Coach Purses

You guys, it is the most beautiful day in the history of forever right now. A week ago it was snowing in Georgia, and now it’s 70 degrees and perfect, without a cloud in the sky. Come lunch time, I am going to be violating many a fashion rule by wearing white and flip flops long before Easter while I sit on a blanket at the University of Georgia’s leafy campus and eat a packed lunch. I will have a picnic with myself and my laptop, so it will be like all of you are joining me, right?

Ok, so, the weirdness of working at home aside, this is the weather that makes me want to put on my best spring purchases thus far and find some grass. I generally hate the outdoors, but for a few precious weeks before Georgia’s heat gets oppressive and insufferable, I can’t help but enjoy the gleaming promise of a new season. The only thing that could make it better would be having the Jimmy Choo Cecile Woven Bag by my side.

img src=”http://www.purseblog.com/images/2010/03/Jimmy-Choo-Cecile-Woven-Bag.jpg” alt=”” title=”Jimmy Choo Cecile Woven Bag” width=”527″ height=”339″ class=”aligncenter wp-image-21502″ />

Bringing this bag to a picnic is probably not the wisest decision unless you’re very careful to keep it on the blanket and far from the food, but I’ve never been that good of a decision-maker (or particularly careful), so I’d probably do it in an instant. And with the basket-mimicking white woven leather and preponderance of shiny gold hardware, this bag is screaming for its turn in the sun – direct lighting is where this bag is going to look its best.

Don’t get me wrong, this bag would also be a champ under artificial light, but when a bag makes such a clear bid to be paired with the bright colors of spring and summer, I can’t help but hope that it gets at least a few moments outside with a fastidious owner that will make sure that the bag remains unsullied by the unpleasant realities of outdoor living. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find my picnic blanket. Buy through Net-a-Porter for $1495.

Programming note: We didn’t forget about Gossip Girl! Our recap of the show’s triumphant return to the airwaves will appear tomorrow, and every week on Wednesdays until Kell On Earth has its finale.

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: Kelly Cutrone’s baby daddy is HAWT. I’m not a big fan of trendy spelling, but the normative spelling of the word doesn’t just quite have the feel that I’m going after, and this is a sentiment that needs to be communicated correctly.

Beyond hot foreigners, however, this episode of Kell on Earth had a lot to offer us: a Flintstones fashion show, a trip to an “adult” toy store to buy supplies for her employees (and for her doctor’s receptionist, for some reason), the most awkward gay blind date in the history of humanity, a nearly apocalyptic tequila shortage, and Kelly Cutrone wearing makeup. The last one is obviously the most shocking, and that’s why this show is great.

Dumb Stephanie got fired and half of the team went to London Fashion Week the day after I had my tonsils out, and then Bravo sadly gave us a week without the People’s Rev crew last week, so it’s been a while since we last spoke. Fret not, however – Dumb Stephanie is still fired and the team is still in London. The more things change, they more they stay the same.

Before they can come back Stateside, Kell had to produce Jeremy Scott’s oddly brilliant Flintstones-on-crack runway show, but of course, the real money shots were watching her beat the lighting dude into submission and watching Emily and Robyn snatch gift bags out of the hands of would-be bagsnatchers. I could watch an hour of that every week – it does not get old.

Speaking of money shots (how often do I get to say that? Let’s wallow in it for a moment), when Kelly and the crew got back to New York City, we got to take a brief detour to a sex shop. Kelly’s doctor’s receptionist asked her to go buy her a vibrator because she was too embarrassed to do it herself and Kelly “looked like the sort of person that would have a vibrator.” Which, I guess, is true. Come to think of it.

Because Kelly is awesome, she went and picked one up for her post-haste (it was a nice one, too), and also asked her office minions if they needed anything from the the toy store before she went. Indeed, Tandrew (brilliant. nickname.) needed – rather, hoped that he would need – some lube because he was going to go on a blind date, and cross your fingers for him, was really hoping to get laid.

