Friday: brown Louboutin slingbacks

As if I need an excuse to switch over to a big back-breaking bag, Neimans is enticing me with this YSL Muse bag — and look, for a limited time only, it comes with free personalization!

As you know, I’ve been carrying my teensy weensy Louis Vuitton Onatah bag for a few weeks now, and I’m feeling like I’m Alice in Wonderland and I’ve just gobbled up the cake that says EAT ME. For once in my life I feel too big for my accessories.

I realize that at 14 1/2″ high x 17 3/4″ wide x 6″ deep, this handbag is way bigger than my head. But enough is enough! I can’t deal with having to make Solomonic decisions about what I can carry on any given day: my compact or my lipgloss kit, my BlackBerry or my iPod, my MasterCard or my AmEx… With this bag, I’ll have the compact and the lipgloss, the BlackBerry and the iPod, credit cards galore — and hell, throw in the kitchen sink too!

Technorati Tags: handbag, YSL Muse, big bags

Wednesday: Prada snakeskin peeptoes

Sure, by now you’ve seen the photos of the skirts whimsically spinning like a ceiling fan, and the flared skirts spread out like pansies and flattened under plastic. But let’s discuss the placards at the “Waist Down: Skirts by Miuccia Prada” installation at the Prada Epicenter store in SoHo. Curator Kayoko Ota of Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture “carefully studied” the skirts, says the gazette that’s handed out at the exhibit, “so that each piece is shown in a lucid yet surprising manner.”

Indeed! Now I thoroughly enjoyed the installation — it was like a walk down memory lane, an ode to all the skirts I’ve loved before — but it’s the descriptions that are truly priceless. They read like a fashion writer gone amuck (not that I haven’t been guilty of that before) or maybe an art historian writing earnestly about a fashion show, and I have to say they warmed my heart. (Whether or not you make it to SoHo before May 31, it’s worth picking up the catalog that accompanies it.)

“This design is purposefully made heavy, yet it gives off a very strange sensation and a different attitude when one walks in it,” reads the description of a steel metal mesh skirt from fall/winter 2002.

On a beaded mini from spring/summer 2003: “Even though many corsages are attached, the fabric is held in suspension without a wrinkle, leading many to believe that some secret technique is at work here.”

On a flared skirt decorated with pink organza corsages: “Here the clothing concept is pushed to the very limits of excess yet still remains perfectly wearable — a signature of Prada irony.”

Well, amen to that!

Technorati Tags: Prada, Waist Down installation, skirts

Monday: bronze Manolo D'Orsay heels

There’s something about shopping for undergarments that simply infantilizes you (or perhaps more precisely, to coin a phrase, pre-pubescentilizes you). Doesn’t matter if you’re buying lacy La Perlas — you can’t help but still feel a little Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.

Realizing that I really needed to revamp my under-wardrobe — okay, so some of those lacy La Perlas don’t really provide the best support or coverage — I did some research (the last Neiman Marcus the book said 80% of women wear the wrong bra size!) and all signs pointed to Town Shop, an old-school lingerie store on the Upper West Side. And I do mean old-school. In addition to having been founded over a hundred years ago, the store employed “expert fitters” who seem to be mostly biddies — the kind you can just imagine asking boys who’ve been dragged to the store by their moms to buy pants, “Is it tight in the crotch here?” You know what I’m talking about. Worse, it was the type of store where you couldn’t just browse. You had to be helped. The bras weren’t hanging on racks; they were stashed away in drawers that the likes of you would never be allowed to rummage through on your own.

Suffice it to say I really had to psych myself up to walk in that door. And my instincts were correct. I was overwhelmed by the crowd. Who knew it would be so busy on a rainy Sunday afternoon? People were milling about — including the sundry men who did who knows what at the store — and I could hear one fitter asking a customer loudly, “Honey, are you sure you think you’re a 34C?”

Just what I needed — someone questioning my cup size. I instantly flashed back to the moment when my mother insisted we had to go shopping for a training bra. Oh, the sheer horror of it. A woman approached me with a clipboard, asking for my name to put on a waiting list to be helped. I panicked.

