2010 March | Coach Purses

We are giving away a Marc by Marc Jacobs Classic Q Hillier Hobo to one of our Facebook Fans! Fan us on Facebook and learn how to enter to win this bag. Ends April 4th, at 10 pm EST.

Fan PurseBlog and PurseForum on Facebook HERE!

I have been meaning to share this with our readers since last September. Like with many other things, the bad habit of procrastination got in the way… in my own way, rather. However, today feels just right.

I must admit to ignorance, because prior to last September, I did not know of this wonderful French documentary. The title plainly reads Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton and offers the viewer intimate insights into the influential fashion genius that is Marc Jacobs. The setting is timed right before the Louis Vuitton Spring Fashion Show in 2007.

The 80+ minute documentary is a must-see for anyone who holds even the slightest interest in Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs or fashion in general. You learn about what drives Marc, the tedious process of designing a whole collection as Louis Vuitton’s creative director and the business of fashion in general.

Fortunately, the DVD is pieced up on Youtube for your instant viewing pleasure in 9 parts. While it is readily available on YT, I still urge you to order your copy from Amazon though, because a. you’ll get much better quality and b. don’t rob the creators of their deserved sales. It’s a no-brainer, really.

While you wait for the DVD to ship, here’s direct linkage to the nine parts on Youtube. Enjoy and we’d love to hear your feedback below!

Part #1
Part #2
Part #3
Part #4
Part #5
Part #6
Part #7
Part #8
Part #9

I am extremely picky when it comes to exotic handbags. I’ve seen so many gorgeous bags yet, at the same time, I’ve seen so many horrible bags. You really cannot skimp on attention to detail when it involves exotic skins. As I am sure many of you already know, sloppy craftsmanship results in flaking scales which is perhaps one of the biggest handbag no-nos out there. Luckily there are several design houses who continue to hit home run after home run with exotics.

Leave it to Carlos Falchi to put together the most amazing hobo that I’ve been obsessing over all day.

The Carlos Falchi Sueded-Python Slouch Hobo is the perfect combination of fashion, functionality and amazing execution. Like hobos in general, if not careful, exotic hobos can look like they were constructed haphazardly. Not the case here. The bark (brown) sueded python skin hugs the shape and style of this bag perfectly. Gunmetal hardware and a leather top handle (12″ drop) offer a bit of contrast to this neutral bag. I love the zip top with the tonal tie but even better yet, light blue suede lining. What a gorgeous pairing of colors. The bag is slouchy, smooshy and one that would go from day to night without much effort. Bravo Mr. Falchi, bravo! Buy through Bergdorf Goodman for $2875.

In grade school we had to do a project on Joan of Arc. I don’t remember any specifics other than if you dressed up you got extra credit. And being the type A personality that I am, extra credit was just about the best thing ever. Any way to make a grade go over 100% or get multiple check plus plus or A ++ had my name all over it. And give me a sticker that says “You’re a Star!“, whew, that was like Christmas morning. So, I didn’t just dress up. My mom and I drove all over town to find the most authentic-looking Joan of Arc ensemble. I had a metal chain vest on while I presented, and it was awesome.

All I can’t think about when I see this Christian Louboutin bag is that day back in 3rd grade. Granted the Christian Louboutin Carillon Quilted Clutch is not made of metal, rather silver quilted leather with sequined disc embellishment. This effect from afar appears like pounded circular metal and I love it.

Of course there is the shoe-embellished clasp fastening at the top of the bag (so un Joan of Arc like). On the inside you will find red grosgrain lining and a pouch pocket. Some may say this piece looks futuristic, but I am reminded of my project and it almost appears a bit industrial. Bottega Veneta once made a Knot Clutch of metal, but this has a different vibe. Even close up, while you can recognize it is leather and sequins, the circular pattern the sequins are arranged in adds a special touch. What can I say? Kind of in love. Buy through Net A Porter for $1,155.

It wouldn’t be Gossip Girl if everyone wasn’t betraying everyone else, and Monday night’s episode was a full-on fit of hotel-stealing, whore-hiring, pill-popping dirty trickery. There was also a side of future boyfriend-stealing at the end, but that’ll mostly have to wait for next week.

For an hour of television that included all of those things, however, startlingly little actually happened. There was a fashion show with a rogue model (been there, done that), an embarrassing run in with a prostitute (that too), an accidentally wasted blond with a lot of fake hair (also that, but this time it wasn’t Serena). Jenny went back to work with Eleanor Waldorf, that annoying model chick came back, and Chuck and Blair are going to have to start scheming again (I’m ok with that part). Gossip Girl was back to its old tricks, and when I say that, I really mean old: I feel like we had seen half of this episode already.