We don’t know if he did or not, but I’m going to say that it’s doubtful at best. Not only did he proposed a game of dirty word association (not on the first date, Tandrew. All the boys are going to think you’re a slut), but before they could even get properly drunk to have sex with strangers, Kelly and Glam Goth Gay Andrew showed up to party crash. Tandrew seemed upset, but it appeared as though fresh faces were the only thing that was going to save that trainwreck. Those two were not meant to be.

Tandrew wasn’t the only gay People’s Rev employee named Andrew to have romantic problems, however. In a brilliant little cut-in, Kelly and non-tan Andrew hit on a random dude on the street, assuming he was gay. And really, it didn’t seem like that bad of an assumption, since he looked like a skinnier version of Anderson Cooper’s ultra gay boyfriend (don’t believe me? Google it. Ben Maisani.) Kelly was wing-manning her hardest, but even she can’t turn a guy gay on Andrew’s whim, and he biked off into the sunset. Probably on a fixed-gear. Hipster.

While Kelly was shopping for sex toys and hitting on gays for her assistant, some infighting was going on back at the office. Smart Stephanie (who shall now be referred to simply by her proper name, since The Stephanie That Shall Not Be Named is now gone) is getting bogged down in all the stuff that’s expected at her, and Emily appears to be a yeller.

I had a hard time figuring out who was at fault here, and I’ve finally decided that they were both a little wrong. Stephanie seems like she might focus more on how busy she is than on eliminating tasks from her to-do list, which is a problem that a lot of the young women I’ve worked with have had, and Emily flew off the handle at her really quickly. It’s a rare work situation where yelling actually helps anything get done, and it’s definitely not helpful when someone is already panicking.

That’s probably what you get when you staff your entire company with people under 30, however – efficiency and professionalism kind of go down the tubes. It seems like People’s Rev could do with a couple more Mother Hen figures to settle everyone when the natives start getting restless over nothing – Kelly can’t always be there to tell everyone to chill the eff out. But hey, people under 30 with limited experience are cheaper to higher, and fashion is as high-paying of an industry as a lot of people would have you think. Something has to give, and I think we all just saw what it was.

The whole thing kind of reminded me of Office Space – when you have eight bosses checking on you and telling you they need things and that they want their needs to be your priority, it’s overwhelming. Stephanie probably shouldn’t have run outside to flip out on the phone with Kelly, but Emily also seemed completely uninterested in actually managing her employee. But isn’t that a situation that we’ve all seen in our own offices?

Which just brings me back to what I always think while watching this show – this isn’t The Bachelor, these are real lives, and that’s why the show is ultimately compelling. Kelly cares enough about her employees to buy them organic lube and listen to them crying on the phone, even when none of that is a boss’s traditional job.

She obviously wants the best for her employees and hopes that she can help them advance in their careers. When you consider that alongside her interaction with her daughter during the photo shoot for her book cover, the whole show had an unexpectedly girl-power bent to it. On the night following the first time a woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, it seemed oddly appropriate and it warmed the cockles of my little feminist heart. How often does reality TV manage to do that?

A little while back I came across a Valentino bag that was discussion worthy. Don’t get me wrong, EVERY bag is discussion worthy, but there are some that I feel people would be likely to offer their opinions on more than others.

So, here we are again with another another bag that I’d love to hear back from you on. The Diane Von Furstenberg Peggy Wrap Bag has several qualities that I really like while at the same time I am not sure if the bag simply misses the mark.

At first glance, I wanted to like the bag. I saw suede. I saw studs, but not just any studs, metal paillettes. Initially, I was pleased. But then I kept looking and wondered: is this bag actually any good?

Like many handbag lovers, I’ve been more interested in Diane von Furstenberg bags after the release of the Stephanie Bag. That bag was an instant sensation and I’ve been waiting for more like it ever since. However, I think this bag is off. The materials used are fantastic, but when combined, they seem to fall short. Although I understand the adjustable, wraparound buttoned strap, again, it seems off. Everything works against one another, not with one another. This bag, if done correctly would be fabulous to tote around during the day as it would be for certain nights out. But, there is something that just doesn’t work. What do you think? Buy through Shopbop for $950.