Now I have friends who swear by this store, but the Grand Central Station nature of it on this day was just too much. I found myself hopping in a cab and high-tailing it to the dulcet confines of the 6th floor lingerie department at Bergdorf’s. There, no fitter accosted me. No one menacingly whipped out her measuring tape. I could graze unmolested. I could choose my size anonymously — dammit, I am a C cup! And I should think I’d know what fits and what doesn’t! Oooh, but this lacy one with the tiny straps and band sure is pretty…

Technorati Tags: lingerie, shopping, bras, undergarments

Friday: Prada straw and croc wedges

The best thing about working at a magazine with a beauty department? The beauty sale. Every few months the lovely, generous beauty staffers clean out their stash of samples and sell everything, with the proceeds going to charity. Most things are a buck. That’s right, a buck. Let me tell you, the line starts early and the elbows are sharp.

One of the worst things? I have bags and bags of stuff from sales past — great stuff, mind you, but did I really need that YSL Sun make-up leg mousse? Hey, it was a buck! There are tables and tables of lipsticks, nail polish, hair products, blush, mascara, perfume, eyeliner… The room gets crowded and hot and dizzying. It’s exhausting. But did I mention everything’s like, a buck?

From the very first beauty sale I devised a strategy: (1) Bring a big shopping bag. (2) Head straight for the skincare table. (3) Grab every high-end brand, do not look at what it is, do not pass go, just grab it. Read the fine print later. (4) Don’t ask if you need it or not. It’s a buck! It’s for charity!

So over the past year I’ve snagged the Natura Bisse Diamond Extreme Cream ($250) and (not one but it turns out, two) Ice Lift DNA Cryo-Mask ($140), a Guerlain Meteorites compact ($150), Frederic Fekkai Protein Rx PM Repair Strengthener ($65 and on back order at Neiman’s), as well as countless Nars lipsticks, Laura Mercier eyeshadows, Shiseido concealers, Chanel nail polishes…

My loot ends up in bags in my apartment, simply because I have so much stuff that I’ve forgotten what I have. The bags are now sitting in my foyer, serving as something like the treasure chest at the dentist’s office — all visitors get a parting gift. Or rather gifts, in my mom’s case — that is, gifts for her, for her secretary, for her hairdresser, for her pals… She cleans me out every time. Not that I miss any of it. I can barely remember what I got at yesterday’s sale. Did I need it? No. But did I have to buy that bright coral nailpolish? Hell yeah!

Technorati Tags: cosmetics, shopping, makeup, skincare

Wednesday: black Prada tassel slides

I’ve decided that this season, it’s going to be all about the dresses. Not necessarily because everyone’s all about the dresses this season (though hey, sometimes it’s quite all right to jump on the bandwagon) but because I’ve got what must be a fantasy in my mind that if I could just buy enough dresses, I wouldn’t take such a painfully long time to get dressed every morning.

I mean, doesn’t that make sense? Your whole outfit is determined in one fell swoop. There are no endless permutations of pants and tops (and since I was a math geek, I’ll designate that number as the product of P x T) or skirts + tops (S x T). When P, T and S are all greater than 25 but less than 100, the figure heretofore designated O for total possible Outfits ((P x T) + (S x T)) is high enough to — using the formal mathematics terms from my day — make your head explode. And that’s before we even factor in the shoe possibilities!

Of course, there are other factors at play, namely cardigans (for offices that are inevitably air-conditioned to polar conditions in the summer) and shoes. But even that is relatively simple in comparison… though I can tell you now that the number of cardigans in my wardrobe, C, is most definitely greater than (P + T + S)… even though the number of cardigans in regular rotation, C_r , is more likely a prime number less than or equal to 17.

But let’s get to the dresses at hand! I draw the line at those regretably back-in-fashion babydolls (because really, who looks good in that shape/shapelessness?), but I’m pretty game for all sorts of styles, from this Catherine Malandrino sundress to this strapless Chloe (that’s where the cardi comes in handy). Above all, I am still searching for the perfect crisp, white cotton shirtdress, to be worn with a wide tan leather belt. I’ve got the belt — a great Prada belt with an engraved buckle — but no dress yet. I don’t know why it’s been so elusive, but I do understand that I’m holding out because I know it’ll be a staple. I might just have to get one made to measure…

Technorati Tags: dresses, shopping, spring clothes