Let’s begin with the issue of Little Jenny Humphrey and the fashion show. Eleanor Waldorf is looking to launch a diffusion line with a Salt Lake City-based department store, and Rufus somehow manages to wedge Jenny back into the operation, despite the fact that Jenny ran away from home the last time that she insinuated herself into the fashion crowd. Rufus apparently doesn’t remember that, and now that he has married in to money, Eleanor Waldorf takes his calls and does favors for him, like giving his delinquent daughter a temporary job.

Similarly, that terrible model Agnes that barely anyone even remembers is back and pretending to be sober, so Eleanor casts her in the show that she’s putting together to impress the head of Cronwell’s department store and Jenny apologizes for what she did to her last season (I can’t even remember what it was. I really didn’t foresee the show wanting to revisit that plot line, it wasn’t even good the first time around) while fitting her for a dress. Agnes pretends to make nice when she finds out that Jenny knows a dealer, and she cons Jenny in to bringing the remaining drugs to the show to pull a prank on Damian, who’s trying to get them back post-breakup.

Pardon me, for a moment, while we talk about how preposterous all of this is. Agnes has been out of the game for a year, she’s too old and girl-next-door beautiful to be hired as a model for a runway show. The fashion industry likes odd-looking Eastern European teenagers, and if you don’t like it, take it up with Miuccia Prada. Second of all, no one would care if she was sober. They likely wouldn’t care if she was actually drunk and/or high during the fitting, as long as she stood still, fit into the samples and didn’t puke on anyone.

The fashion industry does not care about the health or well-being of models, unless one happens to be the face of multiple brands and and is subsequently photographed taking illegal drugs (and even then, Kate Moss still gets more work that almost anyone). Eleanor Waldorf would not be on a one-woman crusade against junkie models, I think her character on the show has made that clear already.

Speaking of things that Eleanor wouldn’t actually do: while all of the Jenny/Agnes drama is going on in the background, Eleanor is talking to Blair about who should attend the show, and she asserts that the normal crowd of snobs just won’t cut it – the CEO of Cronwell’s wants to see regular girls there! College students, even!

I’ve got to call shenanigans on this part, too. The whole point of doing a cheap diffusion line is to give people in Middle America that shop at low-end department stores the feeling that they’re buying a little bit of big-city snobbery at a reasonable price. Having a bunch of socialites and fashion people show up to see the cheap clothes is exactly what the CEO of a JC Penney-esque store would want because it helps drum up media interest in the line and lends credibility to the clothes. That is how you get people to line up in anticipation on the day that the collection debuts in stores. Take a lesson from Target.

Anyway, because Blair doesn’t have any friends, she hires Brandeis (remember her?) and 30 of her closest prostitute friends to act like fresh-faced NYU freshman at the fashion show. However, a problem arises because Middle American CEOs from conservative states love prostitutes. And not just the heterosexual variety! Blair really should have seen this coming, but the Cronwell’s CEO sees a rentboy that he always “parties” with at the show and gets all huffy and holier-than-thou about the inclusion of prostitutes in the audience, and Brandeis tips off Blair as to which prostitute he might be famililar – surprise, it’s a dude!

Obviously, Blair uses this information to blackmail the CEO into buying her mother’s line, but then he gets all indignant about not wanting to use Eleanor Waldorf’s name on the clothes. Again, shenanigans! It’s the high-end designer’s name that creates the excitement over the cheap clothes; if they don’t put her name on it, then it’s just another nameless house brand that no one cares about. Not to mention that they wouldn’t have had a fashion show until the deal was already signed anyway; the entire thing was utterly groan-worthy, except for the CEO being a secret lover of The Gays.

What went on backstage was slightly more interesting (but only slightly). Agnes the Bad Model gets a friend of hers to plunk a few pills into Jenny’s post-show celebratory champaign, and since Jenny looks like she weighs approximately 86 lbs (and four or five of those pounds are yellow hair extensions), she’s stumbling and slurring in no time.

They throw her into a taxi and take her to a club to try to find a guy to date-rape her, and sure enough, they find several that are willing. Nate sees her leave the show, however, and uses the powers of uber-creepy social networking tool Foursquare to find her and save the day just as she is about to be dragged home with some douchey-looking finance guy. Afterward, Jenny suddenly remembers that she used to have a crush on Nate, and she begins plotting malignantly to break up his relationship with Serena.

On to things that we care about even less: wasn’t it Chris Rock that said that all there is to a relationship is finding someone with which you enjoy eating and having sex? That’s apparently all that Dan and Vanessa are doing together, and they like it just fine until Serena makes Vanessa feel like a prude in a relationship rut. Nevermind that it’s impossible to be in a rut after two weeks (and thankfully, Dan mentioned this point) – Serena undermines Vanessa into a full-on panic that causes her to dress up as Grace Kelly from Rear Window and serve Dan some kind of elaborate, ill-conceived dinner.