The Boston Bag shape is a highly used and coveted shape year after year. Gucci has made the term Boston Bag famous, but it is not just Gucci that designs a bag of this shape. And this Spring designers are implementing this easy day bag shape in various ways.

We simply do not talk about Salvatore Ferragamo enough on PurseBlog. But Ferragamo bags deserve more praise. I do not see them popping up on websites as often as I would like. Can the buyers change that, please? Ferragamo is known for high quality craftsmanship. The designs may fly too far under the radar for many though, which is why we don’t see more Ferragamo bags.

Right when I saw the Salvatore Ferragamo Mediterraeno Companion Bag I thought of two things: 1) This is a great price for a quality leather bag and 2) I wonder if Amanda will love or hate this red color. You see, Amanda is very picky about the color red on a handbag. She loves red, but not orangey-reds, and not many other reincarnations. She needs the perfect red. Does this Ferragamo bag hit the mark?

I don’t have much to say about the bag itself, as it does not need much explanation. The textured, pebbled calfskin leather adorns the outside of the bag while their is nylon inside lining. The silvertone hardware is Ferragamo signature, but is rather simple so it leaves us without much to say about it. There are double top handles with a 5″ drop and metal feet. Dimensions are 12½”W X 9½”H X 6½”D, which is similar in size to the Louis Vuitton Speedy 30 (even a tad larger). I am most interested to hear what Amanda thinks about the color. And the price, well it is amazing for a full Italian leather bag. Buy via Saks for $850.

This week, dear readers, Project Runway had one of those oh-so-sublime “alternative materials” challenges. Our top ten (really, they were celebrating that? Top ten is not even making it halfway…) designers were sent to a hardware store by Princess Michael Kors and told to gather enough random objects to somehow make clothing, but then when judging came around, the judges couldn’t decide if they really wanted the designers to turn something hard into something soft or not. Some designers got chastised for it, others were applauded.

Huge, annoying judging inconsistencies aside (but not too far aside – we’ll get to them later), it was nice to see a non-fabric challenge, since those appear to be a fairly accurate bellwether of who will survive and who will eventually be auf’d. In the world of Project Runway, if you can’t make a dress out of sheet metal, you shan’t be long for this world. Likewise, it’s the Tin Man catastrophes that we all enjoy the most, and it’s not as fun when the designers are merely screwing up regular fabric. This episode was great because it separated the real contenders from the straight guys, and it was about time that that happened.

The challenge was as straightforward as it sounds: make an outfit, any outfit, out of materials from a hardware store. Designers were also supposed to make an accessory, but it didn’t seem like the judges really cared about what they made as long as one was present. With those kinds of parameters, it baffles me that so many of these fools decided it would be a good idea to make a metal dress, despite the fact that none of them have ever worked with metal. Hardware stores have lots of non-metal options: drop cloths, rope, tarp, garbage bags, electrical tape, you get the idea. Even if the designers had been set on metal, there are pliable metal options: screen and mesh, anyone?

Indeed, the top three dresses were all from designers that had forgone sheet metal for materials that weren’t quite so obvious. The judges praised Mila for her use of plastic paint tray liners in white and black, cut into small pieces to make a plastic dress that improbably had a lot of movement. I have a problem with Mila’s design sense, however, and it’s not as a result of the mod colorblocking that she uses in every outfit. On the contrary, the thing that always sticks with me is that her outfits tend to not be particularly flattering. Her model looked completely square through the waist, which I probably would have attributed to the difficult materials if the exact same thing hadn’t happened with the nude/peach jersey dress that Mila made a few weeks back.

