach right off of the famous A1A strip (photograph by Vlad pictured above).

Tonight the New Orleans Saints are taking on the Indianapolis Colts in a game that is sure to have a great match up along with hilarious commercials. We have already asked you all if you coordinate your bag to your team colors when it comes to college football, what about NFL football?

What colors are your outfit consisting of and who are you rooting for tonight?

Every celebrity, athlete, and sports fan has taken over South Florida for the New Orleans Saints taking on the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV. While some are here to go to the game, many are just soaking up the Florida sun and partaking in one of thousands of events be held around South Florida. This truly is the place to be right now!

Kim Kardashian has already shown us her love of Adriana Castro bags, when she carried her Modish Clutch. Last night Kim got dolled up and headed to Prime 112 to dine while debuting an Adriana Castro bag that had not been seen before, the Nina Clutch. The clutch is an oversized envelope style that worked perfectly with Kim’s bright bold printed dress. Not only are we loving this clutch, we are loving Kim’s entire look. Because this is the first we see of the Adriana Castro Nina Clutch and we love Kim Kardashian’s look so much, this is our weekend obsession!

The Nina Clutch will be available in crocodile for $1,495, lizard for $1,160, and python for $945. This is just one more bag and celeb to add to the list of Celebs who love carrying Adriana Castro bags. Email info@adrianacastroonline.com to secure your Nina clutch from the Fall 2010 collection.

Even better is that Adriana Castro has set up a special code for all PurseBlog readers for Spring 2010 bags! Right now you can order Spring bags and receive 30% off. Email: info@adrianacastroonline.com and check Adriana Castro online.

CODE: ACPURSEBLOGSPRING for 30% off (Note: this clutch is not included as it is fall)

Megs wrote about this bag a bit ago, but I couldn’t help but cover it as well. So, earlier today I wrote about the Yves Saint Laurent Yes Large Leather Tote. While writing about this tote, I expressed my concern for its price. Well, the same concern has popped up with this Fendi bag.

Ok, first and foremost, I like seeing a Fendi bag that hasn’t been covered with its logo. I’m over logos. So realizing the bag up for discussion is a Fenid AND you can’t really tell unless you look around the handles makes the bag discussion worthy – at least in my book. This is hands down a really cute shopper but my jaw dropped when I saw the price tag attached. How much would you think this bag was going to cost you?

I really didn’t think the Fendi Twins Woven Raffia Shopper would be more than $1000. Low and behold, it was more than double my guesstimation. This really broke my heart because, frankly, I really wanted it for the upcoming Spring and Summer months.

This sand glazed woven raffia shopper has two black leather top handles and light gold-tone hardware. As previously mentioned, there are designer-embossed details at the handles and whether you would use it or not, a detachable and adjustable shoulder strap. As you’ve heard me say before, I am so glad a large shopper like this has some sort of fastening at the top, in this case, magnetic. How cute would you look carrying this bag to a farmer’s market, to the park, to the library, shopping and maybe even to the pool? The answer: super cute. I just can’t believe how much you’d need to throw down for it. Buy through Net-a-Porter for $2560.

So, tell me… worth the price or not?