Dan doesn’t like the dinner and Rufus interrupts and stays for flan, making the whole thing awkward to watch, not to mention unentertaining. I don’t care what Dan and Vanessa do on their own, and when they’re together? Even less so. This relationship strife was so obviously manufactured that I wish that they had been left out of the episode entirely. In fact, I’d trade the both of them to get Eric back. Where did he even go?

Now, finally, to the real story. Chuck is sitting around his penthouse, daintily sipping espresso when the hotel’s security staff comes to oust him from his apartment for good. Elizabeth comes marching in soon afterward, expressing her regrets, and then Uncle Jack and his terrible hairpiece show up to rub a little salt in the wound. Chuck storms out and meets with his mother several times (once outside of a commandeered SUV, once down by the waterfront, once at night in a place that I can’t remember.) She claims to love Jack and to not be Chuck’s mother after all – the first part is pathetic and the second part is a lie, but Chuck believes her because, hey, it sounds like the truth, given the circumstances.

I’m not entirely sure that I’m clear on all the machinations that went in to the hotel heist, but Elizabeth tries her best to make her face move and claims that she didn’t do it for money. She appears to mean it because she apparently asked Jack to pick her or the hotel and he picked the hotel, which she then signs over to him and then buys a plane ticket to Switzerland. He tries to pay her off to get her to stay, presumably to further Chuck’s torture and force him to make his pained catfish face some more, but she takes what little of a high road she has left, refuses the money and leaves town.

Blair and Chuck vow to give Jack a war (side note – why is the guy that plays Jack such a bad actor on this show? He’s great as Quinn on Dexter. Is the dialog really that bad on Gossip Girl?), which is absolutely what I’ve been waiting to hear. The duo had lost some of their malignant spark, and I’m anxious to see them take someone down. Unfortunately, it appears that Blair is going to try to do that by secretly sleeping with Jack, and that’s such a terrible plan that I’m having a hard time even conceptualizing what would make her think that it’s a good idea.

Chuck complained that a lawsuit to get the hotel back would take months, but I don’t think that that’s a compelling reason to try to get it back in other ways. What’s a few months of corporate litigation in Chuck’s world? He can work on other business ventures in the meantime, and I can’t imagine that the papers Chuck signed would hold up in court since his lawyer was one of the people that was in on the swindle. Come on, Chuck and Blair. You guys are smarter than this.

I want to like the Mulberry Cheetah Haircalf Bayswater Tote so badly. I love questionably tacky things, alternative-color animal print, and 80s revival. I love a statement bag that will make everyone look twice. I love being That Girl that will carry or wear stuff that some people don’t understand.

Despite all of that, I just can’t get on board with what’s going on here. The idea of magenta cheetah print is not necessarily one to which I’m opposed (in fact, I rather like it), but the execution on this bag is just not what I would expect from the fine folks at Mulberry.

The issue that I have with this bag is primarily one of proportion. The Bayswater is a fairly large bag, which is usually to its credit, but the scale of the pattern is wrong for the bag. The cheetah print is tiny, and it only looks smaller when shown in such large quantity on a bag with fairly clean lines. Just like plus-sized people are always advised to stay away from tiny patterns (which is a good rule for anyone larger than a size 2, from personal experience), this diminutive print only serves to remind us of just how much of it we’re looking at.

If the scale had been larger and the overall effect a little bit more graphic, this bag could have been an awesome neo-80s accessory to pair with otherwise boring outfits. As it is, the design just doesn’t work. Oh, and the material – fuzzy bags freak me out, I’ll leave it at that. Buy through ShopBop for $2650.

I want to like the Mulberry Cheetah Haircalf Bayswater Tote so badly. I love questionably tacky things, alternative-color animal print, and 80s revival. I love a statement bag that will make everyone look twice. I love being That Girl that will carry or wear stuff that some people don’t understand.

Despite all of that, I just can’t get on board with what’s going on here. The idea of magenta cheetah print is not necessarily one to which I’m opposed (in fact, I rather like it), but the execution on this bag is just not what I would expect from the fine folks at Mulberry.

The issue that I have with this bag is primarily one of proportion. The Bayswater is a fairly large bag, which is usually to its credit, but the scale of the pattern is wrong for the bag. The cheetah print is tiny, and it only looks smaller when shown in such large quantity on a bag with fairly clean lines. Just like plus-sized people are always advised to stay away from tiny patterns (which is a good rule for anyone larger than a size 2, from personal experience), this diminutive print only serves to remind us of just how much of it we’re looking at.

If the scale had been larger and the overall effect a little bit more graphic, this bag could have been an awesome neo-80s accessory to pair with otherwise boring outfits. As it is, the design just doesn’t work. Oh, and the material – fuzzy bags freak me out, I’ll leave it at that. Buy through ShopBop for $2650.