I don’t think her model is square, so the issue appears to be with Mila herself. Even her challenge-winning track suit didn’t have a defined shape, and as much of a point of view as Mila might have, no one really wants to look like any geometric shape except an hourglass. If she can’t find a waistline eventually, I think that she might make herself vulnerable to eventual elimination. Her plastic outfit was cool on its own, but her schtick may be wearing thing, despite Nina Garcia’s apparent decision that she shall be the eventual winner.

It was a good week for people with Serious Fashion Hair, however, because Mini Mila…err, Maya…was also in the top three. She made a wire-frame jacket out of (if I remember correctly) the cording for miniblinds, and it was utterly brilliant. Put that jacket in an editorial in V Magazine, and I’m all over it. That jacket? That jacket was The Truth. Her dress, made out of metal screen, wasn’t bad either – you wouldn’t have guessed that it was metal, and the key necklace that she made as her accessory was something that I’d buy in a heartbeat. It was modern, pretty, and still a little hard – it may have been my favorite look of the challenge.

Maya didn’t win, however, because Jay managed to somehow make leather pants out of layer upon layer of bias-cut garbage bags, and really, that’s a freakin’ miracle of sewing machine ingenuity if I’ve ever seen one. Not only did he make leather pants, but he made a corset with ruffles (also made out of garbage bags, but this time with blue masking tape accents) and a woven belt that no one would have ever guessed wasn’t leather. Jay probably did the best job of utterly transforming his materials from something mundane to something spectacular, and for that, he was awarded the richly deserved win.

But that last sentence? That’s where things went a wee bit off the rails in the judging peanut gallery. Jay was rewarded for turning his garbage bags into something that did not at all resemble their original state, but for doing the same thing, Anthony was put in the bottom three. He made a soft, flowered cocktail dress out of metal mesh and some sort of pink lining, and his expertly curved metal belt was easily the best use of the solid material on this week’s runway.

The judges didn’t like it, though. It didn’t look enough like it came from a hardware store. Um, excuse me, but was that the point of the challenge? If it was, I totally missed it. Jay missed it too, but instead of nearly losing, he won. The dress wasn’t particularly innovative, but are leather leggings innovative? No. If they want innovation to be the primary judging metric, they should use it for everyone, not just people that make something pretty out of ugly materials.

In challenges where regular fabric is used, innovation is important. In a situation like this, where the innovation should be inherent in the materials used, I don’t think there’s anything to be celebrated in taking a crazy material and making something crazy out of it (Emilio, I’m looking at you). Anthony made a dress that a lot of women would love to wear, and he did it out of the same stuff that covers my screen door, and he shouldn’t have been in the bottom. I wouldn’t have necessarily put him in the top, but he should have been safe.

I can’t say the same for the two others that joined him in the bottom three. Anthony was ultimately safe (and he skittered off the runway like he was afraid that the judges would change their minds if he stood there too long), and it was only Jesse and Emilio standing there with their sad little outfits. Well, calling Emilio’s string (literally) bikini an “outfit” might be just a tad charitable.

You see, it started out as a dress and went off the rails from there, because he didn’t have enough string or washers (the string was woven with washers, I’m not making that up) to cover his model’s butt. Ironically, after he ditched all the material between her chest and pelvis, he STILL didn’t bother to give her enough of a garment to obscure her rear end from popular view. He lied on the runway and said that he had purposefully made a bikini to stand out from all the dresses, which may have been the line that saved his (partially covered) behind.

That’s right, it was Jesse’s night to leave, and not a moment too soon. He’s never come across as particularly talented or particularly interesting, and we’ve seen enough of him. He made a dress that looked like a Hershey Kiss in both shape and material, and although it may have been less terrible than Emilio’s string bikini, I think that we all know that Emilio is a more talented designer. Since we’ve seen a half dozen looks from each designer, I’m ok with the judges auf’ing people with their body of work considered – it’s only fair.

I would entertain the argument, however, that the bikini was bad enough to mitigate any pretty dress Emilio had ever made in his entire life – luckily for him, he had the presence of mind to lie. He’ll do well in the fashion industry.

If you’re like me, you can’t help but love getting a sneak peek at the season’s best bags before they come out. That can be hard to do something, but luckily Net-a-Porter has devoted the current edition of their weekly online magazine to showing their customers Spring’s best bags and trends. They’ve also got mini-features on PurseBlog favorites Nancy Gonzalez and Alexander Wang, in addition to lots of gorgeous shots of bags that have yet to hit stores. What are you waiting for? Take a look at their magazine.

The gifted Venice Hobo makes another appearance and bleeds.

As my fellow recapper Richard Lawson of Gawker said on Twitter last night, two new episodes of Real Housewives in one night is basically my D-Day. Luckily for me, nothing happened on Real Housewives of Orange County except Lynne’s kids acting like the two most stereotypical underage drunks in the history of forever, so that simplifies my job a bit.

The Real Housewives of New York City, however, brought it like the camera-hungry famewhores they are. For that, I love them. Sadly, however, it’s been so long since I’ve seen the show that I can’t remember who hates who, and it seems like the housewives themselves are a little confused about it. To make up for that, they’re now just all fighting with each other, and fighting with Bethenny in particular. I guess they’ve all figured out by now that she’s the favorite…can someone remind these women that jealousy isn’t a good look?

But before we get into that, we have to send our Orange County housewives tottering off into the sunset with their drunk children and awful husbands and various plastic and/or silicone body parts. Let’s say both hello and goodbye, after the jump.

It was the end of a season (an era?) in Orange County, and not a minute too soon. Exactly two moderately interesting things happened at the party that took up the entire episode: first, Tamra had a screaming match with Simon in a limo before the end-of-the-season get together and told him that he wanted a divorce. Not exactly a surprise, since we already knew that Simon had filed for divorce. Stupid TV lead times, they ruin all the surprises! Second, Lynne’s aforementioned hot mess daughters showed up hammered.

Let’s talk about the drunk teenagers first. They weren’t drunk when they left the house, they got that way in the limo with their parents present, although Lynne says that they were doing it all sneaky-like at the other end of the seat. Right. That just means that Lynne was high on whatever it is that she’s always on, and her slack-jawed husband was probably distracted by a shiny object or trying to remember how to spell his own name or something.

They got to the party and the girls proceeded to bust into the place like it was an underage club and pout when their mom wouldn’t let them continue to drink. Raquel got irritated and blew that popsicle stand, probably in search of a cheeseburger (I know that’s what I always want to do after a few cocktails), and then Alexa was That Girl. You know the one – she’s already drunk, sitting out on the curb, blubbering into her handbag about god knows what when you’re just pulling up to the club at 11:00. And then something magical happens, either real or imagined, and she’s ready to party again. There’s no explaining it, but one thing is for sure: you DO. NOT. WANT. to be that girl. Alexa is going to be That Girl for the rest of her life. Blame Lynne. Lynne didn’t appear to be overly concerned about any of this, but then again, it’s hard to tell after the facelift.

When That Girl grows up, she becomes Tamra, who also spent most of the party crying, but for a totally legitimate reason. Her life is screwed up, her husband sucks, and she’s finally unable to keep both of those facts below the surface anymore. Simon supervised her while she got dressed, berated her over every dress she chose, and then threw some bowling trip with her kids in her face on the way to the party.

But Tamra surprised me. Instead of being a nonsensical mess when she finally sat in the corner to talk about her problems with Vicki (while her husband was telling everyone else at the other side of the room how great they were doing), she was everything that housewives are contractually obligated not to be – self-aware, contrite, realistic. She understood that Simon used her kids against her and that his hatred for Vicki was just misplaced rage at her desire for independence, and she was able to articulate it effectively while sobbing in public. Is Tamra a smart person in disguise? Can we give her her own show to find out?