Oh, Kell on Earth. We hardly knew ye. Last night was the season finale of everyone’s favorite fashion PR reality show, and unlike the cheap dramatic ploys used by shows that we all love to hate (Real Housewives, I’m looking at you), the finale focused on the cast members doing their jobs and how much Kelly Cutrone’s employees love and appreciate their boss.

If you had told me before this show started that it was going to be about likable people doing their everyday jobs, I would have told you that it would never work – reality television needs to give its viewers a good dose of schadenfreude or everyone gets bored. Somehow, though, Cutrone & Co. pulled it off. The show made me want to move to New York, work at People’s Revolution, and buy a DKNY Cozy sweater (although that last part is just a side effect of Monday night’s episode and not the series as a whole).

The last episode of the season (though hopefully not of the series!) found the ladies and gentlemen of People’s Revolution planning both a guerilla video shoot for a DKNY sweater called the “Cozy” and a guerilla surprise party for Kelly’s birthday. Surprisingly, both looked like a lot of fun. These folks may work long hours for limited pay, but at least their jobs involve things that can be described as “guerilla” from time to time. We should all be so lucky.

The idea for the shoot was to have an army of Power Girls (here, represented by models) in different-colored Cozies (which you can apparently wear a nearly infinite number of different ways) marching through the streets of New York City, looking awesome and privileged and like you want to buy whatever it is that makes them look that way. Kelly chose to go sans permits, so filming while people were milling around and traffic was passing through provided a few problems.

Staging an impromptu shoot in the middle of New York didn’t cause nearly the chaos that I figured it would, however, and the limited security that Kelly brought along (it apparently made a REALLY BIG DIFFERENCE that they were Irish-American) managed to get the cops off their backs long enough to film in front of iconic landmarks like the giant US flag on Wall Street and the Washington Square Park arch. The sweaters looked great, the shoot idea fit DKNY’s ultra-NYC brand image, and we got to see Kelly at her best – a PR coup all around.

What I liked most about this part of the episode, however, was Kelly’s interaction with her daughter. Ava and a friend came to see her mom when they were shooting near home, and Kelly talked about how it was important to her that her daughter saw women working together, creating positive things, and being good role models. If all moms thought so intelligently about how their children perceive the women around them, then the world would be a better place. I, for one, hope that Kelly has more kids – she should be raising as many as possible, based on everything we’ve seen about Ava.

The other half of the guerilla episode was perpetrated by Andrew and Skinner in an attempt to throw Kelly a surprise birthday party at the Carlyle Hotel. As you could probably guess, Kelly is hard to surprise because she has a finely tuned BS meter and doesn’t hide in an office, away from her employees all day, so they had to be extra surreptitious in planning the venue, catering and guest list (no interns allowed!)

They also had to be careful to hide their intentions from the place that they were going to try cake samples, since most bakeries only do tasting sessions for weddings. Obviously, that meant that they had to pretend that they were engaged, which maybe wasn’t entirely believable since he was wearing a skirt the entire time. I’m sure that there’s a male skirt-enthusiast out there somewhere that has married a lady before, however, plus Andrew had gotten down on one knee on a street corner to give her an “engagement ring” on the way to the tasting, so they got to gorge themselves on free cake anyway.

Problems arose, however, when it was time to decide what the bakery should write on the cake. Since they had claimed to be looking for a wedding cake, having them write “Happy Birthday Kelly” wasn’t really an option if the ruse was to be sustained. Ultimately, they went with “Congratulations Mr. & Ms. Mukamal” and Kelly smeared it out when presented with the cake at her party.

Actually getting Kelly in the door was also an issue. Since she has a mind of her own, she kind of wanted to bail on the cocktail hour that she thought she was going to (I usually get the urge to bail last-minute on stuff like that too, so I was nervous for a moment that she actually would), but Robyn did a bang-up job of keeping her out of the (secretly empty) office and herding her, swag bags in tow, toward the Carlyle.

She was a little early, but things mostly went off without a hitch and Kelly was so surprised and happy that she actually cried a little bit and didn’t even make herself go outside. The party itself may or may not have been set up by producers (thanks to Real Housewives, I’m forever skeptical of “parties” on Bravo reality shows), but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Kelly didn’t know about it and that Andrew, Skinner and the rest of the People’s Rev crew have a genuine affection for Kelly that not many employees have for the higher-ups.

The finale (and indeed the entire season) was sweet without being saccharine, “reality television” without being too dubiously real, and a somewhat honest look at the sometimes glam, oftentimes not-glam side of the fashion world that lots of college girls and gays dream of entering. Kelly Cutrone may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but people with strong personalities rarely are, and I think anyone would be hard-pressed to say that she’s not doing a good job raising both her daughter and her Power Girls (and Boys) in Training.