In the end, however, that was all that happened. No one else did anything interesting. Gretchen and Slade aren’t engaged, Vicki and Donn are still improbably the sanest couple on the show, and Alexis and Alpha Douche Jim are still the worst advertisement ever for Christianity. Possibly for all of organized religion. I hope that they take up some sort of missionary cause in a third world country and we never, ever have to see them again.

On to something fresh – well, maybe not fresh, but different than Orange County. The New York housewives wasted absolutely no time getting down to business – they were brawling from the jump off last night, and they continued to argue for an hour straight about who was fake, who was real, and who was going to pick up the check. Seriously – the check. It matters a lot to these women. Bethenny and LuAnne got in a fight at a Hamptons bar over whether or not Bethenny should have paid for LuAnne’s surfing lesson a year ago (she shouldn’t have, LuAnne is a moron), and then they got in a fight over Bethenny’s snarky comments, which was followed almost immediately by her calling LuAnne a “dumb drag queen” in the private interviews, which was so brilliant that it made my entire life. I am going to be calling everyone I know a dumb drag queen for at least a week. Maybe longer.

There were also some issues with Ramona on a boat, which she apparently just rented to create a captive audience to hawk her jewelry business. People seemed miffed and Ramona cried, but then they took tequila shots out of wine glasses and moved on to talking smack about Bethenny, who wasn’t present because she and Jill now hate each other.

Jill says that Bethenny was rude and nasty to her in a phone message, which is probably true. Bethenny said that Jill is a meddling, fight-picking mean girl, which is also probably true. There was a lot of Bethenny-bashing in this show, however, and the more that it went on, the more the real reason became clear – these women are practically choking on their jealousy over her.

Bethenny has had two books on the New York Times bestseller list, she has a nationally distributed liquor brand, people actually like her. She’s winning the series thus far – she’s the most effective of the famewhores. LuAnne made fun of her for pulling up to the bar in a SkinnyGirl branded car, but Bethenny made a very prescient point that seemed to go over LuAnne’s head – Bethenny is making BANK because of it.

It’ll be interesting to see if Bethenny holds out for the full season or quits the show for her new spinoff halfway through, but seeing all these adults so absolutely green with envy will probably get a little old. Or maybe it won’t – maybe they’ll spend every episode duking it out, and I’ll love Real Housewives all over again. One thing is clear, however – our New Yorkers definitely beat out the OC tonight.

One question though – where was Alex? I’ve always liked her. More Alex and Bethenny, please! They’re the only ones that I don’t want to punch in the throat.

Today is an exciting day. Well, first of all, almost all Fridays are exciting to me. I don’t care if I have big weekend plans or no weekend plans, I absolutely love Fridays. Don’t you?

In addition to it being Friday, I’m really excited to share something great with you. Bluefly has added more than 3,000 styles to its online store! I started looking through this morning and before I knew it over an hour had gone by and I had waaaaaay too many items in my shopping cart. With this great news comes a great selection of what we all love here – HANDBAGS! We’ll be featuring some of our favorite picks, but in the mean time, go ahead, treat yourself to something fabulous. CLICK HERE to check out some of the new styles!

In a season where nearly every designer has put out clothes that are classic and subdued, it’s almost a relief to know that Christophe Decarnin is still making clothes for rock stars and supermodels at Balmain. I mean, someone has to, right?

Decarnin’s collection would look aggressively glam in almost any context, but the effect is only magnified a thousandfold when juxtaposed with the somber browns and midcentury shapes of many of the season’s other high-profile collection. Where others were doing ostrich leather handbags and tailored suiting, Balmain brought us rich brocade, gold foiling, leather pants and ostentatious furs.

Several recent Balmain signatures, like bold-shouldered, glimmering minidresses, heavily detailed military jackets, and skintight leather made their requisite appearances, but I was most struck by the slightly out-of-territory aspects of the collection. In particular, the gilded brocade jackets paired with skinny pants reminded me think again and again of Keith Richards, and several deep-v belted evening dresses made me wonder who would be so lucky as to wear them on the red carpet. A fitting collection for a culture that has replaced royalty with music and film stars.